Neuroscience and Climate Change
When:
—
Venue:
Online
We know the climate is changing. Neuroscience shows why it can be so hard to change our behaviour in response.
Professor Michael Thomas is Director of the Centre for Educational Neuroscience (http://www.educationalneuroscience.org.uk/). The goal of the centre is to translate insights into how the brain works, particularly neural mechanisms of learning, into potential classroom applications. The centre has a linked masters course: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/educational-neuroscience. In this online talk, he will discuss the relevance of a neuroscience approach to climate change and sustainability.
Although many of us now think that the climate is changing rapidly due to human behaviour, the way the brain works means that even those who hold such beliefs don’t necessarily change their behaviour. Why not?
Professor Thomas contends that our behaviour is driven as much by emotions and by histories of rewarding and aversive experiences as it is by beliefs. Because of evolution, the brain is interested in immediate, personally relevant consequences (jumping into a car to drive to the shops), while climate change often involves abstract ideas far in the future (the living conditions of distant future generations). When governments induce anxiety in their populations to alter behaviour (‘it’s a crisis’, ‘we’re at a tipping point’), the threat may produce very different effects on behaviour depending on people’s personalities.
This event approaches the big topics of climate change and sustainability by exploring the contribution neuroscience can make in identifying the factors that influence human behaviour, thereby generating insights that may guide future policy.
Birkbeck’s inaugural Climate Festival: The Sustainable Now. See the full programme of events here.
Contact name:
Stephen Willey