Understanding what drives people to take climate action
Madalina Vlasceanu studies the cognitive, behavioral, and societal barriers to addressing climate change – and how to overcome them.
As told to Beth Jensen
Ever since I was a child, I’ve believed that most everything can be known and understood. But how the mind works – what goes on in our brains that gives rise to the human experience – remained a huge unknown.
I was born and raised in Bucharest, Romania, and at first, I thought I’d study the brain by becoming a doctor. But after being admitted to medical school in Bucharest, I received a scholarship from the University of Rochester and decided to move to the country where the epicenter of brain science was being established. During graduate work at Princeton University, incredible scholars inspired me to apply my interests in the basic science of the mind toward a goal of having a positive impact on society.
Later, as I learned more about what our climate future holds – for my family, friends, and eventually my own child – I knew I wanted to contribute to the solutions. So, together with my students at New York University, I began investigating how understanding social cognition can help society address problems such as misinformation spread and climate inaction.
The technology needed to slow climate change is advancing, but the political willpower to adopt it is lagging. I want to increase awareness of the magnitude of the threat we’re facing, and how we all stand to benefit from solutions. There are many ways in which individuals can contribute to decarbonizing our society, from lifestyle choices to advocacy and civic engagement. Each of these pathways to action has its own psychological barriers, which further differ by each individual’s background. We’re attempting to disentangle these processes, to understand how sustainable behaviors and climate action can be most effectively supported in different contexts.
In one recent study, I led a team of 250 behavioral scientists from 63 countries to streamline our existing scientific knowledge on climate awareness and action. The major takeaway was that people feel removed from climate change, and that climate mitigation depends on reducing that psychological distance. Some of the most effective ways to do this include helping people learn about the specific consequences of climate change in their own region, understand which actions will – and will not – be impactful, and grasp how those actions will directly affect future generations of their family.
In my lab at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, I am now building a team to research which social and cognitive approaches can increase climate action, how those approaches scale in large groups, and how systemic change can best facilitate sustainable behaviors. I will also teach courses on climate cognition and the behavioral foundations of climate solutions.
I’m so excited to be joining this school. My research integrates social, cognitive, and environmental psychology, and the Environmental Social Sciences Department is the perfect place to develop this work.
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