February is Psychology Month, a month that highlights the contributions of Canadian psychologists and shows Canadians how psychology works to help people live healthy and happy lives, their communities flourish, their employers create better workplaces, and their governments develop effective policies.
The theme of Psychology Month for 2024 is the climate crisis. How does human behaviour shape climate change, and how can we approach the issue from that perspective? What are some of the mental health effects created by climate change, and how can we address them? Psychologists have a part to play in all phases of our collective response to the crisis that is upon us. We’ll highlight what many of them are doing and what we can all do to help mitigate the damage from this global catastrophe.
We kick off the month speaking with Dr. Katherine Arbuthnott about trust. We tend to think of other people as self-interested, and we are therefore pessimistic about things like our ability to tackle major subjects like climate change. Dr. Arbuthnott is here to tell us this isn't really the case - that most people are, in fact, willing to make sacrifices for the good of the communities and the people around them.
Two relevant articles (sorry, they are paywalled by their journals!)
Did cooperation among strangers decline in the United States? A cross-temporal meta-analysis of social dilemmas (1956–2017): https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2022-80213-001
Cooperating with the future: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13530