Addressing Environmental Issues through Psychology | Summary and Recommendations

Read / Watch / Listen

Description in DB8 document. Please read complete file need 300 words

Read / Watch / Listen 

• Steg, L., Kees, K., Buunk, A.P., & Rothengatter, T. (2017). Applied social psychology: Understanding and managing social problems (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK and NY NY: Cambridge University Press- CH. 9  [attached]

How Climate Change Affects Your Mental Health 

https://www.ted.com/talks/britt_wray_how_climate_change_affects_your_mental_health?language=en

"For all that's ever been said about climate change, we haven't heard nearly enough about the psychological impacts of living in a warming world," says science writer Dr. Britt Wray. In this quick talk, she explores how climate change is threatening our well-being -- mental, social and spiritual -- and offers a starting point for what we can do about it (description per Ted Talk, 2019) (approx. 7 minutes).

How to Turn Climate Anxiety into Action

It's normal to feel anxious or overwhelmed by climate change, says psychologist Dr. Renée Lertzman. Can we turn those feelings into something productive? In an affirming talk, Dr. Lertzman discusses the emotional effects of climate change and offers insights on how psychology can help us discover both the creativity and resilience needed to act on environmental issues (description per Ted Talk, 2019) (approx. 13-14 minutes).

How Behavioral Science Can Lower Your Energy Bill

Alex Laskey shows how a quirk of human behavior can make us all better, wiser energy users, with lower bills to prove it (description per Ted Talk, 2013) (approx. 8 minutes).

You have been hired as a consultant/adviser to address the issues related to the environment, covered this week. Please take 1/3 of your post to summarize the major social problems presented and why these are occurring (psychologically speaking). Then, for the other 2/3 of your post, please suggest ways that these issues can be addressed, as informed by psychology/psychological findings. Don't just move article by article and give a summary. You are being asked to read all of the materials and synthesize them into a "brief" - a short summary of the issues - for those that hired you. Additionally, for your suggestions/recommendations, please don't simply summarize the ideas others have given in your readings; come up with your own ideas as informed by what you've read. Make sure to support your ideas with evidence - why are you making these suggestions? What are they based on? Which findings suggest these ideas could help? Please use all of the resources for this week in your post and use in-text citations.

Finally, at the end of your post, in a separate sentence (titled - "Remaining Question"), please post a question that you had, based on what you'd read. You should think of this as a discussion question you are proposing (not just a question about something in an article).