PP&D 132 Lecture 3: PP&D Week 3
12 May 2018
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During our week 3 lecture we had the privilege of listening the lecture of a guest
speaker, Beth Karlin, from the Transformational Media Lab in the University of California
Irvine. Professor Karlin lectured about the psychology of sustainability. Researchers use
psychology to study anything related to humans, and sustainability is not an exception.
Psychology of sustainability has been around since as early as 1970s. We learned that
Transformational Media Lab studies how technology and new media are changing the
way people interact with natural, built, and social worlds. There are potential
opportunities to influence those changes for either pro-social benefit or pro-
environmental. In order to study this potential, a psychological approach provides a
theoretical base and empirical methodology. The mission of the Transformational Media
Lab is to study how technology and new media can be used to transform individuals,
communities, and systems. Based on the psychology of sustainability people are both
the cause and the effect as they impact the environment and get impacted by it at the
same time. We can do a lot to help our environment become more sustainable both
individually and as a group by such simple actions as recycling. Empirically, our
thoughts and desires do not have a direct impact on the environment but our actions do.
A surprising fact presented by Dr. Karlin that was also covered in one of our articles
about environmental activism was that the number one reason why people don’t support
causes, volunteer, and get involved with the community in other ways is because
nobody asks them. They also do not think that their involvement will have the ability to
have an impact on such a big cause as climate change. Asking someone and giving
them the impact that it’ll have on something makes people more likely to get involved
with supporting a cause. During the second half of the class Dr. Matthew gave a lecture
which was mainly about diversity in the ecological revolution. Both the readings of week
3 by Dr. Danoff-Burg from Columbia University and the lecture by professor Matthew
focused heavily on the field of Population Ecology and how population growth hugely
impacts our environment.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
During our week 3 lecture we had the privilege of listening the lecture of a guest speaker, beth karlin, from the transformational media lab in the university of california. Professor karlin lectured about the psychology of sustainability. Researchers use psychology to study anything related to humans, and sustainability is not an exception. Psychology of sustainability has been around since as early as 1970s. Transformational media lab studies how technology and new media are changing the way people interact with natural, built, and social worlds. There are potential opportunities to influence those changes for either pro-social benefit or pro- environmental. In order to study this potential, a psychological approach provides a theoretical base and empirical methodology. Lab is to study how technology and new media can be used to transform individuals, communities, and systems.
