Deck 6: Its Not Easy Thinking Green

Question 1

How do green defaults take advantage of the two systems of thinking to encourage sustainable behavior?

Answer 1

No Answer

Question 2

To counteract the psychological distance of many ecological problems, it is necessary to increase

A)visual imagery
B)personal relevance
C)emotional arousal
D)logical thinking

Answer 2

personal relevance

Question 3

One study used virtual reality technology to mimic cutting down a tree. What did the researchers find?

A)Participants who had cut down a virtual tree subsequently used significantly fewer paper towels than did participants who had just imagined cutting down a tree.
B)Participants who had cut down a virtual tree reported still thinking about it months later when buying paper products.
C)Both A and B.
D)Neither A nor B.

Answer 3

Both A and B.

Question 4

Which of the following would be most likely to capture attention and spark an emotional response?

A)a vivid visual image
B)a strong odor
C)a logical argument
D)a repetitious public announcement

Question 5

The informational campaigns commonly used by environmental groups typically fail to engage

A)the analytic system
B)the automatic system
C)the analytic system, and, therefore, the automatic system
D)the automatic system, and, therefore, the analytic system

Question 6

Which thinking system must be engaged to inspire behavior change in a sustainable direction?

A)the analytic system
B)the automatic system
C)both the analytic and automatic systems
D)neither the analytic nor automatic systems

Question 7

Efforts to change environmental thinking, such as informational campaigns, typically rest on the assumption that

A)human beings are rational decision makers.
B)environmentally harmful behavior stems from irrational thinking.
C)most of the time people are ""on autopilot.""
D)human thinking is prone to biases and distortions.

Question 8

Which of the following is does not describe a feature of cognition that gets in the way of environmentally responsible behavior?

A)People fail to sense and perceive many environmental hazards.
B)People tend to attend more to immediate consequences than to future ones.
C)Biases cause people to misinterpret the evidence in front of us.
D)The analytic system steers people toward unsustainable behaviors cued by the situation.

Question 9

People's reluctance to change their lifestyles to be more sustainable may be partly explained by

A)the availability heuristic
B)loss aversion
C)belief perseverance
D)confirmation bias

Question 10

The loss aversion bias was evident in a research study in which people's likelihood of using a disposable grocery bag provided by the store

A)decreased when they were charged 5 cents per bag, but didn't change when they were given 5 cents for using their own bag.
B)didn't change when they were charged 5 cents per bag, but increased when they were given 5 cents for using their own bag.
C)increased when they were charged 5 cents per bag, but didn't change when they were given 5 cents for using their own bag.
D)didn't change when they were charged 5 cents per bag, but decreased when they were given 5 cents for using their own bag.

Question 11

In a research study, participants read about a senator responding to pressure to vote against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. What did the researchers find?

A)Participants had more respect for the senator's decision when he went against the pressure exerted on him by interest groups.
B)Participants were more likely to think the senator was correct to bow to pressure when the pressure came from ""environmentalists"" rather than from ""concerned citizens.""
C)When the pressure was described as coming from ""environmentalists,"" even participants who personally opposed such drilling thought the senator made the wrong decision to vote against it.
D)Whether the pressure was described as coming from ""concerned citizens"" or ""environmentalists"" made no difference to participants.

Question 12

Which of the following is true regarding the partisan divide on climate change in U.S. politics?

A)In recent years, the divide between Republican and Demoncratic politicians has been closing.
B)Republicans generally express skepticism and reluctance to act on climate change while Democrats generally consider climate change an issue of great significance.
C)Although politicians are divided on this issue, Republican and Democratic voters don't show such a divide.
D)Republicans with stronger party attachment report greener behaviors than Republicans with weaker party attachment.

Question 13

Which of the following is false about people's pre-existing beliefs?

A)Beliefs are comforting in that they give us confidence we've got things figured out.
B)People have an irrational desire to maintain their beliefs even in the face of contradictory evidence.
C)Beliefs provide stability and order for our thinking because information is easier to process and store when it is consistent with prior beliefs.
D)People tend to pay more attention to information that challenges their beliefs than to information that confirms their beliefs.

Question 14

Researchers have found that 11% of people in the United States hold a completely false mental model of climate change, equating it with

A)the hole in the ozone layer.
B)trapped greenhouse gasses.
C)warming and rising seas.
D)global warming.

Question 15

Which of the following is false about mental models?

A)Experts' mental models are significantly more accurate and sophisticated than non-experts'
B)For most easy tasks, simple, inaccurate, and incomplete mental models are good enough.
C)Mental models are complex, detailed, memory representations of things in the real world.
D)For complex issues with high stakes, like climate change, faulty mental models can have damaging consequences.

Question 16

Given the research evidence, which of the following is not likely to prime climate change concern?

A)being in a warm room
B)seeing dead plants
C)hearing predictions of societal collapse
D)hearing words like ""boil""

Question 17

Which of the following is false regarding the power of personal experience to spur action?

A)People with firsthand exposure to a hazard are more motivated to take action than those without.
B)It is difficult for people to imagine dangers beyond the scope of their own experience.
C)Firsthand or vicarious experience creates a more vivid understanding of environmental threats than does information from an expert.
D)People have an unlimited capacity for concern when it comes to worries arising from personal experience.

Question 18

Which of the following best describes the availability heuristic?

A)People underestimate their own contributions to shared problems.
B)People overestimate the likelihood of events that easily come to mind and underestimate those that don't.
C)When no information is available, people's brains fill in erroneous details.
D)Media coverage can influence what is available in people's memories.

Question 19

To increase the effectiveness of proenvironmental messages, it is best to frame them in terms of

A)human health concerns
B)political and economic concerns
C)religious and moral concerns
D)None of the above is the best way to frame proenvironmental messages.

Question 20

Which of the following has been shown to be an effective frame for proenvironmental messages

A)human health risks
B)patriotism and national security
C)family values
D)All of the above have been shown to be effective with particular audiences.

Question 21

Describe a population in your community that is generally skeptical about environmentalism. Suppose you were designing a campaign to encourage sustainable behavior among members of this population. How might you frame your messages so as to best reach them?

Question 22

Explain how perceptual limits, affect, temporal discounting, and psychological distance all impact people's reactions - or lack thereof-- to climate change.

Question 23

Describe the two systems of thinking discussed in the text. How does understanding these systems and their relationship to each other help explain why people's behavior in industrialized societies is likely to be unsustainable?

Question 24

Which of the following is false about the analytic thinking system?

A)It requires effort and time.
B)It is the dominant system in control of our behavior.
C)It allows us to reason logically.
D)It suffers when we are multitasking or distracted.

Question 25

The text describes two types of thinking: an analytic system and a(n) _______________ system.

A)automatic
B)deliberate
C)conscious
D)slow

Question 26

If you were to ask U.S. college students what comes to mind when they think of global warming, the least likely image would probably be

A)polar bears
B)melting glaciers
C)floods in other parts of the world
D)dead trees in their neighborhoods

Question 27

Which of the following is an example of a green default?

A)motion detectors on classroom lights.
B)bicycle lanes on urban roadways.
C)power-saving options on a laptop computer.
D)All of the above are green defaults.

Question 28

Simplistic mental models, such as perceiving the greenhouse effect as a ""heat-trapping blanket,""

A)interfere with people's ability to understand complex ecological systems.
B)can help people understand complex ecological systems.
C)Both A and B.
D)Neither A nor B.

Question 29

Without how-to knowledge, people cannot

A)engage in problem-focused coping.
B)engage in emotion-focused coping.
C)develop conscious behavioral intentions.
D)understand ecological systems.

Question 30

Learning which behaviors are the most effective to promote sustainability

A)helps people direct their conscious efforts appropriately.
B)sometimes causes cognitive dissonance that leads people to downplay the effectiveness of the behaviors.
C)can be very eye-opening as research suggests most people have no idea.
D)All of the above are true.

Question 31

Once people have developed a conscious intention to behave more sustainably, certain types of knowledge are helpful. Which of the following is not one of these types?

A)effectiveness knowledge
B)risk knowledge
C)how-to knowledge
D)systems knowledge

Question 32

Environmental organizations direct a lot of resources toward increasing people's knowledge about environmental issues. Research suggest that greater knowledge about environmental issues

A)leads directly to proenvironmental action.
B)strongly predicts the development of proenvironmental intentions.
C)does not necessarily have a causal effect on behavior.
D)is not correlated with proenvironmental actions.

Question 33

In modern industrialized society, people's lives tend to be busy, stressful, and overloaded with information. Under such circumstances, people tend to

A)rely on automatic thinking.
B)practice mindfulness.
C)engage in deliberate, analytic thinking.
D)behave with conscious intention.

Question 34

Positive emotional states lead to

A)stronger intentions to act upon new knowledge.
B)breadth of thinking.
C)enhanced creative thinking.
D)All of the above.

Question 35

Like Skinner's insight about the relative merits of punishment and reinforcement, researchers have found that eliciting negative emotions ________________ eliciting positive emotions.

A)is more effective than
B)is just as effective as
C)is less effective than
D)prevents the possibility of

Question 36

When researchers have asked participants to take the perspective of another person, or nonhuman animal, suffering the effects of environmentally irresponsible behavior, participants have displayed

A)increased empathy and environmental concern.
B)callous disregard and psychological distance.
C)self-defensive denial and detachment
D)increased concern for fellow humans but indifference toward the plight of nonhuman animals.

Question 37

Which of the following is false about the use of environmental messages that provoke fear in the audience?

A)Fear messages should never be used because they cause people to respond defensively.
B)Fear messages should always link the problem to specific actions people can take to alleviate it.
C)Fear can overwhelm and disempower people.
D)Without a sense of personal and urgent risk, people are less motivated to take action.

Question 38

Which of the following is false about negative affect and sustainable behaviors?

A)In the industrialized world, inspiring a fear of death in people is a good way to motivate them to behave more sustainably.
B)Logic is often not strong enough to overcome a strong aversion to a sustainable behavior such as composting.
C)If a sustainable behavior sounds like it requires unappealing sacrifice, motivation to adopt it will likely be lacking.
D)When people have negative affect toward a sustainable behavior, their analytic system may chime in with seemingly rational reasons to reject that behavior.

Question 39

When are people likely to engage in emotion-focused coping rather than tackling a problem?

A)when the problem feels out of their control
B)when no effective solutions are apparent
C)when people feel incapable of participating in a solution
D)All of the above describe circumstances that promote emotion-focused coping.

Question 40

Which of the following is false about attempts to scare people into behaving more sustainably?

A)Some frightening environmental messages may actually encourage environmentally damaging behavior.
B)Sometimes people minimize negative emotions through mental strategies rather than changing their behavior.
C)People will often ignore, deny, or rationalize to suppress fear and anxiety.
D)Because anxiety and fear are powerfully motivating, scaring people is a very effective strategy.

Question 41

The cognitive factors that contribute to unsustainable behavior are fixed and unchangeable.

Question 42

Without changing situational cues, it can be very difficult to change automatic habits.

Question 43

Human thinking is characterized by numerous illogical biases.

Question 44

People tend to perceive those on the opposing side of a partisan debate as having more extreme views than they really do

Question 45

People's pre-existing beliefs shape how they interpret new information.

Question 46

Studies have shown that people in a warm room express more belief in climate change than people in a cool room.

Question 47

People tend to overestimate the risk of unprecedented and unknown threats.

Question 48

Scary environmental messages that remind people of their own mortality may encourage environmentally damaging behavior.

Question 49

Because anxiety and fear powerfully motivate action, scaring people is an effective strategy for motivating environmentally responsible behavior.

Question 50

Behaviors that reduce energy waste (e.g., more efficient appliances, home insulation) result in a return on investment of 30% to 50% per year, much greater than the performance of most stocks, bonds, and money market funds, even in a strong economy

Question 51

To motivate emotion and action, an issue must feel psychologically close and real, rather than distant and hypothetical

Question 52

Most Americans guess that their typical household activities use about half as much water as they actually do

Question 53

One of the first breakdowns in people's ability to respond to environmental crises is a failure to detect that they even exist.

Question 54

Human sensory organs are good at picking up abrupt changes but poor at perceiving slow, incremental shifts.

Question 55

The very features of the human brain that allow it to think quickly and efficiently enhance our ability to notice and respond to ecological problems.

Question 56

Acting on ""autopilot"" in industrialized society usually means behaving unsustainably.

Question 57

It is the logical, analytic thinking system that controls most of our daily decisions and actions.

Question 58

People tend to rely more heavily on visual input than on input from any other sense.

Question 59

The best way to frame a proenvironmental message depends on the characteristics of the audience for that message.

Question 60

The invisibility of environmental threats, coupled with their typically delayed impacts, contributes to

A)psychological reactance
B)psychological discounting
C)psychological distance
D)psychological adaptation

Question 61

Which of the following affective responses exerts the most immediate and powerful influence on behavior?

A)fear
B)joy
C)sadness
D)confusion

Question 62

Which of the following is false about temporal discounting?

A)Because of it, people are only able to perceive the short-term consequences of their behavior.
B)It causes people to avoid costly investments in the future despite later payoffs.
C)It makes it unlikely that we will give up something today to alleviate long-term problems.
D)It means people value short-term circumstances more than long-term ones.

Question 63

Which of the following is false about human sensation and perception of ecological threats?

A)Perceptual limitations mask both the dangers of environmental degradation and individuals' role in contributing to the problems.
B)Some environmental hazards are truly undetectable by human senses.
C)Human sensory organs are good at picking up abrupt changes but poor at perceiving slow, incremental shifts such as climate change.
D)Even without direct sensory warnings, the automatic system will register alarm in response to learning about hazards such as the negative ecological and health impacts of plastics.

Question 64

People in industrialized societies are likely to behave unsustainably because

A)it is not natural for humans to behave sustainably.
B)default options in industrialized society are more often unsustainable than sustainable.
C)they rely heavily on logical reasoning, rather than trusting intution as people in non-industrial societies do.
D)All of the above are true.

Question 65

When the analytic thinking system is overloaded,

A)unconscious and speedy impulses have the advantage.
B)emotions prevail over logic.
C)our ability to make careful and rational decisions suffers.
D)All of the above are true.

Question 66

Which of the following describes the analytic thinking system?

A)speedy and nimble
B)emotional rather than rational
C)intuitive rather than reasoned
D)effortful rather than automatic

Question 67

Green defaults allow people to choose the less sustainable option if that is their conscious preference.

Question 68

Sustainable choices do not require conscious effort if the situation is constructed in the right way.

Question 69

Systems thinking comes easily to people.

Question 70

Recycling is one of the most effective household-level behaviors to promote sustainability.

Question 71

Few people are willing to take what they consider extreme measures to be more sustainable.

Question 72

Mindfulness can help people to develop new automatic habits.

Question 73

Intentions are generally very accurate predictors of behavior.

Question 74

Intention to behave is conscious, requiring the attention and effort of the analytic thinking system.

Question 75

There is no effective way to frame messages so as to inspire proenvironmental behavior in people who are skeptical of environmentalism.

Question 76

There is no effective way to frame messages so as to inspire proenvironmental behavior in climate change deniers.

Question 77

When researchers asked U.S. residents about the first thought or image that came to mind regarding global warming, the majority reported images that were distant from their daily lives.