Max Bazerman - US grants

The PIs propose to examine the apparent discrepancy between the pro-environmental attitudes that people express and the less than pro-environmental behaviors that people perform. The PIs propose to perform four streams of experiments to examine this issue. In the first stream of experiments the PIs will examine preference reversals in environmental domains. The hypothesis is that when persons evaluate a single option, they tend to focus on what they want rather than what they think they should do. When choosing between two or more options, people switch their mode of decision making toward what they perceive they should do. In the second stream of experimentation, the PIs will explore the self-enhancement biases that allow people to escape blame from behaving in ways that are detrimental to the environment. In the third stream of studies the PIs will explore egocentrism in the arena of environmental decision making. By interpreting information in a self-serving manner, persons can act in an exploitative way toward the environment and toward each other and still feel that they have behaved appropriately. Finally the PIs will explore the area of generation discounting--the means by which people evaluate the relative importance of their current consumption relative to the welfare of subsequent generations.

This project provides support for a conference entitled, "Psychological Perspectives on Environmental and Ethical Issues in Management." The conference will encourage leading psychologists to contribute intellectually to many of the environmental issues facing contemporary society. The first goal of the conference is to apply psychological research and theory to contemporary environmental and ethical issues. The second goal is to expose psychologists to an important area where their research can make a difference. Issues to be addresses at the conference include decisions over the use of scarce resources, creating polluting byproducts, exposing workers to risky substances, and marketing profitable but potentially harmful products. Leading social, cognitive, and decision psychologists will present their research at the conference and contribute chapters to an edited volume.

The research analyzes the interaction of knowledge, behaviors and values in environmental decision making. Data are collected from two sites where Native American and majority culture populations share a habitat but conflict over resource use: the Wolf River area of Wisconsin and the Lowland Maya forest region of Guatemala. Studies integrate formal modeling techniques from psychology, anthropology and sociology to show that: (1) people share cultural models of the environment to a surprisingly detailed degree; (2) these mental models inform and predict actual behaviors, with measurable ecological consequences; and (3) individual and cultural differences in models are motivated by different patterns of resource valuation. Research findings are expected to establish: (4) a first approximation of ecological cognition across cultures, (5) a cognitive dimension to stimulate new research on how people decide to manage common resources; and (6) a comprehensive basis for conflict-resolution negotiation that involves understanding the relations between environmental cognitions, behaviors and values.