Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Breaking cognitive barriers to a sustainable future

Nature Human Behaviour volume 1, Article number: 0013 (2017) Cite this article

Subjects

As humans, our decision-making process is biased towards maintaining the status quo, even if an alternative choice has substantial long-term benefits. This cognitive myopia and present bias, when applied to decisions that affect sustainability, could be threatening our future.

The long-term well-being and survival of the human species depend on forward-looking decisions that weigh current costs and benefits of different courses of action against future ones. The fact that, over the course of only a few centuries, we have nearly depleted the earth's fossil fuel resources, which took 300 million years to create, and that large portions of the earth are facing water shortages as the result of past and current consumption, suggest that we find it problematic to plan wisely for the future. Technological change — from the industrial revolution to the information revolution — might be advancing faster than our ability to rationally trade off current opportunities and needs against future ones, because our cognitive capabilities of self-control and prefrontal executive functions advance on a far slower evolutionary scale.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Thaler, R. H. & Sunstein, C. R. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness (Yale Univ. Press, 2008).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Weber, E. U. & Johnson, E. J. in Global Cooperation and the Human Factor in International Relations (eds Messner, D . & Weinlich, S. ) 139–154 (Routledge, 2015).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Meier, S. & Sprenger, C. Am. Econ. J. 2, 193–210 (2010).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Samuelson, W. & Zeckhauser, R. J. Risk Uncertainty 1, 7–59 (1988).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Johnson, E. J. & Goldstein, D. Science 302, 1338–1339 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Weber, E. U. et al. Psychol. Sci. 18, 516–523 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Weber, E. U. Climatic Change 77, 103–120 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Atreya, A. & Ferreira, S. Risk Anal. 35, 828–848 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Thaler, R. H. & Sunstein, C. R. Am. Econ. Rev. 93, 175–179 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Sunstein, C. R. & Reisch, L. A. Harvard Environ. Law Rev. http://doi.org/bs4z (2013).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Elke U. Weber is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, Andlinger Center, Room 216, 86 Olden Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.,

    Elke U. Weber

Authors
  1. Elke U. Weber
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elke U. Weber.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Weber, E. Breaking cognitive barriers to a sustainable future. Nat Hum Behav 1, 0013 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-016-0013

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-016-0013

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing