Collective action on climate change requires correcting beliefs about the collective.

Mounting evidence indicates that people’s willingness to support climate change actions depends not only on how they see the threat of climate change (first order beliefs) but on how they think others see this threat (second order beliefs). Studies across the globe find that people believe that their concern about, and willingness to act to reduce climate change is greater than that of others. This talk will address reasons for this discrepancy, ways in which it impedes climate change action, and possible steps to take to close the gap between first order and second order beliefs.

Biography:

Dale Miller is the Class of 1968 / Ed Zschau Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Trained as a social psychologist, his research interests include the emergence and perpetuation of social norms that lack broad support, behavioral change strategies, and the role that social identity plays in decision making and moral actions. At Stanford since 2002, he has been a visiting fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.