Bayesian inference has been advocated as an alternative to conventional analysis in psychological science. Bayesians stress that subjectivity is needed for principled inference, and subjectivity by-and-large has not been seen as desirable. This paper provides the broader rationale and context for subjectivity, and in it we show that subjectivity is the key to principled measures of evidence for theory from data. By making our subjective elements focal, we provide an avenue for common sense and expertise to enter the analysis. We cover the role of models in linking theory to data, the notion that models are abstractions which are neither true nor false, the need for relative model comparison, the role of predictions in stating relative evidence for models, and the role of subjectivity in specifying models that yield predictions. In the end, we conclude that transparent subjectivity leads to a more honest and fruitful analyses in psychological science.
The key message of this chapter is that solving the climate problem will require motivating social and behavioral changes through effective communication. More and better communication about climate issues is needed so people will mobilize solutions. Currently most people in the world do not believe that climate change is worth doing anything about, if they have even heard of it at all. Despite the efforts of many journalists, scientists, educators, and politicians to convey the science behind and urgency of climate disruption, about a third of Americans still deny that climate is changing or that humans cause it, and nearly 60% feel that climate change is not a problem serious enough to affect them. What is more, in many parts of the world, at most 35% of adults have even heard of climate change. This general lack of recognition about the magnitude of climate disruption and the urgency of dealing with it is slowing down the process of implementing solutions. Even if high-level decision makers want to put in place the policies, incentives, and ready-to-be-deployed technologies required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they are unable do so to the extent needed because they have to answer to their constituencies. Put another way, only if the majority of the global society sees the need to mitigate climate change, and the feasibility of doing so, will decision-makers be able to enact the policy changes needed to jumpstart a global energy transition. The good news, however, is that most people—for example, around 60% in the United States—have not yet made up their minds about the need to fix the climate problem. Reaching these individuals with the right information in the right way offers great opportunity to boost societal awareness and effect necessary change. In this chapter we briefly review the information that supports these statements, and summarize the key pathways of communication about climate change that have prevailed so far, including where they have been successful and where they have fallen short. We focus on the United States, because of its high-emitter status and consequent influence on attitudes about climate mitigation worldwide. We then discuss findings from recent research on communication strategies that suggest an effective way forward—namely, that much remains to be done through appropriate framing of the issues for diverse constituencies that have not been effectively reached. We suggest that by targeting specific audiences with appropriately framed information, the societal balance can be tipped from the current condition of a majority who are apathetic to a majority who become receptive to the reality of harmful climate disruption and the need to avoid it. For example, strategies may include peer-to-peer interactions that communicate how climate change and associated impacts fit with existing value systems that define various religious, political, and economic spheres. To this end, we recognize four general communication strategies that will be useful. - Develop coordinated local, state, national, and international informational campaigns to tell diverse constituencies about the need for and benefits of mitigating climate change. These must be framed appropriately for specific target audiences, much as advertising agencies do to promote products effectively, and evaluated rigorously to know how to improve subsequent campaigns. - Integrate education about climate change impacts and solutions into all levels of education, from K-12 through University curricula. - Create venues for decision makers, business leaders, religious leaders, and academics, spanning the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and the arts, with the overall goal of developing recognition, dialog, and action on the intertwined behavioral, ethical, political, economic, social, health, and scientific dimensions of climate disruption. - Communicate that actionable solutions to climate change problems exist and are feasible to implement. This should include embedding climate change information and action opportunities across a variety of venues, from print journalism, to traditional TV and radio, to digital and social media.
We investigate young children’s sensitivity to minimal group membership. Previous research has suggested that children do not show sensitivity to minimal cues to group membership until the age of five to six, contributing to claims that this is an important transition in the development of intergroup cognition and behavior. In this study, we investigated whether even younger children are sensitive to minimal cues to group membership. Random assignment to one of either of two color groups created a temporary, visually salient minimal group membership in 3 and 4-year-old study participants. Using explicit measures, we tested whether children preferred minimal group members when making social judgments. We find that, in the absence of any knowledge regarding the two groups, children expressed greater liking for ingroup than outgroup targets. Moreover, children estimated that ingroup members would share their preferences. Our findings demonstrate that from early in development, humans assess unknown others on the basis of minimal cues to social similarity and that the perception of group boundaries potentially underlies social assortment in strangers.
Objective: Low levels of perceived social integration, or loneliness, are associated with increased risk for a range of poor health outcomes. Sleep disturbance plays a central role in the evolutionary theory of loneliness, which provides a mechanistic account of how low levels of social integration may negatively impact health. No studies, however, have examined whether the association between social integration and sleep disturbance is consistent with a causal effect after accounting for genes that are common to both variables. Method: Using twin data ('N' = 905 twin pairs) from the nationally-representative Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) survey, I evaluated a series of bivariate twin models exploring whether the phenotypic association between low social integration and sleep disturbance can be explained by shared genetics. In addition, the current study specified a series of quantitative models for studying gene x environment (G X E) interactions to determine whether the genetic and environmental influences on sleep disturbance differ as a function of social integration. Results: The phenotypic association between social integration and sleep disturbance was fully accounted for by genes that are common between the two variables, suggesting that within-twin pair differences in social integration do not exert a causal influence on sleep disturbance. Social integration, however, moderated the non-shared environmental influence on sleep disturbances, with the greatest environmental influences observed at the lowest levels of social integration. Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that an essential feature of the evolutionary model of loneliness may need refinement or elaboration. The moderation findings are discussed in terms of the fit with a stress-buffering model of social support in which environmental influences on sleep disturbance are strongest when social resources are low.
We are living in a world of over seven billion people, with annual greenhouse gas emissions of approximately 50 billion tons a year and rising steadily. If continued unabated, the world is on target to warm by about 2 °C in less than 40 years, pushing the climate to a regime unlike any that has been witnessed in the last million years. Nonetheless, we still have time to avert such a catastrophic scenario, or delay its occurrence by several decades to provide human societies and the ecosystem with the time to adjust. In order to mitigate the possibility of climate disruption, we need to recognize that fossil fuel based technologies have become outdated and transform the energy system to that of low-carbon, sustainable and secure energy systems. In addition, we have to mitigate emissions of the four short-lived climate pollutants to bring immediate relief from climate change and protect vulnerable societies. Stability of the climate system involves not only the centrality of scientific and technological advancements and investments, but also necessary shifts in social structure and behavior by individuals, communities and societies worldwide as well as market based instruments, sub-national collaborations and governance structure. Fortunately, living laboratories—such as the State of California and the University of California system, which has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2025—provide demonstrable solutions which hold promise in alleviating the climate warming in the next generation. These jurisdictions are tiny emitters in the global picture, but they offer the potential for leverage through demonstrating (Figure 1) new technologies as well as workable institutions that cut emissions. We outline 10 pragmatic solutions—a “kit of parts” rooted in California but scalable to the world—that taken together, can “bend the curve” of the upward trajectory of human-caused warming trends. Wholesale transformation of our current fossil fuel based energy systems towards sustainable energy is among the greatest of societal challenges—and opportunities—faced in the 21st century.
In this chapter we discuss the economics of climate change. We begin with a discussion of economic considerations that are important to take into account when designing and evaluating climate policy, including cost effectiveness and efficiency. We then discuss specific policies at the state, national, and international level in light of these economic considerations. We have several recommendations for the path forward for climate policy. First, the goal of climate policy should be to reduce the damages caused by greenhouse gases. In addition to mitigation policy to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, one can also reduce the damages causes by greenhouse gases by adaptation measures that reduce our vulnerability to climate change impacts. Second, policy-makers should use incentive- (or market-) based instruments as opposed to command and control policies (including quantity-based mandates) whenever possible. Whenever unpriced emissions are the sole market failure, incentive-based instruments such as a carbon tax or cap and trade program are more likely to achieve the social optimum and maximize social net benefits [1, 2]. Lin and Prince [3] calculate that the optimal gasoline tax for the state of California is $1.37 per gallon. Our third recommendation is to address the risk of emissions leakage, which arises when only one jurisdiction (e.g., California) imposes climate policy, but not the entire world. One way to reduce emissions leakage is to use the strategic distribution of emissions allowances to local producers. This method, known as “output-based allocation” or benchmarking, effectively subsidizes local producers and at least partially offsets the increase in their costs caused by an emissions cap [4]. Importantly, only local production is eligible for an allocation of valuable allowances, providing a counterweight to the incentive for emission leakage. Our fourth recommendation is that if they are used instead of incentive-based instruments, quantity-based mandates such as the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, renewable portfolio standards, and the Clean Power Plan should be combined with a cost containment mechanism. The findings of Lade, Lin Lawell and Smith [5] suggest that pure quantity-based mechanisms leave policies susceptible to large increases in compliance costs, particularly in the presence of capacity or production constraints that are inherent in energy markets. Given the experiences with the federal RFS2 in 2013, anticipating and designing climate policies in a way that can contain compliance costs is imperative. Our fifth recommendation is that for international leverage, we should develop a climate club backed by border tax adjustments to non-participants. University of California at Berkeley Professor Larry S. Karp has been proposing an agreement between the top 10 emitters as an alternative to the UN framework [6]. Without international leverage or cooperation, unilateral climate policies, such as California’s AB 32 or the American Clean Energy and Security Act, are not only unlikely to fully combat climate change, but can also have other detrimental effects such as the reduction of economic competitiveness and the possible displacement of jobs from the U.S. to countries without carbon pricing [7]. Our final, and main, recommendation is that, as University of California at Berkeley Professor Severin Borenstein points out, California should focus on solving the problem of 'global' climate change. The primary goal of California climate policy should be to invent and develop the technologies that can replace fossil fuels, allowing the poorer nations of the world – where most of the world’s population lives – to achieve low-carbon economic growth [8].
Technology is a centrally important component of all strategies to mitigate climate change. As such, it encompasses a multi-dimensional space that is far too large to be fully addressed in this brief chapter. Consequently, we have elected to focus on a subset of topics that we believe have the potential for substantial impact. As researchers, we have also narrowed our focus to address applied research, development and deployment issues and omit basic research topics that have a longer-term impact. This handful of topics also omits technologies that we deem to be relatively mature, such as solar photovoltaics and wind turbines, even though we acknowledge that additional research could further reduce costs and enhance performance. These and other mature technologies such as transportation are discussed in Chapter 6. This report and the related Summit Conference are an outgrowth of the University of California President’s Carbon Neutrality Initiative, and consequently we are strongly motivated by the special demands of this ambitious goal, as we are also motivated by the corresponding goals for the State of California, the nation and the world. The unique feature of the UC Carbon Neutrality Initiative is the quest to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 at all ten 10 campuses. It should be emphasized that a zero emission target is enormously demanding and requires careful strategic planning to arrive at a mix of technologies, policies, and behavioral measures, as well as highly effective communication – all of which are far more challenging than reducing emissions by some 40% or even 80%. Each campus has a unique set of requirements based on its current energy and emissions. Factors such as a local climate, dependence on cogeneration, access to wholesale electricity markets, and whether a medical school is included shape the specific challenges of the campuses, each of which is a “living laboratory” setting a model for others to learn and adopt. An additional aspect of a zero GHG emission target is the need to pay close attention to system integration – i.e., how the various elements of a plan to achieve carbon neutrality fit together in the most cost effective and efficient way. This optimization imposes an additional constraint, but also provides an important opportunity to capture the synergies that can arise from those choices. For example, one of the themes that has been proposed is the complete electrification of energy supplies, residential & commercial building operation, and transportation. The deployment of storage technologies such as batteries and/or hydrogen for both transportation and for load balancing of grid and distributed generation may provide some synergistic opportunities for integrating these systems that will accelerate the deployment of each. A specific example is the use of on-board batteries in electric vehicles for load balancing the electric grid. On-site residential storage as is now being developed by Tesla Motors, has the potential to accelerate the deployment of residential solar installations. In the case of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, the necessary infrastructure to provide a network of hydrogen filling stations might also accelerate the use of hydrogen for storage on the electric grid by using excess solar capacity to produce hydrogen by electrolysis.
Greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion and land use are changing the radiative budget of the Earth and changing its climate. The negative impacts of this climate change on natural and human systems are already emergent. The solution is to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions altogether as soon as possible, but the rate at which these emissions can decrease is limited by human reliance on fossil fuels for energy and the infrastructural, socio-economic, and behavioral inertia of current systems around the world. In this chapter, we discuss the physical impacts as well as the many challenges and obstacles to ‘bending the curve’, and provide a framework of possible solutions.
The ability to adapt to statistical structure (often referred to as “statistical learning”) has been proposed to play a major role in the acquisition and use of natural languages. Several recent studies have explored the relationship between individual differences in statistical learning and language outcomes. These studies have produced mixed results, with some studies finding a significant relationship between statistical learning and language outcomes, and others finding weak or null results. Furthermore, the few studies that have used multiple measures of statistical learning have reported that they are not correlated (e.g., [1]). The current study assesses the reliability of various measures of auditory statistical segmentation, and their consistency over time. That is, do the generally low correlations observed between measures of statistical learning stem from task demands, the psychometric properties of the measures, or the fact that statistical learning may be a highly fragmented construct? Our results confirm previous reports that individual measures of statistical learning tend not to correlate with each other, and suggest that the somewhat weak reliability of the measures may be an important factor in the low correlations. Our data also suggest that aggregating performance across tasks may be an avenue for improving the reliability of the measures.
Previous work has shown that the N400 ERP component is elicited by all words, whether presented in isolation or in structured contexts, and that its amplitude is modulated by semantic association and contextual predictability. What is less clear is the extent to which the N400 response is modulated by semantic incongruity when predictability is held constant. In the current study we examine N400 modulation associated with independent manipulations of predictability and congruity in an adjective-noun paradigm that allows us to precisely control predictability through corpus counts. Our results demonstrate small N400 effects of semantic congruity ('yellow bag' vs. 'innocent bag'), and much more robust N400 effects of predictability ('runny nose' vs. 'dainty nose') under the same conditions. These data argue against unitary N400 theories according to which N400 effects of both predictability and incongruity reflect a common process such as degree of integration difficulty, as large N400 effects of predictability were observed in the absence of large N400 effects of incongruity. However, the data are consistent with some versions of unitary ‘facilitated access’ N400 theories, as well as multiple-generator accounts according to which the N400 can be independently modulated by facilitated conceptual/lexical access (as with predictability) and integration difficulty (as with incongruity, perhaps to a greater extent in full sentential contexts).
People with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) often report difficulties with attention and memory on tasks that are unrelated to their trauma. One important component of everyday event comprehension is the segmentation of ongoing activity into meaningful events. The present study asked whether PTSD symptom severity was associated with impaired segmentation and memory for neutral, ongoing activity. A sample of 137 participants, ages 21-79, completed event segmentation and memory tasks, general cognitive functioning tasks, and questionnaires assessing PTSD symptom severity. People with higher levels of PTSD symptoms had poorer event segmentation and event memory performance. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses demonstrated that PTSD symptom severity explained unique variance in event segmentation performance, even after controlling for general cognitive function. These results suggest that interventions aimed at improving event comprehension may help compensate for memory disruptions in PTSD.
In recent decades, Americans have adopted a parenting norm in which every child is expected to be under constant direct adult supervision. Parents who violate this norm by allowing their children to be alone, even for short periods of time, often face harsh criticism and even legal action. This is true despite the fact that children are much more likely to be hurt, for example, in car accidents. Why then do bystanders call 911 when they see children playing in parks, but not when they see children riding in cars? Here, we present results from six studies indicating that moral judgments play a role: The less morally acceptable a parent’s reason for leaving a child alone, the more danger people think the child is in. This suggests that people’s estimates of danger to unsupervised children are affected by an intuition that parents who leave their children alone have done something morally wrong.
Learned visual categorical perception (CP) effects were assessed using three different measures (similarity rating, same-different judgment, and an XAB task) and two sets of stimuli differing in discriminability and varying on one category-relevant and one category-irrelevant dimension. Participant scores were converted to a common scale to allow assessment method to serve as an independent variable. Two different analyses using the Bayes Factor approach produced patterns of results consistent with learned CP effects: compared to a control group, participants trained on the category distinction could better discriminate between-category pairs of stimuli and were more sensitive to the category-relevant dimension. In addition, performance was better in general for the more highly discriminable stimuli, but stimulus discriminability did not influence the pattern of observed CP effects. Furthermore, these results were consistent regardless of how performance was assessed. This suggests that, for these methods at least, learned CP effects are robust across substantially different performance measures. Four different kinds of learned CP effects are reported in the literature singly or in combination: greater sensitivity between categories, reduced sensitivity within categories, increased sensitivity to category-relevant dimensions, and decreased sensitivity to category-irrelevant dimensions. The results of the current study suggest that the cause of these different patterns of CP effects is not due to either stimulus discriminability or assessment task. Other possible causes of the differences in reported CP findings are discussed.
An important assumption in interpersonal attraction research asking participants about their ideal partner preferences is that these preferences play a role in actual mate choice and relationship formation. Existing research investigating the possible predictive validity of ideal partner preference, however, is limited by the fact that none of it has focused on the actual process of relationship formation. The current research recruited participants when single, assessed ideal partner preferences across 38 traits and attributes, tracked participants’ relationship status over 5 months, and successfully recruited the new partners of 38 original participants to assess their self-evaluations across the same 38 traits and attributes. Using multilevel modeling to assess the correspondence between ideal partner preferences and self-evaluations within couple, the results showed a positive within-couple association that was not accounted for by personality similarity or stereotype accuracy. We discuss these results with respect to the current literature on the predictive validity of ideal partner preferences in relationship formation.
Coral reefs worldwide are affected by excessive sediment and nutrient delivery from adjacent watersheds. Land cover and land use changes contribute to reef ecosystem degradation, which in turn, diminish many ecosystem services, including coastal protection, recreation, and food provisioning. The objectives of this work were to understand the role of coastal oceanic and biophysical processes in mediating the effects of sedimentation in shallow reef environments, and to assess the efficacy of land-based sediment remediation in the coastal areas near Maunalei reef, Lāna’i Island, Hawai’i. To the best of our knowledge, this was the first study of sediment dynamics on an east-facing (i.e., facing the trade winds) reef in the Hawaiian Islands. We developed ridge-to-reef monitoring systems at two paired stream bed-to-reef sites, where one of the reef sites was adjacent to a community stream sediment remediation project. We found that the two reef sites were characterized by different processes that affected the sediment removal rates; the two sites were also exposed to different amounts of sediment runoff. The community stream sediment remediation project appeared to keep at least 77 tonnes of sediment off the reef flat in one wet season. We found that resuspension of sediments on this reef was similar to that on north-facing and south-facing reefs that also are exposed to the trade winds. We posit that sites with slower sediment removal rates due to slower current velocities or high resuspension rates will require more-robust sediment capture systems on land to reduce sediment input rates and maximize potential for reef health recovery. This suggests that interventions such as local sediment remediation and watershed restoration may mitigate sediment delivery to coral reefs, but these interventions are more likely to be effective if they account for how adjacent coastal oceanographic processes distribute, accumulate, or advect sediment away from reefs. Our results on the effectiveness of gabion dam sediment capture may help guide scalable solutions for erosion control on islands.
Climate change is projected to cause widespread and serious harm to public health and the environment upon which life depends, unraveling many of the health and social gains of the last century. The burden of harm will fall disproportionately on the poorest communities, both in the U.S. and globally, raising urgent issues of “climate justice”. In contrast, strategies for climate action, including those of an institutional, and cultural nature, have the potential to improve quality of life for everyone. This chapter examines the social dimensions of building carbon neutral societies, with an emphasis on producing behavioral shifts, among both the most and the least advantaged populations. In support of Bending the Curve solutions 2 and 3, the case studies offered in this chapter rely not only on innovations in technology and policy, but innovations in attitudinal and behavioral change as well, focused on coordinated public communication and education (Solution 2), as well as new platforms for collaborating, where leaders across sectors can convene to tackle concrete problems (Solution 3).
California is one of the least greenhouse-gas intensive states in the United States, and one of the most energy efficient economies in the world. Its success is partly an accident of geography, due to a temperate climate, and its service-based economy with little emissions-intensive industry. But California’s governors, state legislators, and local agencies have also shown a willingness to enact climate legislation and implement mitigation policies, far ahead of the federal government and most other states. In part, climate action in California is rooted in the legacy of the air quality and energy efficiency programs from the 1970s and 1980s, which bequeathed state agencies with a depth of technical, regulatory and legal expertise. However, California has also legitimized climate mitigation as a matter of state action, and demonstrates high public accountability and enlists powerful coalitions by providing substantial and enduring incentives. This article discusses the range of mitigation policies, from cap-and-trade to vehicle efficiency and green building standards, that California has implemented, and the political coalition that has enabled their introduction. It also highlights challenges, particularly the difficulty in passing down mandates and incentives for emissions reduction to local government agencies, which retain a monopoly in land-use planning.
We used satellite-based remote sensing to estimate home ranges for Swainson’s Hawk, a species listed as threatened in California (USA), on its breeding grounds in the Natomas Basin (northern Central Valley, California) and to evaluate whether the species’ space-use intensity (statistically derived density of telemetry locations) was associated with land cover, sex, reproductive success, or life stage of offspring. We differentiated seven classes of land cover—alfalfa, annually rotated irrigated crops, developed, grassland, orchard / vineyard, rice, and water. From 2011–2013, we fitted transmitters with global positioning systems to 23 adult Swainson’s Hawks. We recorded a minimum of six locations per day per bird from spring through early autumn of each year. We used a fixed, bivariate-normal kernel estimator to calculate a utilization distribution at 30-m resolution for each life stage of each individual within each year. We used a linear mixed model to estimate the associations between intensity of space use and land cover, sex, and reproductive status. The majority of adult Swainson’s Hawks traveled distances up to 8–10 km from the nest throughout the breeding season. Median seasonal home-range sizes in a given year ranged from 87–172 km2. The association between intensity of space use and grassland was 50–139% stronger, and the association between intensity of space use and alfalfa 23–59% stronger, than the associations between intensity of space use and any other land-cover type. Intensity of space use did not vary as a function of sex, reproductive status, or life stage. Given our results and additional knowledge of the species’ ecology, we suggest that reproductive success and, in turn, population-level recruitment may be associated equally if not more closely with availability of nesting sites than with the current distribution of land cover.
The experience of awe is typically elicited in response to perceptually vast stimuli and is often characterized by feeling small and insignificant. In the present series of studies we aimed (1) to determine the effects of awe on body perception and (2) to elucidate the role of the personality trait of ‘absorption’ (i.e. the tendency to get fully immersed in one’s experiences) in relation to the feeling of awe. Across 4 different studies, involving both lab-based and field experiments, we found that feelings of awe are associated with smaller body size estimates. We also found that absorption is a strong predictor of feelings of awe: people scoring high on absorption tended to report overall stronger feelings of awe – irrespective of the experimental manipulation. In addition, experimentally manipulating absorption, by instructing participants to get fully absorbed in an external stimulus resulted in stronger feelings of awe. Thereby these findings illustrate that two key features underlying the experience of awe are changes in the perception of one’s body and a tendency to get absorbed in internal or external stimuli.
The story of the University of California’s institutional goal of de-carbonization by 2025, already years in the making, was a key feature of a systemwide Summit on carbon neutrality and climate mitigation in the Fall of 2015. This report, commissioned by the Summit, represents a unique multi-campus, interdisciplinary collaboration, an attempt by one university system to harness its diverse intellectual resources to address the crisis of global climate disruption. This chapter puts the Bending the Curve report into the context of the University of California’s (UC) carbon neutrality and sustainability initiatives and offers one example of how a large organization can become a “living laboratory”— a research, teaching and learning, and innovation testbed—for climate solutions.
