Environmental Psychology

Question 1

What is the main reason we need conservation today?

Answer 1

• conservation = human activity

Question 2

What should conservation aim for?

Answer 2

• avoiding extinction?
• maintaining biodiversity?
• retaining ecosystem services?
• retaining/creating natural environments?

Question 3

Shifting baselines- difficulties, when are baselines set?

Answer 3

difficult to assess L-T trends when you haven’t experienced them
baseline = often set in childhood or early adulthood
for declining species, next generation will have a lower baseline

Question 4

what can shifting baselines lead to?

Answer 4

1. misperceptions of changes in species abundance
2. misperception of how abundant species’ ‘should’ be in an ecosystem
3. makes it harder to know what an ecosystem is suppose to be like

Question 5

What is the effect of consuming a resource now and delaying costs, even when future cost is higher?

Answer 5

overconsumption

Question 6

What does Tragedy of the commons refer to?

Answer 6

• everyone has access to resources, take more than need
• sensible evolutionary strategy, causes environmental problems
• e.g. over-harvesting, contributors to pollution, e.g. climate change - most only consume small amount of ‘resource’, as collective we take more than is sustainable

Question 7

What are the solutions to Tragedy of the commons (resource overuse)?

Answer 7

• large-scale inter-governmental agreements on resource use
• granting ‘ownership’ of local resource to local community e.g. reef fisheries, managing trophy hunting
• creating national pride e.g. the giant panda

Question 8

Experiment: Martin Seligman, 1970s
groups for the experiment

Answer 8

separated dogs into 3 conditions for ‘training’
1. control group
2. gets an electric shock but can switch it off by pressing a button
3. gets an electric shock of the same length but there is no button to turn it off

Question 9

Experiment: Martin Seligman, 1970s
what is the experimental set up?

Answer 9

tested in same experimental set-up: all dogs could move away from an electric shock

Question 10

Experiment: Martin Seligman, 1970s
what were the results?

Answer 10

• dogs from condition 1 and 2 usually learned quickly to move to the other side of the cage - at least attempted to get away from shock
• dogs from condition 3 sat there and got shocked, no attempt to avoid them

Question 11

Experiment: Martin Seligman, 1970s
why were these reuslts found?

Answer 11

learned to be helpless

Question 12

what is the form of learned helplessness connected with conservation?

Answer 12

• constantly giving people -ve messages about conservation -> form of learned helplessness
• presenting problems w/o solutions can be disengaging
• solutions and optimism = important

Question 13

what is the lesson from Experiment: Martin Seligman, 1970s?

Answer 13

when communicating w/ public and other stakeholders, present solutions, not just problems
- e.g. Comic relief - raised over £1 billion since 1988