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[Music] Today, we're talking about environmental risk and environmental risk perceptions. In environmental psychology, environmental risks are situations or events that cause, or have the potential to cause, negative health impacts, death, and destruction to many people. You can see why it's an important topic. How people assess the likelihood and potential consequences of environmental risks affects their efforts to prevent or prepare for them. That's important because it has major implications not only economically, but also in terms of human health, death, and suffering.
By the way, you'll hear the terms "environmental hazards" sometimes and also "environmental threats," and those are the same thing as environmental risks. Environmental risks include natural disasters like volcanoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and tornadoes, but also keep in mind that natural disasters can be caused by or aggravated by human activities. In particular, I'm talking about climate change-related natural disasters like flooding, fires, droughts, extreme heat, and other extreme weather events that are linked to climate change.
Environmental risks also include technological risks and disasters like chemical oil spills, nuclear plant meltdowns, hazardous waste leaks, chemical and oil spills—things like that, air and water pollution even. I want to point out that environmental hazards often involve ethical issues. One of these is that poor people, particularly poor people of color, are often more vulnerable when it comes to environmental hazards. "Vulnerability" is about the characteristics of a person or group that influence their ability to anticipate, cope with, and recover from the impacts of natural or technological disaster.
For instance, in the early fall of 2020, California experienced record-breaking heat and dozens of wildfires. The heat, smoke, and ash posed significant health threats, especially if you had a pre-existing health condition. As I sheltered in place in my air-conditioned home, stressed but safe, many Californians weren't so lucky—particularly those without air conditioning and those without homes.
I also want to point out a related issue: When it comes to industrial and technological disasters, hazards, and threats, another moral issue is that the people and industries that contribute the most to these risks and that benefit the most from these risks (that is, make the most money from these risks), are not usually the ones that are most vulnerable to the worst consequences should disaster happen. In the United States, for instance, pollution-producing industries are more likely to be situated in low-income communities of color, and these industries and their owners and stockholders reap the benefits, or most of the benefits, while the consequences are borne by the people living in that community. This is an example of what is sometimes called environmental racism/classism, and that is a concept from what is known as the environmental justice movement.
Our big focus today is on environmental risk perception. You're not completely oblivious to the environmental hazards that lurk in your area. If you're a Californian, for example, you probably know that earthquakes and wildfires are risks here, but if you're like most people, you probably don't grasp the full nature of the environmental threats that could potentially affect you, and you haven't thought much about how to prepare and what to do if it happens. Chances are you haven't taken political action to pressure the government to reduce the threat or prepare for it. As you'll learn today, psychologists know why.
First, let's clearly define what risk perception is. Risk perception is about how people assess the potential impacts and consequences of a hazard and how they choose to respond. The psychology of risk perception seeks to understand why people ignore environmental hazards and fail to take actions to prevent and mitigate the risks; opting instead for dealing with it if it happens. "Mitigate," by the way, means "reduce the impacts." Risk perceptions matter because they can amplify or reduce the impact of disasters. Understanding risk perception also aids in the development of more effective risk communication and disaster management policies.
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If you think that people are rational in their assessment of environmental risks and that the problem is that people don't have the information that they need to make accurate estimations of risk, you're only partly right. Yes, it's true that people often are making risk assessments under conditions of limited information. But on top of that, the way we process information is often biased due to the way our brains work and because of the way our emotions work. In other words, our risk perceptions are influenced by what is known as "bounded rationality." The idea of bounded rationality is that psychological biases and common errors in information processing limit our rational processing of information. And when it comes to risk perception, bounded rationality often prevents people from making the choices that reduce hazard risks and disaster consequences.
Next, we're going to talk about these two general categories of bounded rationality: the cognitive biases and the motivational biases. The cognitive biases, which we'll start off with, have to do with our natural information processing strategies. There's a lot to process in this world—a lot of information and a lot of stimuli, and our brains have developed ways of processing information quickly. Those natural information processing tendencies normally serve us well, and they can help us make quick judgments and assessments about risk, but unfortunately, there are also some errors that are a consequence of these processes that generally serve us well.
After that, we'll talk about motivational biases, and these have to do with the fact that we are emotional beings with self-protective needs and who want to do what we want to do and want to believe what we want to believe. These motivational biases also interfere with our rational processing of risk information and risk assessment. But first, let's talk about the cognitive biases associated with bounded rationality.
So I've already said that the cognitive biases that interfere with our accurate risk perception have to do with the way our brains work, particularly the way they work to process information quickly, that is, our cognition. In other words, our brains take a lot of cognitive shortcuts. Psychologists call these natural shortcut information processing strategies "heuristics." People often rely on heuristics to help them make quick judgments about the probability of events. Let's focus on a specific risk-relevant heuristic called the "availability heuristic."
Simply put, the availability heuristic is about how the easier it is to imagine an event, the higher we judge the probability of it happening. It's called the "availability heuristic" because vivid, dramatic events are more memorable, that is, they're more cognitively available, and that makes us judge them as more frequent. Psychologists believe that our brains likely evolved to more easily remember vivid, dramatic environmental events because it served our survival to be able to easily recall them and to perceive them as a threat.
Recent events are often more cognitively available. So, for example, whether people will buy insurance for natural disasters is greatly affected by recent experiences with disasters. If floods haven't happened in the immediate past, people who live on floodplains are less likely to buy flood insurance. After an earthquake, more people buy earthquake insurance, but as their memories fade, they let it go. Consistent with the availability heuristic, people's concerns about climate change are influenced by recent weather. Public anxiety about climate change is greater during hot, dry summer months.
The availability heuristic means that people's estimations of risks are influenced by whether they or someone they know has ever experienced negative consequences from the disaster and how often they've been exposed to media images of negative consequences from the disaster. People judge risks as greater when someone in their personal social network has been personally impacted. We call that "psychological distance," and when media coverage provides dramatic imagery of the hazard and the people that are harmed by it. So think about that and how the media that people consume affects their threat perceptions. Those of you that regularly read news sources that cover climate disasters most likely perceive them as a greater threat than those of you that don't. But it's not just the news. Movies, for example, that portray disasters can make it easier to imagine such a thing happening and can influence our risk perceptions. Sometimes they can lead us to perceive a threat as greater than it is. Something to think about next time you watch Shark Week or The Walking Dead.
Of course, many hazards don't receive media coverage until they become disasters. For example, environmental scientists have been warning for decades that climate change from fossil fuel use would result in more and widespread dangerous fires, rising oceans, and extreme weather events. But for the most part, they were ignored by the media because it hadn't happened yet. So people couldn't imagine it, and we underestimated the threat. And so, we failed to take action, and now we're bearing the consequences.
Next, I want to give you another example of a cognitive bias that limits our rational risk assessment. It's called the "present bias" or the "temporal discounting bias," though it sometimes goes by other names such as "time discounting" or "delay discounting." The temporal discounting bias refers to the human tendency to prioritize here-and-now rewards over future costs or benefits. For example, people will discount the future environmental costs of driving gas-guzzling vehicles in favor of the present rewards of driving them. The truth is that most people have an easier time thinking about present rewards than they do about future negative consequences. So again, this is called the present bias or the temporal discounting bias because we discount the future in favor of the present. "Temporal" means having to do with time, and the present bias is the cognitive tendency to overvalue immediate rewards and devalue future costs.
Now, the present bias partly explains why it's been so hard to get people to reduce their consumerism and their carbon footprints to reduce climate change. It partly explains why people don't consider how their consumer choices contribute to future environmental problems. They focus on the here-and-now benefits of their environmentally irresponsible actions and don't even consider the future costs. It also explains why so many preventable technological failures weren't prevented. Government and business officials focus on the here-and-now and so don't devote the resources to repair aging equipment and infrastructures that may create disaster later. Likewise, they don't spend enough money preparing for disasters when the benefits of doing that won't be experienced until some distant future.
The present bias is a cognitive bias that arises out of natural information processing tendencies that provide cognitive economy. In other words, it requires less thinking of us. Making decisions based on "the now" is quick and easy and doesn't involve the harder cognitive work of weighing future consequences and delaying gratification. People tend to impulsively go for the short-term gain without thinking about the pain it may cause in the long term.
The present bias is also a byproduct of the fact that our attention is naturally more focused on the here-and-now. The present is more salient and dominates our attention because it's what's right in front of us. This also makes us discount long-term hazard risks and focus on short-term benefits. The present bias is a common bias, but it is affected by individual differences. Some people are higher in what is called "the need for cognition." Such people like thinking hard and rationally. They favor more deliberative judgment and decision-making which considers present and future rewards and costs. Other people not so much. They find thinking burdensome and hard. Also, some people, by virtue of personality or neurodiversity, are more impulsive and have a harder time delaying gratification, and this also makes them more prone to the present bias.
Psychologists like David Kahneman say we have two cognitive systems: one that helps us think fast and the other that helps us to think slow. The cognitive biases that affect risk perception and action to reduce environmental risks arise because we think too fast when we need to think more slowly. They arise because our brains developed ways to think quickly without really thinking much at all. Therefore, to overcome these biases, we must use our capacity for intelligent and rational thought to accurately assess risk and reduce environmental harms. We must be more deliberate in our thinking, slowing it down and considering unbiased scientific information about environmental threats. Then individuals and businesses and government decision-makers need to act to prevent future disasters or prepare when prevention isn't an option.
People's accurate risk perception is also bounded by their feelings and desires. Their risk perceptions are motivated by their emotions and by their feelings (their affect), and this leads to bias. This idea that risk perception is biased by our goals, our beliefs, and self-protective needs is called "motivated reasoning." The truth is that for most people, motivated reasoning is a much stronger determinant of risk perception than our objective facts about environmental risk. We're going to talk about three examples of motivated reasoning that contribute to bounded rationality and risk perception. First, we'll talk about perceived control and defensive denial.
One example of motivational bias is how perceived control affects our risk perception. For example, you'd think that living close to an environmental hazard would increase people's perceptions of its risks, but when they believe the hazard is difficult to control or that they don't have the power to do anything about it, they will downplay its threat to reduce its stressfulness. This defensive denial or defensive minimization protects them from fear and worry about environmental threats they feel they can't do anything about. Do you live near a railway that carries toxic chemicals or did you live near an aging levee or nuclear power plant? Is your area at risk for wildfires or flooding? If you feel you have no control over these things, it's quite possible that you engage in defensive denial and try not to think about these risks; you deny them or downplay them.
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The affect heuristic is another motivational bias that distorts our risk perceptions. It's also called the "risk-as-feelings hypothesis." This one is about how when we're highly motivated to do something or feel very positively about doing something, we'll downplay its risk. In psychology, "affect" means feeling, and the idea here is that if people feel very positively towards something, they tend to judge its risks as low. So people judge a risk not only by what they think about it, but also how they feel about it. So for example, let's say you finally saved up enough money to buy your first home. You've got a baby on the way, and you're ready to settle down. You find a house that seems perfect, but the real estate disclosures tell you that the house is located on a flood plain, it's near train tracks where trains pass carrying hazardous materials, an earthquake fault runs through the town, and it's near an aging nuclear power plant. The affect heuristic suggests that if you really, really want that house, you'll underestimate the threats posed by these environmental hazards so you can do what you want to do. Likewise, a community may downplay the environmental cost of a polluting or hazard-prone industry if they really want the jobs. They feel positively about the jobs, and so they downplay the risk. During the covid-19 pandemic, you undoubtedly knew someone that minimized the threat because they wanted to go to social gatherings to party, celebrate, or worship. In short, the affect heuristic is about how what people feel positively about doing can lead them to deny or minimize its environmental risks and costs.
A word of caution before we move on to our last motivational bias: On the face of it, the affect heuristic and the present bias look very similar, but remember they have different sources. The present bias arises from the way our brains work whereas the affect heuristic is a product of our emotional needs and desires. "Solution aversion" is another example of motivated reasoning. It's how if we don't like the solution to a risk or the actions that are recommended to reduce the risk, then we will downplay the risk so that we can just do what we want to do.
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The "optimism bias" is another example of how people's risk perceptions are biased by self-serving motives. It describes how people optimistically assume that they and the people they care about won't be affected by environmental hazards. They'll admit there's an actual environmental threat, but they judge the risk to be lower for themselves than for other people. They're optimistic about their personal risk. A good example of this is that during the pandemic, some people didn't wear masks because they believed that covid-19 was real, but they didn't think it would happen to them or someone they cared about, or if it did, they thought it wouldn't be a big deal.
The optimism bias is sometimes fueled by religious devotion, beliefs in the power of positive thinking, or other spiritual practice. Some people believe that their spiritual or psychological practices give them special protection that other people don't have. Personality also affects the optimism bias. As far as personality goes, people vary in how optimistic or pessimistic they tend to be. Optimists, needless to say, are more prone to assuming that they'll be just fine in the face of environmental disaster. Meanwhile, pessimists and those prone to depression are less likely to assume this. And if you're prone to anxiety, and thinking of worst-case scenarios, you probably don't display the optimism bias. The optimism bias is a good thing in some ways. It does reduce fear and worry so that we can go about our lives without paralyzing anxiety. But the flip side is that it can keep people from worrying and acting when they should. For example, research finds that even when people live in an area at risk for floods and have experienced them before, they may not believe it will happen again, or believe that if floods do happen, that they'll be protected by God. Likewise, many people perceive climate change as something that will happen in the distant future to other people in other places and not something that will affect them and the people that they care about.
So far, we've thought about risk perception through two psychological lenses: a cognitive lens and an emotional or psychodynamic lens. Next, we're going to think about risk perception through a social lens. Humans are social animals, and they're influenced by what others think. The famous environmental risk researcher Paul Slovic once said, "Danger is real, but risk is socially constructed." And he's right—social factors affect our risk perceptions; social referents such as family, friends, and media often influence how we view environmental hazards and can amplify and intensify our risk perceptions. There are two general ways this works, one is called "informational pressure," and the other is called "normative pressure."
First is that when people are uncertain and also when they're somewhat lazy, they typically adopt the attitudes and beliefs of their social group. So, if you're uncertain how to assess risk or if you're unmotivated to do the research to accurately assess risk, you'll rely on the words and deeds of your people to help you decide what to think. If they don't seem to take an environmental risk seriously, then you probably won't either, and the reverse is also true. In social psychology, this type of social influence is called "informational pressure." Here are a few examples of informational pressure. Uncertain whether to socially distance or mask up during a pandemic? Follow the lead of your reference group—if they do, you do; if they don't, you don't. Not sure whether climate change is real and don't want to be bothered by looking at the science? Just adopt the views of your family or your political party.
A second type of social influence is called "normative pressure." This type of influence has to do with the fact that humans have a fundamental need to belong, to feel accepted, to avoid social rejection. This makes these susceptible to adopting others' attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors or rejecting them, for social approval. As far as risk perception goes, if it's a norm among "your people" to be concerned about a risk and those that comply with this norm are rewarded with social approval and those that don't are ridiculed or rejected, then this may affect your perception of risk. In other words, risk perceptions can be norms in a group, and they can be policed with social approval or social disapproval. This has been a major problem underlying the climate crisis. Scientists have known for decades that our use of fossil fuels was likely to cause climate change, but among some groups in our society, it's been a social norm to deny it, and to ridicule people that believe otherwise.
All right, Earthlings, that does it for our section on environmental perception, although we'll see some of these concepts throughout the quarter. Next week we begin our section on environmental stress. I'm sure you'll find that interesting and also quite useful. Until then, take care and be well.
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