58. Cameron Brick: climate change, pro-environmental behaviour, and illusory essences

Cameron Brick is an Assistant Professor in Social Psychology at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on the psychological aspects of climate change. In this conversation, we talk about climate change, the psychological aspects behind it, the difficulty of defining pro-environmental behaviour, and his recent article on Illusory Essences in psychological (and neuroscientific) research.

BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. In 2022, episodes will appear irregularly, roughly twice per month. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.). 

Timestamps
0:00:04: How Cameron started working on the psychology of climate change
0:06:24: What is the actual problem of climate change? And what can we do about it?
0:21:47: What actually is "pro-environmental behaviour" and how can we measure it?
0:32:35: What kind of person is pro-environemtnal, and why?
0:38:54: Start discussing Illusory Essences
0:45:20: Formal models in psychology
0:47:23: Are the Big-5 in personality an illusory essence?
1:01:17: How to solve the problem of illusory essences


Podcast links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-pod
• Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-pod-twt

Cameron's links

• Website: https://geni.us/brick-web
• Google Scholar: https://geni.us/brick-scholar
• Twitter: https://geni.us/brick-twt

Ben's links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-web
• Google Scholar: https://geni.us/bjks-scholar
• Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-twt

References
Brick, Hood, Ekroll & De-Wit (2022). Illusory essences: A bias holding back theorizing in psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science.
Brick & van der Linden (2018). Yawning at the Apocalypse. The
Psychologist.
Brick, Sherman & Kim (2017). “Green to be seen” and “brown to keep down”: Visibility moderates the effect of identity on pro-environmental behavior. Journal of Environmental Psychology.
Brick & Lewis (2016). Unearthing the “green” personality: Core traits predict environmentally friendly behavior. Environment and Behavior.
Smaldino (2017). Models are stupid, and we need more of them. Computational social psychology.
Spence, Poortinga & Pidgeon (2012). The psychological distance of climate change. Risk Analysis: An International Journal.
Srivastava (2010). The five-factor model describes the structure of social perceptions. Psychological Inquiry.
Updegraff, Brick, Emanuel, Mintzer & Sherman (2015). Message framing for health: moderation by perceived susceptibility and motivational orientation in a diverse sample of Americans. Health Psychology.
Wittgenstein (1953). Philosophical investigations.

Background on why I laughed at Cameron mentioning Brian Wansick: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/brian-wansink-cornell-p-hacking
Where I learnt to floss by doing only 1 tooth per day: Fogg, B. J. (2019). Tiny habits: The small changes that change everything.
Borges's short story about maps: https://genius.com/Jorge-luis-borges-on-exactitude-in-science-annotated