Michael Livermore 0:11
Welcome to the Free Range podcast. I’m your host, Mike Livermore. This episode is sponsored by the Program on Law, Communities, and the Environment at the University of Virginia School of Law. With me today is Arden Rowell, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law. We’ll be discussing her new book with co author Kenworthey Bilz, the name of the book is the Psychology of Law and was recently published by NYU press. Arden, thanks for joining me today.
Arden Rowell 0:38
Happy to be here, always fun to chat.
Michael Livermore 0:42
So as you know, in the book, environmental law, which obviously we’re both environmental law professors, it’s a very interdisciplinary field, right? There’s, you know, like, obviously, ecology and the natural sciences, you have economics and other social sciences, you have philosophy and humanistic disciplines that all kind of intersect with environmental law in lots of different ways. But as you make a compelling case in the book, psychology hasn’t had as much of an impact on environmental law, even though maybe it should have. So what do you think the reason for that is why has psychology lagged these other disciplines, in terms of making an imprint on how we how we think about environmental law and policy?
Arden Rowell 1:27
Yeah, that’s such a great question, Mike. I think that the heart of the matter, really, is that, you know, the environment is what surrounds us, it’s what’s outside of us, it’s external to us. And psychology is truly the study of what is most internal, what is happening inside of our minds inside of our hearts. And so I think there’s just something very counterintuitive about putting the two together, I think, for me, at least, that’s the explanation for the heart of why there’s been less attention, less attention to psychology and environmental law than than with these other sciences and social sciences that you just mentioned. I think an additional kind of explanation, though, might look to the fact that psychology has traditionally been very what I would call non normative. That is, it’s a really very descriptive social science that’s trying to understand how and why people think and feel and to some extent, act as they do. And it’s really not interested in, in, in trying to promote or even really invest in any particular view of how people should be behaving. And that I think, is, is different than at least some portions of other social sciences, like for example, economics, where there’s long been a much richer tradition of engaging with, with normative aims, like efficiency and social welfare.
Michael Livermore 2:58
Yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah. It’s, and I think that’s that’s the to explore a little bit is the is that idea of psychology is a non a non normative discipline. That’s worth definitely getting into if we if we have time. But maybe again, just to kind of ease our way in to the conversation. There is, you know, there are areas of law, or there at least, in the conversation about law, generally, psychology has been playing a greater role in recent years. And I think it’s probably fair to argue that the role of psychology in thinking about law has perhaps lagged other other disciplines like economics, there’s a huge law and economics movement that dates back, you know, almost, I mean, maybe more than 50 years at this point. Whereas behavioral economics law and psychology is a newer, as is a newer area. Now, is there anything so so for your book, and for your project, about the psychology of environmental law, are you kind of applying the general insights of psychology to law, the way that we see in other fields like consumer finance or something like that there could be a psychology of consumer finance law? Or is there something kind of special or some features of environmental law that are special that make the application of the field of psychology and insights for psychology particularly important?
Arden Rowell 4:26
Yeah, great. So So certainly, you can use general tools of law and psychology, in any field and, and they’re useful for helping to inform and understand and predict human behavior across different realms that the law and behaviors that the law tries to regulate. But yeah, the thrust of the book is really to make an argument that there is also something special psychologically about environmental law and policy that makes environmental law and policy particularly particularly need psychological tools and psychological research so that we can best understand how environmental law works and how it can work better. And what is that? What is it that makes in my view, environmental law and policy psychologically distinctive, is that environmental law is fundamentally concerned with environmental injury. And that environmental injury has a kind of a recipe or a cocktail of characteristics that make it unusually difficult for people to perceive, to process and attach value to. And because of that, that creates a series of challenges in regulating environmental injuries that don’t necessarily come up in other contexts.
Michael Livermore 5:49
So like, what are some of the what? So you know, a Negroni is one part gin, one part Campari, and one part sweet Vermouth? What are the parts of what is the how do you make an environmental law and psychology cocktail in such a way that it creates these problems?
Arden Rowell 6:07
Yeah, so so the three distinctive parts a that I see to environmental injury are, the environmental injuries tend to be diffuse, that is spread through space and time. And that creates, in particular, a bunch of, of challenges in people perceiving them. So they’re diffuse, they’re complex, and that they often implicate multiple causes and nonlinearities, interactions, etc. And because they’re complex, that makes them even more difficult for individuals to process and understand. And then the third, the third ingredient, is that environmental injuries are distinctively, and frequently non-human in character, that is, they affect nonhumans, they work through non-human processes. And because of that, they are psychologically difficult for people to attach emotion and value to you the social brain that that humans have developed over so many years, suits us really well for understanding social problems with other humans, or at least for having tools for processing those problems. But when it comes to trying to think about non-human processes and non-human stakeholders, it just, it ends up being a misfit, it ends up firing in cases where it doesn’t actually make sense to do so. And it ends up not noticing things that are potentially important when they don’t fit into our kind of social, the social structure of our brain. So so environmental injuries are distinctively a diffuse, complex, and nonhuman and character. And all of those create additional challenges for individuals in in perceiving, understanding and then attaching value to them.
Michael Livermore 8:03
Right. Okay, so you got our ingredients and and they do make a difficult, a difficult cocktail, to to address through law or to, or, or it can make it difficult even to build political constituencies to get legal change and all that kind of thing. So maybe just to get into these in a little bit more detail. Maybe we could take the the nonhuman one first. And I think part of okay, so. So one of the things that I’m trying to disaggregate a little bit is, of course, I’m bringing a particular kind of law and econ mindset to this, which is, which may or may not be useful, but to think of that disaggregate between kind of people making mistakes that are due to psychology, or the interaction of human psychology and certain features of a policy problem, versus kind of preferences, right? So a few times in the book, you note that, you know, people tend to have more empathy towards like cute and cuddly creatures, that that look a little bit like human babies. And therefore, you know, that might explain, you know how, in practice, the Endangered Species Act works, like in theory, the Act doesn’t say it’s not the cute, cuddly animal protection act, right. It’s just the Endangered Species Act. But in reality, we do see that there tends to be an emphasis on protecting megafauna. You know, kind of the cute and cuddly, um, not that grizzly bears are cute and cuddly, but you know, like in a picture, I guess they’re kind of cute. Or little grizzly bears are cute. So, Baby Baby ones. But okay, so so so on the one hand, you know, like an economist might just say an economically oriented person might just say, Look, that’s just what people care about. They care about cute, cuddly, you know, there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s not kind of a psychological failure. That’s just a reality of how people relate to the world. And I mean, is that? Is that is that an okay view? Or is there another way of looking at the problem?
Arden Rowell 10:06
Well, I guess it’s okay. I mean, I think that it goes to the heart of an economic mindset and the way that Economics and Law economics, uh law and economics has traditionally approached behavior, which is to sort of start with preferences and move on from there and to just take preferences is is given and not everybody in line economics always does that. But then that’s just sort of the the starting point. And it makes sense, because economics is, is largely built on observational studies, for example, which aren’t necessarily going to get very effectively into questions of motivation, or why it is that people have the preferences that they do. And, and because what economics is often largely interested in is figuring out what the impacts of those preferences are going to be and how to implement them. Not so much whether or not they’re good preferences. And so it’s either good is it bad to think that way? It’s worth noting that you’re thinking that way, as you are, in fact, noting, what I think psychology offers, it’s a little bit different, is some tools for sort of stepping back the for the time of preference formation and asking why it is that people hold the preferences that they do. So as you said, in the Endangered Species Act, context, basically, the way that species ended up being protected is that someone, whether it’s an agency, or an individual and serve initiating a petition process, and that means they have to, you know, pay attention enough to the species to know that it’s potentially endangered i to, to be able to even trigger that process. And then they have to actually care enough about the species to go through the process of gathering up the information and et cetera, and to potentially get it protected. And so what is it that leads people to, to notice or to care about particular species, animal or plants is going to affect which ones end up getting getting protected? And it might be, and I think, in fact, it is the case that sometimes people aren’t aware of what it is that makes them notice things or care about things. And it might be that, that their preferences for for cuddly animals that look like human babies, it’s not a preference is particularly deep or that they care that much about, it’s just something that they have without thinking about it, and that they just sort of go around the world, a expressing again, not necessarily in a reflective way, and not even necessarily in a way that that truly reflects their deeper values or commitments. And so, for example, it may be that that many people, if you really had a kind of long conversation with them, would, would be, would be perfectly willing to even change their minds about which species they cared about, if you emphasize the importance of, I don’t know, low level plants or animals on a food chain, and how, if we have an insect apocalypse, that could end up undermining the enormous portions of the earth psychologies. And, and they may just really never think about that is even a possibility for reasons that are really opaque to them, and which don’t represent anything particularly important either their to their welfare, or anything else. But but if we never realize that the mechanisms that lead people to notice some animals and not others, or to care about some animals, or plants and not others, if you’ve never noticed that there are mechanisms that are affecting those things, we can never even get to the point of asking, Well, you know, are these good or bad? If we have we ended up with a pattern of protection of endangered species that is appropriate or inappropriate? And I think a feature of the psychological approach is that what’s an appropriate or inappropriate pattern of protecting endangered species? We could try to answer in a bunch of different ways. We could try to answer it by looking at what’s most, most efficient, or what’s best for social welfare, or we could try to answer it by reference to what’s most just and psychology would allow us to to answer that question, either of those ways that unless we know that there’s a pattern to look at and ask that question about, are we choosing the right animals and plants to protect? We’ll never even get to the point of doing that analysis.
Michael Livermore 14:33
Yeah, I think yeah, there’s, there’s it’s very interesting, because so just on the in a way on the non normative point, do you think you would concede that the your what’s your view on that question of whether whether someone’s reflective preferences are, in some sense better than they’re, then they’re not, you know, non reflective preferences. So people go around, they like the cute and cuddly species, and that’s what they focus on. And then and then you say, Well look, that might just be an artifact of your psychology, and you should really care about insects and you know, other, you know, other types of critters just as much as you care about koala bears. And then someone updates their view and says, Okay, now I care about, you know, cockroaches just as much as koala bears, then is that second set of preferences like better? Or, you know, kind of more robust? Or like, have we have we benefited in that situation? Or is it just a matter of like, well, if you think that reflected preferences are better then then they’re better, but you don’t necessarily have to think that?
Arden Rowell 15:40
Yeah, I mean, I think my view on this is that people’s uninterrogated, environmental preferences are going it are going to be a product of this kind of bitter cocktail of psychological impacts that mean that, you know, what we’re getting with the animals and plants people choose to protect, is decided by a whole bunch of factors, again, which they may be totally unaware of. And I and which are likely insensitive to the complexity of relationships between different species that likely are insensitive to, you know, the diffuse impacts of the thriving of various species, not just an ecosystem they’re in but also interconnected with other ecosystems, and which are triggered by these, probably, these potentially a potentially irrelevant, I sort of human factors that make us you know, see faces, not just in animals, but also in inanimate objects. And so–
Michael Livermore 16:48
Like a piece of toast.
Arden Rowell 16:50
Yes, exactly, exactly. And we do the same thing with you know, polar bears, we we anthropomorphize them, we we imagine that they have human expressions. And, and, you know, is that if you point that out to people, are they necessarily going to develop sort of better preferences in some way? I’m not sure. You know, I think it depends on what our policy goals are. I mean, I guess one way of thinking about this, when it comes to the Endangered Species Act is there’s really nothing in the act that suggests that Congress meant to act to be a, you know, cute, cuddly safe, a cute, cuddly–
Michael Livermore 17:31
Oh, I bet if you look at the legislative history, though, they talk a lot about about cute and cuddly and less about the the nasties out there.
Arden Rowell 17:41
Because they are subject to the to the to the same kinds of, of impacts as just anybody else any human. And but the actual statute itself, it doesn’t try to distinguish between sort of where it is that plants or animals fall in a food chain or, or, you know, it doesn’t create a mammal protection provision that only applies for mammals, even though it gets used so frequently for mammals, you know, plants are included as well. And and so the way that this statute itself is written works for even scary, ugly, tiny animals that are non mammals. It’s just not getting invoked and used in that way. And so I think that there’s, you know, there’s a potential basically for a misfit between between statutory purpose and the actual impact of a statute, when we get these are these psychological factors coming into play? Particularly if and if policymakers are not themselves, understanding the kinds of the kinds of psychological factors that can go into to people invoking the law in a in sort of skewed or, or psychologically impacted ways?
Michael Livermore 18:56
Yeah, it’s very interesting. I mean, I think I’m have kind of two minds about this, as we’re talking about it. On the one hand, I think I’m probably happy to just say, you know, free your mind, man, like your preferences are better once you’re alerted to ways that you could be led astray. And you know, they’re more likely to line up with your underlying commitments are more likely to be morally sound, they’re more likely to improve your own well being, and that, you know, that that that I think I’d be pretty comfortable with, with making a claim like that. On the other hand, I, you know, I think that one could take a psychological perspective and say, you know, if what we’re really trying to get at is what were the purposes of the Endangered Species Act, then what we know about human psychology is that they probably were thinking about megafauna when they were, you know, even if they didn’t, you know, put that down, and then we’d have to, like have a conversation about how best to interpret a text, you know, yes, they didn’t put the words in there exactly that way, but maybe they were thinking along those lines. So you know, so So I think that’s kind of an interesting thought, in some sense. If you’re thoroughly non normative, you know, thoroughly going in a non normative perspective, it’s just like, these are the facts, like people care more about cuddly than they do about maybe, you know. I don’t know, then they quote unquote, should, whatever that means, I guess. Or we could take a view and say, Actually, people should be pretty agnostic, cute and cuddly shouldn’t really matter. It doesn’t really matter, and that people are making a kind of mistake. It sounds like you’re in a bit of a middle ground on that question.
Arden Rowell 20:34
Yeah, I mean, one thing you said that, I think, really triggers just such an interesting question, which is, should we read psychological bias into statutory purpose? And that’s a bigger a bigger question. A hard question. I sure feel uncomfortable with that. That doesn’t mean that we couldn’t mount an argument for it. But that’s a tough one. And I’m certainly not here to advocate for, and for reading statutes, in light of the likely psychological bias of the policymakers who are distracting them.
Michael Livermore 21:09
It’s kind of interesting. It’s kind of an interesting thought.
Arden Rowell 21:10
Yeah. I mean, one thing I struggled with throughout this book, and which I also struggle with in talking about it is, I think that the, again, a feature of a psychological approach to environmental law and policy is that it can fit with so many different normative views, you can take a justice based approach, a rights based approach an efficiency based approach. That doesn’t mean that I myself have no normative views, right. And so, so I really tried throughout and, and I was helped by the fact that my co author Kenworthey Bilz has a different set of normative preferences than I do. I tried throughout the book to really not confused the my own normative leanings, with what it is you can use psychology to deal. But yeah, so even in the question you just asked, I mean, I don’t I think you can take a psychological approach to the question that’s descriptive and helpful, regardless. And then and then I guess I could clarify my own position on it, which is, I think that, that people’s unexplored preferences about the environment are often misguided. And then even if it’s actually difficult, although you can change those preferences by talking with them, sometimes it can also be quite difficult to change those preferences, because of all the psychological challenges that come along. And so I tend to think that we should be more skeptical of using preferences as an indicator or a vector, or a driver of policy in the environmental realm, then in in other realms where we regulate even human health and well being. I, you know, that’s that’s where I ended up coming down. Now, that still ends up, you know, that opens up a whole host of additional puzzles, that in some ways are tangential to this particular project. But that is where sort of where I’ve ended up after this project and seeing just how tricky it is for people to, to see and understand and, and attach meaning to environmental impacts.
Michael Livermore 23:27
Yeah, it’s really interesting. And it maybe towards the end, we could return back to this question of kind of, almost more generally law in psychology in a democracy and how to, you know, how do we think about the relationship of democratic legitimacy when we know that people’s, you know, instincts or preferences or perceptions can can lead us astray? And that just raises a host of interesting and difficult questions. But just to dig into the actual environmental context and the intersection of psychology and the environment a little bit more. I think, one of the I mean, there’s, there’s lots of different things in the book is really rich, I, of course, encourage folks to read it. There are many, many different interesting examples and incredibly useful, just summary of existing literature that’s relevant. So that’s incredibly helpful. But a few that popped out to me that I, I particularly find interesting is like, the one was the distinction between natural and non natural, and, you know, this kind of plays out in lots of different ways, like how we define pollution versus non pollution, that kind of thing. And the psychology of that, and, you know, and then of course, that has a lot of importance for environmental law and in lots of different contexts. So, so what what’s going on there? What is the psychology of that? And how is it relevant?
Arden Rowell 24:54
Yeah, great. So and so one of the things that, that I think is particularly interesting about how people engage with pollution in particular, is, is this emotional content, that that people end up attaching to things that they think of as sort of polluting, or clean or, or sacred or profane by and so there’s been work, of course, in other social sciences and anthropology, and in particular on cultural evaluations of risks, which finds that people in different societies and different cultures end up thinking of different things as kind of safe or risky, dirty or clean. And when it comes to sort of modern Americans, and one of the one of the ways that modern Americans tend to think about what is clean and what is dirty, or what is dangerous, and what is safe, is that, that we tend to, as you, as you already pointed out, to think of things that are natural, as if they’re safer than things that are manmade or artificial. And this is not inevitable, and we didn’t have to develop that view. And of course, many, many risks, many forms of pollution can be either naturally occurring or, or artificially produced. So you can have naturally occurring arsenic in the soil, or you can have a complicated industrial process that ends up creating arsenic waste, and the arsenic itself is, is equally dangerous either way. And so this is just it’s sort of cultural phenomenon that informs people’s perceptions, the psychology of what they see as risky, and what they see as safe. And so, one, one example I give in the book, and is, you know, we all, we all know that we all know this, but people who do environmental law and policy know that particulate matter, air pollution is particularly dangerous, particularly deadly. And, and, you know, kills so many people every year and makes so many people sick, it also exacerbates, we now know, risks from from COVID and other types of illness, etc. It’s dangerous. And, and yet, if you think about what people think of as a kind of natural source of particulate matter, wood smoke, you can see that, that people often associate kind of cozy, warm, safe feelings with the scent of woodsmoke that is with the scent of particulate matter. And, and it even goes so far as to sunbeam that we have wood smoke as a popular candle scent. And, you know, why is that? Well, if we called it particulate matter scent, I think it won’t sell as well, industrial industrial pollution said, people don’t want that they want the sensitive of wood smoke, even when, when in reality, what they’re smelling is much the same. And so, so what is it that’s leading to it to people’s perception of, you know, particular thing as as polluting or as dangerous? And what leads them to be tolerant of that, or to think that, that they’re safe enough? There there’s a there’s there’s a number of different psychological factors that come into play. And of course, that can end up interacting also with other social and cultural factors as well.
Michael Livermore 28:44
Yeah, I know, there’s some great examples in the in the book, I think, if I’m recalling this correctly. So there’s the story of the Portland reservoir. Yes. So so how does that go?
Arden Rowell 28:55
Oh, my goodness. I think it was in 2014. There was an incident caught on camera for this reservoir in Portland open air reservoir at Mount Tabor Park. And they had some security cameras rigging this reservoir and they caught this teenager peeing into the reservoir on tape. And this got picked up by by news outlets. And it just caused a furor. People were so upset they were so disgusted. And they just why because they didn’t want to drink water that came from a reservoir that some I think that as the as the water official said later that some Yahoo had peed in. And so this became such a big deal that the the water board ended up deciding that it would, it would just dump 140 million litres of water at a cost of 10s of 1000s of dollars out of the reservoir, and then just sort of refill and start over again, with treatment.
Michael Livermore 30:13
Which is crazy because of course, in the in the natural course of events, what happens all the time.
Arden Rowell 30:19
There’s there’s animals who are peeing into that reservoir every day. And not just peeing in the reservoir, which you know, is probably pretty sterile, like human urine. But dying in the reservoir, they they have to they have to, to fish, animal corpses out of the open reservoir frequently, and they just look at that as the business of an open reservoir. But, but when it comes to a human peeing into it, and peeing into it, you can only imagine what the kind of malicious some sort of malicious intent that creates pollution that people are upset about. So upset, streaming just millions of liters of water, even as pollution that is either essentially equivalent, like animal pee, or presumably much worse, biologically, in the form of these animal corpses, but they’re just tolerated and nobody even thinks about them. It’s just, we have course we have an open reservoir, and no, they’re not going to drain it every time that a fish dies in it. So so this I think, is at you know, it tells us something important about how it is that people perceive pollution and the kinds of, of of triggers that lead them either to tolerate it or not. And and those triggers are they’re psychological triggers. Right? It doesn’t make sense. It’s hard to tell a sensible story. Well, maybe it’s hard to tell a sensible story about this, this incident at all, but it’s really hard to tell a story that makes sense about it, unless we realize that there’s psychologically something different for people in in human peeing in this reservoir and an animal doing so.
Michael Livermore 32:11
yeah, no, it’s it’s a it’s a really, it’s a hilarious story. Yeah, just it highlights. Now again, does it highlight irrationality? You know, maybe that’s a that’s a different kind of question, right? Was it a bad idea to drain the reservoir? Maybe not, it was a good idea if people really didn’t want to drink their water, and that’s how they want to spend their money. But, but the psychology highlights, and perhaps illuminates kind of what’s going on there. A related example that that you mentioned is is even more serious consequences is kind of the treatment of particulate matter pollution in the context of the national ambient air quality standards. With respect to wildfire management, I actually didn’t know this, this was this is a really interesting. And this this goes to, I think both the natural non natural human human cause versus kind of in the course of events, and I think in the context of the book, you describe it in that as like an action inaction distinction, as well. So do you want to just explain that, assuming that I’ve done a good enough job of saying what I’m talking about here? Do you want to just–
Arden Rowell 33:18
Yeah, let me say a little bit about it anyway, um, so. So yeah, so one important source of particulate matter, air pollution, particularly in Western states, and to some extent, Florida, and is, is fire and wildfire, in particular, because basically, when you burn up a bunch of vegetation, it sends particulate matter into the air. And again, it can create dangerous levels of particulate matter. So basically, fire managers around the country, and particularly whether you know, there’s a bunch of public lands to manage, typically have it’s a sort of a choice, a basic choice in managing, managing the lands under their control, either of doing kind of small prescribed burns over time, on purpose, and then having a little bit of vegetation burnt up and a bit of particulate matter pollution over time. Or it’s just sort of waiting around until there’s a lightning strike or some fool throws a cigarette out of a window. And–
Michael Livermore 34:30
Or does a gender reveal party.
Arden Rowell 34:32
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And triggers a wildfire and burns up all the vegetation that wasn’t burnt up in, in prescribed burns. And the way that these two different methods of management tend to get perceived is that that prescribed burns, that is people burning on purpose is a kind of manmade, a source of pollution and and that that wildfires are just sort of an accident that can happen. And so historically, that view has been then embedded into the way that EPA has calculated particulate matter levels in the States for purposes of figuring out whether or not states are in attainment with the requirements of the Clean Air Act or not. And historically, they have, EPA has actually basically preferenced allowing wildfires, which create much larger quantities of particulate matter released, you know, during the period of the fire, and which, of course, is we’ve seen, sadly, tragically, recently, also come with a series of other risks. I have referenced those by basically accepting wildfires from from, from the calculation of whether or not a state is in compliance or not. And so that’s, that’s a potential problem. And it’s one that might be at least partially informed by sort of the way that these different things are being perceived as manmade or not manmade. And, and the kind of psychological impacts that come with that. That’s what you were meaning.
Michael Livermore 36:15
Yeah, you have, it’s super, it’s really impactful, right? Because it creates this situation where basically, you’re penalized under the air quality standards for engaging in controlled burns. And you get, and there’s no, you’re not penalized, or there’s it’s just treated as kind of outside of your control when you have a, you know, a wildfire that, that that releases the same pollutants, except all at once, which likely makes the situation worse from a public health perspective.
Arden Rowell 36:47
Yeah, exactly. And to be clear, like, it’s the same vegetation in some sense. It burns, whether whether it’s a prescribed burn, or whether a lightning starts the burn. But because wildfires tend to be triggered less frequently, you tend to have sort of more brackin and brushin and small trees, etc. that burn. And so yes, if anything, because Because particulate matter seems to be a nonlinear, have a nonlinear dose response function, very high concentrations of it seem to be more dangerous. And so if anything, you may be even creating additional risk with these very high levels of release in a wildfire.
Michael Livermore 37:31
Right, exactly. Yeah, while we’re on the wildfires, I wonder what your thoughts are on, you know, this frigid weights a little bit to this perception of natural versus non natural, if, you know, now that we know about climate change and kind of the Anthropocene more generally, especially in places like California, where folks are quite conscious of of the reality of climate change, and they know that wildfire risks are, you know, part of the package. If, just a bit of speculation, you you think that, you know, as people start to attribute wildfires to human activity, ie climate change, that will lead them to perceive them as as worse and more dangerous than they would otherwise?
Arden Rowell 38:20
Yeah, that’s a great, that’s a great question, Mike. Yeah, I do. And same thing with, with other climate mediated events, like hurricanes, as people start to perceive those as anthropogenic, then they will are likely to also increasingly perceive them as riskier.
Michael Livermore 38:44
This is a little bit off of the environmental topic, but I you know, I was interacting with someone recently who was basically didn’t believe in vaccines, the vaccination and was kind of strongly opposed to any kind of mandate on vaccination. And my my instinct, or, you know, what came out came out of that conversation was this person, you know, just believed in what we what they would call natural medicine. You know, they didn’t like the idea of putting artificial things in their body. So is this kind of the same underlying mechanism at play in a slightly different context?
Arden Rowell 39:22
Yes, I really think that it is. And, you know, again, it’s a it’s socially constructed, how we whether we decided whether people a ended up believing that, that, that manmade items are more safe or that natural, so to speak natural that is not human products and processes, etc. are more safe and even in the United States. It hasn’t always been the case that we’ve had this preference or that people have exhibited this preference for the natural you know, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, artificial products were seen as higher quality. And as if, you know, that is if they were sanitary. And, and so it’s a kind of modern phenomenon that we’re seeing this shift towards a preference for what’s perceived as, as natural. And mean, you know, I’m not in the business of saying the natural isn’t better than the manmade, I just don’t think that the distinction makes sense in all circumstances. And, you know, it’s to me, the source of the effect is not what for policy purposes, we should, we should really care about most of the time, except that we need to note that the individuals may care about it individuals, it may very much matter whether or not the source of a pollutants is what they perceive to be natural, or what they perceive to be, to be manmade. And when we see this kind of what’s called a source effect, in other circumstances too and in ways that can really matter to policy so. So a source effect is just the idea that the source of a pollutant or the source of a risk is a determinant of how risky or dangerous it is. So another kind of source effect that comes up frequently now, not just in environmental contexts, but also in regards to the pandemic is that people tend to believe to see to perceive themselves and people that are close to them, as not being as risky as as not presenting as many risks as not being as disgusting as not being as polluting as strangers and people that they don’t know. And so, a couple of pretty funny studies on this actually, where they, for example, will spray people with a stinky spray, and then ask them, how smelly their friend is versus some stranger. And, and, and they’ll say that their friend isn’t this smelly. And I think they they themselves are not as smelly, either. So anyway, so source effects like this mean that people tend to just not recognize risks, for example of communicable disease as easily when they’re emanating from someone that’s close to them as when they’re coming from, from a stranger or someone that’s unknown to them. And this sort of tolerance of familiar sources of risk, familiar sources of pollution, is it’s potentially dangerous in an environmental context, the book suggests that it may contribute to what what we call it, a hometown pollution effect where, you know, people may, people in general don’t want to live and, and work and raise their families in places they think of as polluted. But they may really not think about this, you know, the familiar Frito Lay factory that’s always been in their town. And that, you know, Uncle Stu works at as a source of pollution, the fact that it’s so familiar that they have these kinds of connections to it, personal emotional connections to it may end up having a source effect, where the actual factory itself seems unthreatening. And thus the pollution seems, seems either tolerable, or as if it must not be that damaging. And so this is source effects can be can be dangerous, when they lead people to, to struggle to perceive what can be very real risks.
Michael Livermore 43:40
So so at this insight in hand, but says I think the interesting example, that there is that there is the source effect that there’s a potential for these source effects. You know, what do we do from a policy perspective with with that information, do we? I mean, we could have it, one possibility would be to say, well, you know, we’re going to kind of ignore people’s views on the dangers of local threats, because they’re going to just they’re going to misperceive what’s going on there. You know, we could try to talk to them. You know, as you notice, people’s views on such matters are often pretty stable and difficult to change just through chatting. So what do we do with this information now that we have it in hand?
Arden Rowell 44:30
Yeah, so I think first we can do a better job of predicting how it is that any policy instrument that we choose to exercise might actually work. And especially if we’ve created a policy instrument that allows individuals to select when and how it operates. Like, as we talked about earlier, with the Endangered Species Act, then we want to be really, really sensitive to these kinds of you could call them distortions or impacts or phenomena, etc. Because we’re gonna we’re basically making the function of our environmental law and policies contingent on shaped by a people’s psychological perceptions of their environment and environmental risk. And so that’s not something that a policymaker is happy with. If they don’t want people to be to be living in, in, you know, more polluted places, happily, then, then then you’re going to need to come up with policy instruments that control the pollution, without requiring individuals to to, to calibrate the alert their level of exposure, or to calibrate their level of tolerance. And so that that can be tricky. And, you know, I can see a world where, and this goes to, to kind of democratic theories that you you referenced earlier in our conversation Mike, I can see a world where, if you want to take one, one form of democratic approach to this, you would just be stuck, you’d have to say, like people don’t care about local polluters, hometown polluters. And so why would why do we need to do anything about hometown polluters people are fine with them implement their preferences as is. But you could also have a different, or maybe even just a more nuanced democratic theory. And that would would say, Well, the reason they don’t kick her is because of these kinds of psychological challenges. And that are leading them to basically misperceive or underperceive the risks that they and their family are being exposed to, let’s not force them into that situation, let’s set a policy that’s optimal, or are preferable based on whatever, whatever, whatever mechanism you prefer, and, and just don’t leave it to individuals to make these sorts of make the sorts of trade offs.
Michael Livermore 47:07
Yeah, it’s tough, it’s a tough, it’s a tough question, I think. One that we face a lot, in many different contexts, actually, that would be my view. So another kind of phenomenon that you’re describing the environmental, you know, it’s kind of psychological phenomenon has consequences for environmental law that struck me as really interesting is the kind of in group out group phenomena that people tend to tend to, you know, understand themselves in via kind of group membership. They express very different attitudes towards people who are who they perceive as outside the group and people who they perceive inside their group. So, so what are some ways that that that kind of psychos psychological phenomenon affects environmental law policy or its implementation?
Arden Rowell 48:02
Yeah, so this can affect environmental law and policy, and particularly, of course, environmental politics, as well. But basically, what it boils down to is that so long, actually, I’ll back up a little bit here and say, most people who are not sociopaths, most people are not sociopaths, and most people who are not, sociopaths don’t want to hurt other people, and they don’t want other people to be hurt. And, and they actually experienced the thought of harming others as is painful or as upsetting. And so this has a number of impacts on its own. The book talks about this phenomenon, which psychologists have called moral disengagement that flows from this where it can be very difficult to convince people that they have done something that hurts other people, because it is so harmful to them to imagine that that’s the case. And so that creates a number of challenges when you’re thinking about, for example, communicating with people about climate change impacts and their role in it, or even potentially communicating with people about their role in, in pollution, etc.
Michael Livermore 49:21
Just to pause for a second there. I mean, one of the things I think is interesting here is it, I think, provide some really nice insight into why so much of the conversation about climate change has been about climate science, which I think is a very, so an outside observer or an alien from another planet might find that to be very peculiar why are we fighting about climate science, like the science has been settled for a very long time. That really doesn’t seem to be what’s that like? Obviously people’s views about the science map onto you know, these other features like their power, their political leanings, their geography their you know, what they do for a living. So so why is it that we keep talking about climate science rather than about, you know, kind of policy? Like what is the economically best thing to do? What obligation do we have to the future generations here to people in other countries, etc, etc, talking about the kind of underlying values instead, we keep sticking with talking about, you know, whether climate change is happening or not. And it seems like it might be related very closely to this issue of moral disengagement that you’re describing.
Arden Rowell 50:26
Yeah, I really think that’s I think that’s right, Mike. And I think so psychologists have chronicled, basically a bunch of cognitive, could say strategies, although many of them are unconscious cognitive paths that people use to disengage from the kind of recognizing the possibility that they are causing harm, and they are paths or strategies that we see so often in the climate realm. So minimizing and minimizing the harm diffusing responsibility. You know, shifting of blame, displacement, euphemistic labeling, all of these are basically mechanisms for people who, who, who are trying to avoid feeling bad at the thought of, of having done something that hurt others and, and, and I think it to me, one thing that’s important about seeing this connection to, to moral disengagement and the psychology of, of moral disengagement, and the climate realm is to recognize that, you know, the reason that, that people may do these things is actually because they aren’t sociopaths, they don’t want to cause harm, you know, and, and to some extent, the more upsetting that people find the thought of causing harm, the less they want to believe that, in fact, they have done something hurtful, or, and so. So, to me, this, this helps in, in kind of illuminating the humanity, even if people who are, for example, intransigent climate deniers, there’s a there’s a, there’s a kind of tragedy there. And also perhaps a sense of like, you know, people can have a very good heart and still still be be engaging in these basically, distortions, contortions, to avoid seeing something that’s terrible.
Michael Livermore 52:34
Yeah, I mean, what I’ve, the way I kind of think of this as almost as though, you know, the fact that we’re still talking about the science just means that as a society, we’ve conceded that if climate change is real, we really need to be doing something about it. Because, you know, because otherwise, we would have just accepted the reality of climate change and moved on to questions about what we should do about it.
Arden Rowell 52:56
Yeah, yeah. And I think it also, that’s, that’s a great point, Mike. Um, and I guess what I, what I would just add is that, you know, a trick there is that as we do specify more and more of the awfulness that comes with most climate scenarios, we’re in a sense, entrenching, some people more and more, and a, because we’re making it worse and worse for them to sort of recognize the causal mechanisms. So yeah,
Michael Livermore 53:33
Yeah, it’s not great. But I’m sorry, I interrupted, we were kind of moving in the direction of the in group out group issue, I think.
Arden Rowell 53:41
Yes, so and so it, so basically, and people tend to internalize the harms to their in-group people they see as part of their community or relevant to them. And they tend to, to really not want to hurt those people. And at the same time, as social scientists have found that, that people tend to be much more tolerant of harms to out-group members, and in some cases, some kind of upsetting cases, you may even seek to harm people who are sort of they perceive as outside of, of their community. And so one kind of application that that that I find interesting for this research, is in thinking about the whether or not environmental laws and policies should extend beyond the borders of the United States, and how much we need to be thinking about foreign people, ecosystems, etc, in setting domestic policies. And, you know, this is a very tricky question already with a whole bunch of different, you know, fascinating but hard, interactive factors to decide things like when we’re calculating the social cost of carbon should we be using a global or a domestic number. But at least one way of thinking about how individuals see that question is to, is to recognize that, that to the extent that people see fellow Americans in the US as in the in-group, that’s gonna trigger a whole set of basically forms of internalization and caring, and they won’t necessarily get triggered when they’re thinking about about foreign persons or people outside of that group.
Michael Livermore 55:31
Yeah, so I think that, you know, this is kind of part of the diffusion side of environmental law, but it’s certainly the case in climate change that, you know, the reality is that greenhouse gases are a global pollutant. And so a ton of greenhouse gases emitted in California, will have as much effect in California, as a ton of greenhouse gases emitted in Germany, will have in California. And so we’re stuck in this together, but there is this element of our psychology that seems to be very, you know, kind of oriented towards our groups and less oriented towards worrying about other groups and, and climate change one of the, I’d be curious if you have any thoughts on this is, I think one of the tricky things politically about climate change is that it encourages people to take a kind of global mindset, a more what people in their literature refer to as a more cosmopolitan worldview, to think about international institutions to think about kind of the global environment, a global public good, what our responsibilities are to people around the world. And that seems, you know, that mindset is very much an anima, to a kind of nationalistic, you know, let’s focus on our group and not worry about the other groups kind of orientation. And, you know, we’ve seen a growth in nationalism in the last, you know, however many years that see that strikes me as very difficult to deal with climate change if we’re moving in a more nationalistic direction.
Arden Rowell 57:06
Yeah, I mean, yes, it’s definitely I mean, first, if we are indeed moving in a more nationalistic direction, which, as you point out, there’s, there’s there’s indicators of it does create real challenges to further challenges to dealing with climate change. And I guess the only thing I would add there is to say, you know, from a technical perspective, where the rubber meets the road on this, in current climate policy is in the calculation of the social cost of carbon, which is another greenhouse gases, which is the way that federal agencies account for the likely harms that are caused by each unit of greenhouse gas emissions. And basically, agencies have to figure out whether or not they’re going to calculate that based on how much harm there is to the entire world, or maybe just the US or maybe something kind of in the middle. And there’s been a kind of flip flopping of executive, a policy on this in recent years. So under Obama, agencies used global estimate under Trump, they were encouraged to use a domestic estimate. And now under Biden, we’re back to back to a global estimate. I think that, you know, what should they be using iis very difficult question. I think that, you know, my very strong preference that they use a global estimate, although I think that, in some cases, that creates some legal challenges with statutes that were drafted to address national interests. But what I guess I could add from on the psychological side, on the ingroup, outgroup side of things, is to say, except in unusual circumstances, people tend to attach some value to reducing harm to folks in out groups, even if they don’t attach as much value as they do to protecting and people that they think of as as inside of their group. And so, you know, this matches up to what research has been done on whether Americans care about like the rest of the world existing or value anything about the rest of the world outside of US borders. And it’s pretty clear that even if you take a very nationalistic approach, to valuing something like climate change impacts, it’s not going to make sense to only come up with a valuation estimate that looks at you know, only things that fall within the the political borders of the United States, even a very nationalistic approach is going to have to take a broader a broader estimate than that and there would be there’s further support for that, in when we looked at these in-group out-group studies.
Michael Livermore 59:53
So even the most in-groupy people care, at least a little bit about folks in the group.
Arden Rowell 59:57
Except in unusual circumstances. And so I guess the best counter argument would be that there are some studies that find that when you have groups that are in direct competition, that that, that people actually prefer to harm out groups. When you think about the interconnectedness of the environments and ecosystems and economies, etc, the plausibility of that in the climate change context, it seems really remote to me, but you know, I guess.
Michael Livermore 1:00:34
Yeah, I don’t know. I’m I like to think, well, it’s a sad like, I certainly like to believe that that’s true. You know, I who knows that there may be folks out there that are that are more than happy to see others harmed by climate change, if it does, if it if it if it helps their relative status. I don’t think that’s the kind of thing we should be basing public policy on. But it may be. It may be some people’s sentiment. Well, thanks so much for this really wonderful and insightful book, you know, it’s really broadened my way of thinking about environmental law. And I hope it was I suspect it was fun to write and, you know, it was a fun conversation today. So thanks for joining me.
Arden Rowell 1:01:14
Thanks. Thanks so much, Mike. It was great fun to write and, and even more fun to chat with you.
Free Range Podcast 