DOCSLIB.ORG

Affective and Moral Roots of Environmental Stewardship

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Affective and Moral Roots of Environmental Stewardship AFFECTIVE AND MORAL ROOTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP: THE ROLE OF OBLIGATION, GRATITUDE AND COMPASSION by EZRA M. MARKOWITZ A DISSERTATION Presented to the Environmental Studies Program and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2012 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Ezra M. Markowitz Title: Affective and Moral Roots of Environmental Stewardship: The Role of Obligation, Gratitude and Compassion This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Environmental Studies Program by: Sara Hodges Co-Chair Azim Shariff Co-Chair Paul Slovic Member Ronald Mitchell Member Kari Norgaard Outside Member and Kimberly Andrews Espy Vice President for Research & Innovation/Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded September 2012 ii © 2012 Ezra M. Markowitz iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Ezra M. Markowitz Doctor of Philosophy Environmental Studies Program September 2012 Title: Affective and Moral Roots of Environmental Stewardship: The Role of Obligation, Gratitude and Compassion Environmental issues such as climate change and habitat loss pose significant challenges to existing political, legal and financial institutions. As these challenges have become clearer in recent years, interest in understanding the psychological, cultural and moral motivators of environmental stewardship has grown. Recent research within the social sciences—particularly psychology, sociology and communications—has revealed numerous intra- and interpersonal processes and mechanisms that shape whether, how and to what extent individuals and communities engage with the environmental problems they face. In this dissertation, I integrate research from these and other fields to examine the role that affect, identity and morality play in driving individual-level concern about and response to environmental challenges. Across three chapters (which present results from eight empirical studies), I attempt to answer a series of core research questions, including: (1) What is the role of affect in motivating active engagement with environmental issues? (2) What factors shape recognition of problems such as climate change as morally relevant? (3) What can we learn by studying the interaction of affect and morality in the context of environmental conservation? (4) What are the limits of the affective and moral judgment systems in motivating environmental concern and action? iv In Chapter II (‘Is climate change an ethical issue?’), I show that relatively few people identify climate change as a moral issue, that such perceptions are shaped in part by individuals’ beliefs about the causes of the problem, and that perceived moral obligation predicts behavioral intentions. In Chapter III (‘Who cares about the future?’), I further examine the affective roots of environmental moral beliefs and demonstrate that feelings of gratitude towards past generations enhance individuals’ perceptions of responsibility towards future generations. Finally, in Chapter IV (‘Are pandas like people?’), I find limits to the role of affect in motivating beneficent action on behalf of non-human others. Together, these three chapters provide novel and actionable insights into some of the factors that shape individual-level environmental stewardship. This dissertation includes both previously published sole-authored (Chapter II) and unpublished co-authored (Chapter IV) material. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Ezra M. Markowitz GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Environmental Sciences, Studies & Policy, 2012, University of Oregon Master of Science, Psychology, 2008, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, Psychology, 2007, Vassar College AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Conservation and Environmental Psychology Environmental Communications and Policy PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Research Scholar, Gallup Inc., Princeton, NJ 2011-2012 Staff Member, PolicyInteractive, Eugene, OR 2008-2012 Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 2009-2011 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: APA Divisions 9 & 34 Outstanding Student Paper Award, SPSSI 9th Biennial Conference, 2012 Best Paper Award, 9th Biennial Conference on Environmental Psychology, 2011 Betty Foster McCue Dissertation Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2011 Gregores Graduate Student Award, Psychology Department, University of Oregon, 2011 vi Marthe E. Smith Memorial Science Scholarship, University of Oregon, 2011 Seed Grant, Institute for Cognitive and Decision Sciences, University of Oregon, 2011 Clarence & Lucille Dunbar Scholarship, University of Oregon, 2010 Graduate Teaching Fellowship, Psychology & Environmental Studies, 2009-2011 Graduate Research Fellowship, National Science Foundation, 2007 to present Phi Beta Kappa, Vassar College, 2007 PUBLICATIONS: Bowerman, T., & Markowitz, E. M. (Forthcoming, 2012). The attitude-action gap: Toward a better understanding of “how much is enough.” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy. Markowitz, E. M. (Forthcoming, 2012). Is climate change an ethical issue? Exploring young adults’ beliefs about climate and morality. Climatic Change. Markowitz, E. M., & Bowerman, T. (Forthcoming, 2012). How much is too much? Examining the public’s beliefs about consumption. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy. Nisbet, M. C., Markowitz, E. M., & Kotcher, J. E. (Forthcoming, 2012). Winning the climate change conversation: Framing and moral messaging in public campaigns. In L. Ahern & D. S. Bortree (Eds.), Talking green: Exploring contemporary issues in environmental communications. New York: Peter Lang. Swim, J., Markowitz, E. M., & Bloodhart, B. (Forthcoming, 2012). Psychology and global climate change. In S. Clayton (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of environmental psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. Yang, Y., & Markowitz, E. M. (Forthcoming, 2012). Direct and indirect effects of parental attitudes on children’s active school travel: Evidence from a community sample. Transportation Research Record. Markowitz, E. M., Goldberg, L. R., Ashton, M. C., & Lee, K. (2012). Profiling the ‘pro-environmental individual’: A personality perspective. Journal of Personality, 80, 81-111. vii Markowitz, E. M., & Malle, B. F. (2012). Did you just see that? Making sense of environmentally relevant behavior. Ecopsychology, 4, 37-50. Markowitz, E. M., & Shariff, A. F. (2012). Climate change and moral judgment. Nature Climate Change, 2, 243-247. Trumbetta, S. T., Markowitz, E. M., & Gottesman, I. I. (2007). Marriage and genetic variation across the lifespan: Not a steady relationship? Behavior Genetics, 37, 362-375. Markowitz, E. M., Willemsen, G., Trumbetta, S. L., van Beijsterveldt, T. C. E. M., & Boomsma, D. I. (2005). The etiology of mathematical and reading (dis)ability covariation in a sample of Dutch twins. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 8, 585-593. viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A dissertation about morality, gratitude and compassion would be far from complete without an expression of my deepest gratitude towards all of those who have provided me with support, guidance and aid over the past five years. First and foremost I want to thank my advisors and committee members at the University of Oregon—Sara Hodges, Azim Shariff, Paul Slovic, Ron Mitchell and Kari Norgaard—for their support, flexibility and interest in seeing me succeed. I also want to thank Bertram Malle and Alan Dickman for taking a chance on me five years ago, as well as Gayla WardWell, RaDonna Aymong, Becky Goodrich and Lori Olsen for helping me to navigate the ins and outs of two wonderful graduate programs at the UO. Many thanks to Steve Mital for his continued support and interest in my work, to my fellow graduate students (especially my labmates—Karyn Lewis, Andrew Monroe, Adam Kramer, Brian Clark, Devin Howington, Mike Myers and Sean Laurent) and friends in the Environmental Studies Program and Psychology Department, and to the many wonderful research assistants and students I have had the opportunity to work alongside during my time at UO, including BL, AB, SO, NR, DD, CS, HF, LW, CM, GVZ, BR, JN, KE, SM, and NA. I also want to thank Dale Jamieson for introducing me to the world of climate ethics. There are a number of other people who have played a very special role in my life these past few years whom I would like to mention by name. I would never have ended up doing the research I love so much nor doing it at the UO had it not been for the guidance and support I received from Randy Cornelius and Susan Trumbetta when I was a student at Vassar. Lew Goldberg has been an incredibly loving and supportive mentor and friend since the first day I met him for lunch at ORI, and I feel extremely lucky to ix have been taken under his wing. Rosemary Bernstein, Zack O’Malley Greenburg and Leigh McCallen have always been there for me, no matter how far the physical distance has been. My family has given me the foundation upon which everything is built and I am deeply grateful and proud to be a part of it. Last, and most importantly, I want to thank my wife, Melissa, though I know that there are no words I can write that would fully express just how much she has done for me these past five years. Finally, I want to acknowledge the many organizations and individuals who have provided
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Moral Framing and Charitable Donation: Integrating Exploratory Social Media Analyses and Confirmatory Experimentation
    Hoover, J., et al. (2018). Moral Framing and Charitable Donation: Integrating Exploratory Social Media Analyses and Confirmatory Experimentation. Collabra: Psychology, 4(1): 9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.129 ORIGINAL RESEARCH REPORT Moral Framing and Charitable Donation: Integrating Exploratory Social Media Analyses and Confirmatory Experimentation Joe Hoover*, Kate Johnson*, Reihane Boghrati†, Jesse Graham* and Morteza Dehghani‡ Do appeals to moral values promote charitable donation during natural disasters? Using Distributed Dictionary Representation, we analyze tweets posted during Hurricane Sandy to explore associations between moral values and charitable donation sentiment. We then derive hypotheses from the observed associations and test these hypotheses across a series of preregistered experiments that investigate the effects of moral framing on perceived donation motivation (Studies 2 & 3), hypothetical donation (Study 4), and real donation behavior (Study 5). Overall, we find consistent positive associations between moral care and loyalty framing with donation sentiment and donation motivation. However, in contrast with people’s perceptions, we also find that moral frames may not actually have reliable effects on charitable donation, as measured by hypothetical indications of donation and real donation behavior. Overall, this work demonstrates that theoretically constrained, exploratory social media analyses can be used to generate viable hypotheses, but also that such approaches should be paired with rigorous controlled experiments. Keywords: Moral Psychology; Charitable Donation; Natural Language Processing; Social Media The 900-mile-wide Hurricane Sandy hit the Atlantic Coast charitable donation in public discourse by modeling the of the United States on October 29th, 2012 with record- language used to frame charitable donation in the wake of breaking rainfall and 80-mile-per-hour winds.
    [Show full text]
  • Ezra M. Markowitz [email protected] |
    Ezra M. Markowitz [email protected] | www.ezramarkowitz.com Assistant Professor of Environmental Decision-Making Department of Environmental Conservation 303 Holdsworth Hall University of Massachusetts Amherst Amherst, MA 01003 Education 2012 Ph.D. Environmental Sciences, Studies & Policy. University of Oregon. Dissertation: Affective and moral roots of environmental stewardship: The role of obligation, gratitude and compassion Committee: Sara Hodges, Azim Shariff, Paul Slovic, Ron Mitchell, Kari Norgaard 2008 M.S. Psychology. University of Oregon. Thesis: Did you just see that? Making sense of environmentally relevant behavior Advisor: Bertram Malle 2007 B.A. Psychology. Vassar College. Departmental and general honors. Advisors: Randy Cornelius, Susan Trumbetta Appointments 2014- Assistant professor. University of Massachusetts Amherst. 2013-2014 Postdoctoral research fellow. Earth Institute. Columbia University. 2013-2014 Visiting postdoctoral research associate. PIIRS. Princeton University. 2013-2014 Fellow. FrameWorks Institute. Washington, DC. 2012-2013 Postdoctoral research associate. PIIRS. Princeton University. 2011-2012 Scholar-in-residence. School of Communication. American University. Professional and Teaching Experience 2012 Consultant. FrameWorks Institute. Washington, DC. 2012 Consultant. ecoAmerica. Washington, DC. 2010-2012 Gallup research scholar. Gallup. Princeton, NJ. 1 2010-2011 Director. Campus Conservation Corps. University of Oregon. 2010 Instructor. Psychology of Climate Change, Univ. of Oregon. 2009-2010 Graduate teaching fellow. Intro to Env. Studies; Statistics. Univ. of Oregon. 2008-2009 Graduate intern. Institute for a Sustainable Environment. Eugene, OR. 2008-2013 Senior staff. PolicyInteractive. Eugene, OR. Awards, Grants, Honors, Scholarships 2013 DISCCRS VIII Symposium (invited, attended). DISCCRS.org. 2012 Outstanding student paper award. Amer. Psych. Assoc. Divisions 9 & 34. 2011 Best paper award. 9th Biennial Conference on Environmental Psychology.
    [Show full text]
  • Empathy Through Data Loneliness Through the Lens of Data Visualization
    Empathy Through Data Loneliness through the lens of data visualization By Sananda Dutta A thesis presented to OCAD University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design in Digital Futures. Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 2021. Empathy Through Data Sananda Dutta Creative Commons Copyright Notice Copyright Notice This document is licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 2.5 Canada License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode You are free to: Share - copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Under the following conditions: Attribution - You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions - You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. 1 Empathy Through Data Sananda Dutta ABSTRACT This research examines strategies aimed at fostering empathy through data visualizations. Loneliness experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic (during May, July and September 2020) is used as a case study to explore alternate ways of representing data. Along with ways to humanize data representation and curb Statistical numbing, this research uses metaphors to encode sensitive data to help visually represent people suffering loneliness in Ontario during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The research amalgamates ‘affect theory’ with concepts of ‘arithmetic of emotions’ and ‘compassion fade’ to try and create a solution for issues related to the ways in which we respond to sensitive issues.
    [Show full text]
  • Self-Other Similarity and Its Effects on Insensitivity to Mass Suffering
    Self-­‐Other Similarity and Its Effects on Insensitivity to Mass Suffering Ka Ho Tam Thesis for Honors Research Project in Psychology Northeastern University April 2016 Tam 2 Abstract Past studies show that our compassion toward suffering others when decreases we are exposed to numerous suffering individuals as opposed to a single sufferer. This phenomenon is called the “collapse of compassion”. The present research examines the effects of self-­‐other similarity on our insensitivity to suffering. mass Based on existing evidence that self-­‐other similarity can promote compassion, we e xpected the collapse of compassion to disappear diminish or when similarity is experimentally induced. In a single experiment involving 242 undergraduate participants , we manipulated the level of self-­‐other similarity priming by participants with Shared Human xperiences E (SHE) that highlighted commonalities between participants the and children in Ethiopia. Participants in the control condition were primed with cultural-­‐specific experiences that were unique to the Ethiopian population. We then presented participants with a description a of poverty-­‐stricken village in Ethiopia, followed by images of either one or eight suffering children from that village. Results of the experiment supported the opposite orig of our inal hypothesis. Participants in the SHE exhibited condition the collapse of compassion, whereas participants in the reported control condition sig nificantly more compassion for a group of suffering children than for a single child. Our research demonstrates that although self-­‐other similarity can promote compassion in a single victim context, this effect is reversed when multiple victims present, are leading to the collapse of compassion. Future studies further may explore the factors that mediate the relationship between self -­‐other similarity and the collapse of compassion.
    [Show full text]
  • The Pennsylvania State University the Graduate School MOTIVATING
    The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School MOTIVATING ENGAGEMENT WITH SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES THROUGH COMPASSION TRAINING: A MULTI-METHOD RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL A Dissertation in Psychology by Sinhae Cho © 2020 Sinhae Cho Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2020 ii The dissertation of Sinhae Cho was reviewed and approved by the following: José A. Soto Associate Professor of Psychology Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute Dissertation Advisor Co-Chair of Committee Robert W. Roeser Professor of Human Development and Family Studies Bennett Pierce Professor of Caring and Compassion Co-Chair of Committee C. Daryl Cameron Assistant Professor of Psychology Research Associate in Rock Ethics Institute Michael N. Hallquist Assistant Professor of Psychology Assistant Professor of Institute for Computational and Data Sciences Kristin A. Buss Professor of Psychology Professor of Human Development and Family Studies Head of the Department of Psychology iii ABSTRACT To address issues of racial disparities in the US and effect lasting social changes, it is essential for members of privileged groups to learn about the experiences of marginalized individuals and groups. However, this kind of empathic engagement around social justice issues is often avoided by privileged group members due to the potentially high emotional costs associated with engaging with these issues. This multi-method, randomized controlled trial examined a two-week, online-based, self-administered
    [Show full text]
  • Solidarity in the Media and Public Contention Over Refugees in Europe
    Solidarity in the Media and Public Contention over Refugees in Europe This book examines the ‘European refugee crisis’,offering an in-depth comparative analysis of how public attitudes towards refugees and humanitarian dispositions are shaped by political news coverage. An international team of authors address the role of the media in contesting solidarity towards refugees from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Focusing on the public sphere, the book follows the assumption that solidarity is a social value, political con- cept and legal principle that is discursively constructed in public contentions. The ana- lysis refers systematically and comparatively to eight European countries, namely, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Treatment of data is also original in the way it deals with variations of public spheres by combining a news media claims-making analysis with a social media reception analysis. In particular, the book highlights the prominent role of the mass media in shaping national and transnational solidarity, while exploring the readiness of the mass media to extend thick conceptions of solidarity to non-members. It proposes a research design for the comparative analysis of online news reception and considers the innovative potential of this method in relation to established public opinion research. The book is of particular interest for scholars who are interested in the fields of Eur- opean solidarity, migration and refugees, contentious politics, while providing an approach that talks to scholars of journalism and political communication studies, as well as digital journalism and online news reception. Manlio Cinalli holds a Chair of Sociology at the University of Milan and is Associate Research Director at CEVIPOF (CNRS – UMR 7048), Sciences Po Paris.
    [Show full text]
  • Running Head: ADVERSITY and COMPASSION 1
    Running head: ADVERSITY AND COMPASSION 1 Past Adversity Protects Against the Numeracy Bias in Compassion Daniel Lim & David DeSteno Northeastern University Contact Information: David DeSteno Dept. of Psychology Northeastern University Boston, MA 02115 Email: [email protected] July 1, 2019 In Press, Emotion ADVERSITY AND COMPASSION 2 Abstract Past research has suggested that one problematic limitation of compassion is its seeming resistance to increase in response to growing numbers of targets in distress. This insensitivity to numeracy results in the dampening of compassion when faced with mass suffering. Given that emerging evidence suggests that facing past adversity in life may foster compassion and a general prosocial orientation, we explored whether those who have experienced greater adversity show a resistance to this numeracy bias. In a series of four experiments, we demonstrate not only that those who have experienced greater adversity readily overcome the numeracy bias in compassion, but also that beliefs regarding their ability to be efficacious in helping others underlie this link. Of import, we also show that direct manipulation of such efficacy beliefs can remove the numeracy bias in compassion typically found among those who have not endured significant life adversity. Finally, we explore the ability of adversity to engender prosocial donations to those in need via mechanisms involving compassion and efficacy beliefs. Keywords: compassion, adversity, numeracy bias, self-efficacy, prosocial behavior ADVERSITY AND COMPASSION 3 Past Adversity Protects Against the Numeracy Bias in Compassion Compassion is a powerful moral emotion capable at times of driving decisions and behaviors aimed at alleviating the suffering of others (DeSteno, 2015; Goetz, Keltner & Simon- Thomas, 2010).
    [Show full text]
  • Willing to Help, but Lacking Discernment: the Effects of Victim Group Size on Donation Behaviors Devin Lunt a Dissertation Submi
    Willing to Help, but Lacking Discernment: The Effects of Victim Group Size on Donation Behaviors Devin Lunt A Dissertation Submitted to University of Texas-Arlington College of Business Under the Supervision of Dr. Traci Freling In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN MARKETING University of Texas-Arlington Arlington, TX May, 2016 1 Abstract Researchers and practitioners in the nonprofit domain have long lamented the tendency of people to offer greater aid to a smaller number of victims, in essence de-valuing the lives of victims as the number of victims grows. This is often referred to as Compassion Fade-a greater responsiveness among potential donors to individuals and small numbers of people in need, and lower sensitivity toward larger groups of victims (Markowitz et al. 2013) This dissertation consists of three essays exploring compassion fade and the specific biases that exemplify this phenomenon. The first essay provides a qualitative synthesis of the compassion fade domain as a whole, including a review of current findings of psychophysical numbing, proportion dominance bias, and scope insensitivity studies. The mechanisms by which these effects occur (e.g., other-focused affect, anticipated self-focused affect, and deliberative thoughts) are discussed, along with proposed directions for future research. Demonstrations of the most often studied form of compassion fade bias—known as the “identifiable victim effect” (IVE—abound in the literature. The IVE is quantitatively synthesized in the first essay. As such, the second essay undertakes a meta-analysis of 40 articles (with 144 effect sizes derived from 225,193 observations) spanning almost 30 years suggests that victim identifiability and group size significantly affects potential donors’ helping behaviors, but not their empathetic attitudes.
    [Show full text]
  • Compassion Fade and the Challenge of Environmental Conservation
    Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 8, No. 4, July 2013, pp. 397–406 Compassion fade and the challenge of environmental conservation Ezra M. Markowitz∗ y Paul Slovicz x Daniel Västfjäll{x Sara D. Hodgesz Abstract Compassion shown towards victims often decreases as the number of individuals in need of aid increases, identifi- ability of the victims decreases, and the proportion of victims helped shrinks. Such “compassion fade” may hamper individual-level and collective responses to pressing large-scale crises. To date, research on compassion fade has fo- cused on humanitarian challenges; thus, it remains unknown whether and to what extent compassion fade emerges when victims are non-human others. Here we show that compassion fade occurs in the environmental domain, but only among non-environmentalists. These findings suggest that compassion fade may challenge our collective ability and willingness to confront the major environmental problems we face, including climate change. The observed moderation effect of environmental identity further indicates that compassion fade may present a significant psychological barrier to building broad public support for addressing these problems. Our results highlight the importance of bringing findings from the field of judgment and decision making to bear on pressing societal issues. Keywords: decision-making, identifiable victim, sustainability, prosocial behavior, compassion. 1 Introduction mass starvation to climate change—may not only involve overcoming political and economic hurdles but also in- A single child fallen down a well or dying of starvation sidious psychological ones as well (Gifford, 2011). stirs our hearts and moves our hands (and wallets) to ac- Nearly all extant research on compassion fade has fo- tion (Jenni & Loewenstein, 1997).
    [Show full text]
  • CARING IS COSTLY 1 Caring Is Costly
    Running head: CARING IS COSTLY 1 Caring is Costly: People Avoid the Cognitive Work of Compassion Julian A. Scheffer1, C. Daryl Cameron1,2, & Michael Inzlicht3,4 1Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA 2Rock Ethics Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA 3Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Scarborough, ON, CAN 4Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, CAN Address correspondence to the first author [email protected] Author Note This article is accepted at the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. © 2021, American Psychological Association. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the final, authoritative version of the article. Please do not copy or cite without authors' permission. The final article will be available, upon publication, via its DOI: 10.1037/xge0001073 Data and syntax can be accessed at the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/k25yr/. CARING IS COSTLY 2 Abstract Compassion—the warm, caregiving emotion that emerges from witnessing the suffering of others—has long been considered an important moral emotion for motivating and sustaining prosocial behavior. Some suggest that compassion draws from empathic feelings to motivate prosocial behavior, while others try to disentangle these processes to examine their different functions for human pro-sociality. Many suggest that empathy, which involves sharing in others’ experiences, can be biased and exhausting, whereas warm compassionate concern is more rewarding and sustainable. If compassion is indeed a warm and positive experience, then people should be motivated to seek it out when given the opportunity. Here, we ask whether people spontaneously choose to feel compassion, and whether such choices are associated with perceiving compassion as cognitively costly.
    [Show full text]
  • Making Meaning and Making Monsters: Democracies, Personalist Regimes and International Conflict
    MAKING MEANING AND MAKING MONSTERS: DEMOCRACIES, PERSONALIST REGIMES AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Government by Madison V Schramm, M.A. Washington, D.C. July 25, 2019 Copyright 2019 by Madison V Schramm All Rights Reserved ii MAKING MEANING AND MAKING MONSTERS: DEMOCRACIES, PERSONALIST REGIMES AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT Madison V Schramm, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Matthew Kroenig, Ph.D. ABSTRACT It is well established that while democracies don’t fight other democracies, they frequently engage in conflict with autocratic regimes. This project demonstrates that democracies are particularly prone to engaging in conflict with countries ruled by personalist dictators, as opposed to autocracies with some form of collective leadership. I argue that this pattern cannot be explained only with reference to the autocracies themselves, but instead must be understood as stemming from psychological biases and the political and strategic culture of democratic elites. Identity, psychology, and culture work to exacerbate the (perceived) threat personalist regimes pose to democracies. Importantly, these dynamics can manifest when the autocratic regime in question is deeply institutionalized but perceived as being ruled by a strongman figure. I explore these issues using statistical analysis, archival research, and survey experiments in multiple countries. iii Acknowledgements I am indebted to my incredible mentors, colleagues, and friends whose support and guidance made this project possible. I started at Georgetown with an exceptional group of students—Sungmin Cho, Miriam Krieger, Shannon Souma, Loriana Crasnic, Dani Nedal, Silvana Flinn Niazi, Laura Bures, Paula Ganga, Karin Kitchens, Anjali Dayal, Diane Zovighian, Alexandra Stark, and Chris Schorr.
    [Show full text]
  • The Science of Generosity
    A white paper prepared for the John Templeton Foundation by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley May 2018 The Science of Generosity Written by Summer Allen, Ph.D. ggsc.berkeley.edu greatergood.berkeley.edu The Science of Generosity EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Generosity comes in many forms, from charitable donations to formal volunteering to helping a stranger to caring for a spouse or a child. What these and other examples have in common is that they involve “giving good things to others freely and abundantly”—the definition of generosity according to the University of Notre Dame’s Science of Generosity Project. When they are generous, people (and sometimes animals) prioritize the needs of others, often above their own. But where does this generosity come from? What are the benefits that result from helping others? And how can generosity be further cultivated within individuals and in society as a whole? These questions have motivated studies from fields as diverse as economics, neuroscience, psychology, sociology, and ecology; their key findings and insights are the focus of this paper. The Roots Of Generosity Humans are a generous species. Indeed, generosity has its roots not just in That statement seems to fly in the face of our individual development but also in our decades of research—and centuries of conven- very biology and evolutionary history. Species tional wisdom—equating “human nature” with as diverse as bees, birds, vampire bats, rats, and selfishness and aggression. Yet in recent years, a chimpanzees all exhibit forms of generosity, more complex and nuanced understanding of or what can be broadly described as “prosocial human nature has emerged.
    [Show full text]