Caty Arevalo
Bilbao, June 20 (EFE).- Anyone looking for an explanation as to why, given the best information, human beings act against their own interests, should read or listen to Elke Weber (Gelsenkirchen, Germany, 1957), pioneer and scientific authority in the field. study of the reasons that motivate decision-making in the face of major social and environmental challenges.
The professor of Psychology at Princeton University and founder of the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, at the University of Colombia (New York), speaks to EFE on the occasion of her visit to Bilbao to collect the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge award in Humanities and Social Sciences.
Question (Q): What is behind the growing support for populism in Europe or for Donald Trump in the United States?
Answer (R): The galloping increase in inequality in recent decades. We have left many people behind economically and socially, and they feel frustrated, scared and neglected. Populisms, whether they are called Trump or Marine Le Pen, have been able to reap the feelings of anger and fear of the people whom the system has left in the lurch.
Q: Are those same feelings that lead people to believe fake news?
A: Partly yes, but there is also an important responsibility of large technology companies and their tendency to create bubbles. Algorithms tend to amplify existing beliefs, even if they are erroneous, instead of correcting them or including more minority opinions. Furthermore, behind the seed of misinformation, there are interests of governments, such as the Russian or Chinese, so that people stop believing in democracy.
Q: Decades ago you joined the United Nations panel of climate change experts (IPCC) to explain why, even knowing the severity of global warming, we do not act. Has our attitude changed at all?
A: Something remains the same: our understandable attitude of distancing ourselves from a problem of such magnitude that we cannot solve, that frustrates us and the tendency is not to think about it. And something has changed: today 80% of the population wants governments to act against climate change, and the majority of the private sector too.
Q: Does the solution to the environmental crisis fundamentally go through governments and regulation?
A: Without a doubt. That’s why we elect and pay our policymakers, governments and experts to tackle problems over the long term. At an individual level, people are ‘myopic’: we think in the here and now. We have politicians precisely to work for our common future, the problem comes when they only act thinking about their own re-election.
Q: What could we do to get politicians to put aside electoral short-termism and think long term?
A: Government reforms in two senses. First, limit the influence of pressure groups (lobbies), and prohibit their contributions to political parties. And the second, make politicians have longer terms, of eight or ten years, and not allow them to be re-elected. If a politician knows that he cannot be re-elected, he will end up thinking about the future and doing what is good.
Q: Do you have hope that young people will confront the environmental crisis in a more forceful way than has been done so far?
A: Yes. The older generations have been dominated by fear of climate change, they are moved by anger, which is a better emotion to change things. The key is to channel that anger in a more constructive way. Instead of throwing paint at emblematic paintings in museums, they should try to be part of parties and institutions and change things from within, or study science and make advances in subjects useful for the ecological transition, such as green hydrogen or fusion.
Q: After four decades of researching psychology in environmental decision-making, have you become more optimistic or more pessimistic about human beings?
A: Optimism and pessimism are two forms of fatalism, I prefer applied hope: I believe that the world can be a better place but that we have to work and fight every day to make it so. EFE
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