Climate Change Education Across the Curricula, Across the Globe

Climate Change Education Across the Curricula

Lesson Plan: Why Do Our Brains Ignore Climate Change

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As an Undergraduate teacher of Psychology in the Social Sciences you can use this lesson plan to teach your students aspects of behavioural science, explain why our brains are wired to ignore climate change, and discuss potential behavioural science solutions to the climate crisis.

This lesson plan provides teaching resources that would help your students learn about some cognitive and psychological factors that influence an individual’s response to climate change. It includes discussions on how the human brain responds most strongly to threats that are direct, visible, and immediate. As the impacts of climate change are rarely such, we tend to have psychological barriers that prevent meaningful sustained climate action for the long term. The lesson plan further includes resources to show how behavioural science could provide some solutions to the climate crisis.

Thus, the use of this lesson plan allows you to teach aspects of Behavioural Psychology in your Social Sciences classroom. This lesson plan can be used as a module in a Behavioral Psychology course or as a topic in Behavioural Psychology in an Introductory Psychology course.

Questions

Use this lesson plan to help your students find answers to:

  1. What is behavioral psychology?
  2. What cognitive and psychological factors influence responses to climate change?
  3. What is climate psychology?
  4. What are some psychological barriers that prevent sustained climate action?
  5. How can behavioral science provide solutions to the climate crisis?

About Lesson Plan

Grade Level High school
Discipline Social Sciences, Psychology
Topic(s) in Discipline Behavioral Psychology
Climate Topic Climate and Society

Climate Change and the Anthroposphere
Location Global
Language(s) English
Access Online
Approximate
Time Required		 60 – 120 min

Contents

Video

(~33 min)

 A video containing talks to introduce the science of behavior change hosted by The Royal Institution of Great Britain.

This can be accessed here.
Video lecture

(~22 min)

 A video lecture on the cognition of climate change denial by Prof Stephan Lewandowsky from the University of Western Australia.

This can be accessed here.
Video lecture

(~55 min)

 A video lecture titled ‘Why Our Brains are Wired to Ignore Climate Change’ by George Marshall at Talks at Google.

This can be accessed here.
1 Introduction to Science of Behavioural Change Introduce your students to the lesson plan by providing an overview of behavioural psychology and the science of behavioural change. You may proceed with your own lecture material or can provide your students with the video titled ‘The Science of Behaviour Change’. This resource contains three short talks hosted at the Royal Institution. Speakers include:

Prof Susan Michie - Professor of Health Psychology and Director of the Centre for Behaviour Change at UCL.

Nick Chater - researcher, author and editor for the journals Cognitive Science, Psychological Review, and Psychological Science.

Toby Park - Behavioural Insights Team

This resource can be accessed here.

You can use this resource to explain to your students how human beings often do not act in rational ways or do what is best for them. Solutions to critical problems such as climate change may require a behavioural change. This resource can be used to encourage your students to think about how people make decisions. Further, they can understand what interventions may encourage behavioural change that benefits individuals and society.
2 Cognition of Climate Change Denial Next, introduce your students to the topic of climate psychology. Use the video titled ‘Cognition of Climate Change Denial’ by Prof Stephan Lewandowsky from the University of Western Australia, hosted by the University of Sydney.

This resource can be accessed here.

In this video, Prof Lewandowsky discusses “some of the cognitive and psychological variables that determine people’s responses to climate science.” Emphasize to your students, his findings on people’s level of comprehension of climate data and climate science. Further discuss with your students, Prof Lewandowsky’s results on how ideology plays a significant role in whether an individual accepts or rejects climate science.
3 Climate Psychology: Why Our Brains Ignore Climate Change Next, discuss with your students what is climate psychology. Use the video titled ‘Why Our Brains are Wired to Ignore Climate Change’ by George Marshall at Talks at Google.

This resource can be accessed here.

In this video, George Marshall discusses how the human brain is wired to ignore the climate crisis even though it is such a critical problem. According to Marshall, the human brain responds most strongly to threats that are direct, visible, immediate, and caused by a defined “enemy”. As the impacts of climate change often tend to be less direct and immediate, we tend to have psychological barriers that prevent meaningful sustained climate action for the long term. Emphasize to your students, how Marshall addresses critical questions such as “What is the psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? And how is it possible that when presented with overwhelming evidence, even the evidence of our own eyes, we can deliberately ignore something while being entirely aware that this is what we are doing?”

Summarize this lecture during your classroom discussion and emphasize the point that behavioural change can provide potential climate change solutions once we better understand human motivational drivers.

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