3 Things I Learned in Grad School This Week ~ January 29 2017

I'm being overwhelmed and learned way more than 3 things. For the sake of expediency and just processing this stuff, here are 3: Construal Theory, Pro-environmental Behavior, and 4 Ways of Knowing Something

Construal Level Theory
From Wikipedia: “The more distant an object is from the individual, the more abstract it will be thought of, while the closer the object is, the more concretely it will be thought of.” On the face of it, this seems like a no duh. But, when you consider the impacts of this it has some important ramifications. The biggest one that I can relate to is that we do a poor job of trying to predict the future and how we will behave and what we will value in the future. CLT uses several dimensions to explain events, including: temporal, spatial, hypothetical distances and social distances. Basically, the further “away” something is (in any of the dimensions listed above) the less we think, or even value, the details. There are high and low level types of construal and both affect our engagement with the world in different ways- low focuses on the details and high thinks more abstractly. The difference between the two and how and why we mix them up leads to all kinds of cognitive biases and mistakes we make unconsciously like: stereotyping, categorizing, temporal discounting, procrastination, self-control, social conflict, to name a few.
 
Pro-Environmental Behaviors
I found a paper that rocked my world. It is called “Mind the Gap: Why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior?” by Anja Kollmuss & Julian Agyeman
 
This paper is a meta-analysis of models to explain environmental education. They aren’t really advocating for one over the other, merely sharing the different ones that have been developed. The reason it is called Mind the Gap is that the way environmental education has been taught is basically: knowing leads to caring. But research has shown there is a significant gap between knowledge and action. This paper tries to explore the different ways and reasons why it is more complex.
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Below are a bunch of figures increasing in complexity of trying to explain this:

One of the more accessible theories is a simple equation.
Stern et al. propose that environmental concern is caused by a combination of these three factors: Motivation= V (egoistic orientation) + V (social orientation) + V (biospheric orientation)
 
This final quote describes perfectly my own difficulties with understanding environmental issues (and probably a big reason why I am in graduate school):
“Environmental awareness is constrained by several cognitive and emotional limitations. Cognitive limitations of environmental awareness include: 1) Non-immediacy of many ecological problems…2) Slow and gradual ecological destruction…3) Complex Systems…” Additionally, we have a complexity of emotional involvement that manifest itself in: “1) Emotional non-investment (a) lack of knowledge and awareness (b) emotional reactions …” Finally, we feel as if we have no “locus of control” (we don’t feel like we have the ability to make any change) and our responsibilities and priorities are affected as well.
 
4 Ways of Knowing
I learned that there are 4 Ways of Knowing Something:

• Experience
• Religion/Spirituality
• Philosophy
• Empiricism (or Science)

 
I’ve looked this up and there are apparently all kinds of theories about this. Some folks say there are 8 different ways and others only 1. However, I find this useful as a tool to help explain how different knowledge is “known” and by whom it is “known” by.
 
One of the thoughts that I had is what happens when we include augmented reality? What happens when we add the prosthetics of faster-than-human-leg legs? The experience of running is heightened. Or, what about improving our own eyes? Currently, we can only see a small sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. What happens when we increase our eyesight and see the whole spectrum? How would our “knowledge” change if we can see regularly in ultraviolet, infrared, or radio waves? This will change our experiential knowledge but it is one we currently live in now. I’m also thinking of virtual reality: what if we can change genders, turn into a bird, alter gravity, or exist in 4-dimensions?