Читать книгу The Psychology of Environmental Law - Arden Rowell - Страница 35

People are inherently prone to creating and maintaining groups, identifying with them, and even favoring them to the detriment of outsiders. Groups are social constructs, and they simply consist of agglomerations of individuals who perceive themselves as members of the same social category and who therefore share an identity with others in that category (Turner et al., 1987). Triggers to creating groups can be tiny and even arbitrary. In some of the earliest experimental research in this area, for instance, groups of research subjects were brought into a lab, shown slides of collections of dots, and asked to quickly guess their number. Then (irrespective of their answers) they were randomly told either that they were “underestimators” or “overestimators.” Afterward, they engaged in a task where they could assign money to others who were either fellow estimators or the opposite. Despite the fact that they knew nothing about the others except that they were a “member” of one or the other entirely manufactured and artificial “groups,” research subjects consistently allotted more resources to their fellow in-group members (Tajfel, 1970).

This early finding spawned much more research, supporting the idea that group creation and a preference for giving advantages to fellow in-group members is a deeply ingrained human tendency. By creating groups, we create social identities from which we derive intense pride and esteem (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), plus a sense of belonging in the world (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). To increase that esteem, we strive to increase the status of our group—which leads us to discriminate in favor of fellow members (Hewstone et al., 2002). This usually takes the form of increased cooperation with in-group members (Balliet et al., 2014; Cremer & Vugt, 1999), but it can also take ugly and even perverse forms, where people actually take pleasure in harms experienced by members of an out-group (Cikara, Botvinick & Fiske, 2011) or even become willing to actually harm their own group in order to inflict damage on the other (Balliet et al., 2014). These tendencies are further exacerbated when the out-group is perceived to be a competitor (Cikara, Bruneau & Saxe, 2011).

And unfortunately, in a world of scarce resources, people have lots of competitors (Kurzban & Neuberg, 2005; Schaller et al., 2003). Even worse, scarcity makes people more likely to classify another as a member of an out-group in the first place. For instance, making economic troubles more salient to white research subjects makes them more likely in a subsequent task to identify a biracial face as black (Rodeheffer et al., 2012). A perception of threat to their own status also makes people denigrate out-groups more—particularly members of lower-status out-groups, and even when the threat came not from the lower-status group but from a higher-status one (Cadinu & Reggiori, 2002).

This fundamental “groupiness” of human organization makes it easier to ignore the bad effects of environmental impacts that diffuse across space to harm members of out-groups—even, or perhaps especially, as it makes the benefits to in-groups loom that much larger. And, in particularly pernicious versions of in-group/out-group dynamics, it might even cause people to get value out of inflicting such harms! Where an environmental problem involves scarcity—as it often does—these in-group/out-group effects are exacerbated.

As we discuss further in subsequent chapters, in-group/out-group dynamics may complicate environmental regulation in multiple ways. Regulation (or lack thereof) in one place may affect environmental outcomes in another, with no (or little) overlap across populations. A farmer who fertilizes his field in Iowa gets the benefit of that fertilization in bigger, more lucrative crops—and incurs almost none of the harm caused by nitrogen runoff into the Mississippi watershed nor of the sprawling dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Others, separate and remote from that farmer, suffer effects such as destruction of fishing stocks, decreased recreation opportunities, and risks to health. The farmer and the farmer’s representatives may underestimate and undervalue those harms, where they are perceived to accrue to out-groups. In some perverse contexts, polluters may even perceive a benefit to externalizing harm onto those they perceive as outside their group—people in other cities, states, or just marginalized communities. In this light, the likelihood that most climate impacts will accrue outside the borders of any single country (Rowell, 2015) may lead to systematic underestimation and undercaring about those climate impacts.

In other words, diffusion of the harm through space and in-group/out-group dynamics exacerbate the typical problem of externalities, and may create distributional problems as well. Again, part of the problem is cognitive: The farmer may not know how his fertilization practices lead to distant environmental problems, and the fact that the harms caused by his actions are so distant—and involve such diffuse stakeholders—makes it even less likely that he will ever learn of those impacts or be reminded of them if he does. Moreover, he has cognitive strategies to minimize the extent of the harms that he does know about: He may tell himself that his contribution is tiny compared to everyone else’s, that he needs to feed his family, and that it’s just a bunch of fish anyway. But another part of the problem is that the harms are experienced by out-group members—non-farmers, non-Midwesterners, perhaps even foreigners. And he has a motivational incentive not to care as much about harms to them.

Another and more extreme example is the Amazonian rain forest, half of which is in Brazil. That forest constitutes a significant carbon sink that, if released through deforestation, would significantly affect not just Brazil but the entire planet (Pan et al., 2011; Phillips et al., 2008). Yet citizens of Brazil can make great productive use of the rich forest land for cattle grazing, mining, and harvesting other products of the forest—all activities that destroy the forest and release carbon. Forest-consuming choices that Brazilian companies (or the Brazilian government) make within their borders will redound mainly to the benefit of their own economy—the in-group—but mainly harm non-Brazilians—members of the out-group. In other words, if Brazilians forewent the benefits of using the rain forest, the out-group would essentially be freeriding on their sacrifices. When free riding occurs in a small community under, say, a unified political or social system, the solutions are clearer and easier, in no small part because of the greater likelihood of social unity between cost payers and benefit receivers. Social pressures to fall into line are more effective when imposed by in-group members. But more formal solutions will work better too: The polity will have an easier time taxing or punishing free riders because there will be more political support to protect harms to the in-group by a few bad actors. For similar reasons, the polity might also have an easier time compensating harm sufferers. But conventional approaches to solving public goods dilemmas (which is what these are) are weaker when the dispersion is large, because in-group/out-group dynamics are also large.

The solutions become even more complicated when they must cross political jurisdictional lines. For example, while international bodies can urge Brazil to restrict economic activity that destroys the forest, there is no obligation for Brazil to do so and no way consistent with international law to unilaterally make them. Negotiation and bargaining is always an option in principle, of course. If there were agreements or treaties to which Brazil was a party that required restrictions on Brazil’s destruction of their own forests, then of course there might be meaningful and legal enforcement mechanisms—but Brazil would have to have entered into such agreements willingly. Similarly, Brazil might be paid off by other countries—but it would have to agree to any such payoff and to an enforcement mechanism for living with the terms of the deal. Classic economic theory holds that rules are irrelevant in perfect markets where there are no transaction costs because stakeholders will bargain to the efficient solution (Coase, 1960). But one big transaction cost, and thus obstacle to a negotiated solution, is that Brazil—and Brazil’s decision makers—are likely to fall prey to self-justification, minimizing the harm that they cause through deforestation and mentally bolstering the value of the deforestation to themselves. Such self-serving distortion is made that much easier because Brazil will not see most of the harm of climate change—though they will see much of the benefits of the activities that cause deforestation. The result may be an inflated value attached to continued deforestation and a refusal to bargain “rationally” with international actors.

Moreover, even if Brazil’s domestic laws or international treaties, freely entered into by them, manage to protect the forest, these are, at heart, political solutions—and in democracies, at least, such solutions are driven (or resisted) by individual perceptions of what is important and what is tolerable. As a result, they are subject to individual psychology and to the full range of psychological effects we are discussing. They are furthermore subject to destabilizing social phenomena like availability cascades—self-reinforcing processes of collective belief formation, where an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that leads to widespread adoption of an idea (Kuran, 1995; Kuran & Sunstein, 1999). Whether because of cascades or not, preferences have proved unstable recently in Brazil (Schiffman, 2017), and laws designed to preserve the rainforest have begun to be reversed after a regime change. As a consequence, while deforestation of the Amazon had slowed over the last decade, it has recently begun to increase in earnest again. And note that, while cascades can arise wherever a risk or issue gains prominence, they are systematically less likely to occur where the risk or issue has been cognitively shoved into the background, as distant environmental risks are prone to be. In short, regulation of agricultural runoff, the use of the Amazon, and countless other spatially diffused public goods dilemmas are at least in part in-group/out-group problems for environmental regulators to solve—ones for which the usually available solutions are likely to be weak or even nonexistent.

Although we believe the psychological challenges of in-group/out-group dynamics in environmental law and policy should be recognized as worrisome, there are less conventional potential solutions. One glimmer of hope is that the in-group/out-group dynamic is malleable: The tendency toward “groupification” is itself something that can be magnified or muted depending on the context. For the dynamic to trigger at all, intergroup identities must be salient, and their interaction must be thought of as relevant (Turner et al., 1987). Also, individuals will engage in group-based bias less to the extent they perceive the in-group as permeable, unstable, or illegitimate (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Structural or procedural shifts can also minimize the dynamic: Lack of interdependence among in-group members decreases bias against out-group members (Balliet et al., 2014), and sequential interactions with out-groups decrease bias versus simultaneous-exchange interactions (Balliet et al., 2014). Furthermore, except where the groups are defined by moral positions, many people at least exhibit reluctance (though not complete unwillingness) to display out-group hate by actively harming out-group members (Wiesel & Boehm, 2015). These features may be, or perhaps can be made to be, more or less prevalent in different environmental regulatory contexts. More importantly, the perception of their existence might be something that can be shaped through careful choice architecture and regulatory action.

Another possible solution to the problem of in-group/out-group dynamics in the environmental arena is actually suggested by the phenomenon itself. Groups are a matter of social construct and therefore perception. Groups may be arbitrary, but they are more saliently and robustly consequences of gender, race, religion, political affiliation, and geographic location. This means that at every moment humans are members of multiple groups that nest and overlap. Preferential treatment of the in-group is generally driven more by self-love than other-hate (Brewer, 1979; Balliet et al., 2014), and the choice of “group” frame is driven by the relative salience of the relevant grouping (Turner et al., 1987). This means that regulators can try to create a sense of solidarity with a larger, superordinate group in order to inspire self-sacrificing but group-protecting impulses.

A surprising demonstration of this comes from studies that expose research subjects to their national flag. Rather than inspiring denigration of out-groups, such exposure can trigger a larger sense of community. Exposing American research subjects to a large American flag actually causes them to report less hostility to Arabs and Muslims, particularly among the most highly nationalistic participants (Butz et al., 2007). A similar phenomenon was demonstrated after exposing Israeli citizens to their flag—it moderated nationalistic impulses about the Israeli–Arab conflict (Hassin et al., 2007). Moreover, this effect has now been conceptually replicated in several settings (Butz, 2009). We can speculate about how this might work for the Amazon forest problem. Citizens of Brazil are also members of the superordinate class of “South Americans” or even “humans”; many are also “parents.” Carefully describing the problems of deforestation in terms that reference the superordinate category can convert a seemingly intractable in-group/out-group inflected environmental problem into a more tractable, simple public goods problem—at least psychologically.