Atkinson Quentin D, Jacquet Jennifer
School of Psychology, University of Auckland.
Department of Environmental Studies, New York University.
Perspect Psychol Sci. 2022 May;17(3):619-630. doi: 10.1177/17456916211018454. Epub 2021 Nov 5.
In the face of a slow and inadequate global response to anthropogenic climate change, scholars and journalists frequently claim that human psychology is not designed or evolved to solve the problem, and they highlight a range of "psychological barriers" to climate action. Here, we critically examine this claim and the evidence on which it is based. We identify four key problems with attributing climate inaction to "human nature" or evolved psychological barriers: (a) It minimizes variability within and between populations; (b) it oversimplifies psychological research and its implications for policy; (c) it frames responsibility for climate change in terms of the individual at the expense of the role of other aspects of culture, including institutional actors; and (d) it rationalizes inaction. For these reasons, the message from social scientists must be clear-humans' current collective failure to tackle climate change on the scale required cannot be explained as a product of a universal and fixed human nature because it is a fundamentally cultural phenomenon, reflecting culturally evolved values, norms, institutions, and technologies that can and must change rapidly.
面对全球对人为气候变化的反应迟缓且力度不足的情况，学者和记者经常声称，人类心理并非为解决这一问题而设计或进化而来，他们还强调了一系列阻碍气候行动的“心理障碍”。在此，我们批判性地审视这一说法及其所基于的证据。我们确定了将气候不作为归因于“人性”或进化而来的心理障碍存在的四个关键问题：(a) 它将群体内部和群体之间的变异性最小化；(b) 它过度简化了心理学研究及其对政策的影响；(c) 它将气候变化的责任归咎于个人，而忽视了包括机构行为者在内的文化其他方面的作用；(d) 它为不作为提供了合理化解释。出于这些原因，社会科学家必须明确传达这样一个信息——人类目前在应对气候变化所需规模上的集体失败不能被解释为普遍且固定的人性的产物，因为这是一个根本上的文化现象，反映了文化进化而来的价值观、规范、制度和技术，这些是可以而且必须迅速改变的。
