PSYC 51.14 Sustainable Choices: Understanding Human Cognition To Save The Planet
Every choice we make in our daily life has an impact on the environment we live in and on life on earth in general. While perceiving this impact is impossible in most cases, the enormous human population and globalization make the cumulative impact of every simple choice very profound. In this multi-disciplinary course, we explore how human activities affect life on earth in terms of climate change, biodiversity, deforestation, pollution, etc., in order to learn about the intricate link between our everyday choices and eco-sustainability, as well as how physical and biological laws limit or improve our ability to be sustainable. This course is focused on learning about the impact of our choices as it is focused on learning about heuristics/biases that humans exhibit when making those choices and how these heuristics/biases emerge in the brain. The course brings together ideas from Neuroscience, Psychology, Economics, Physics, and Biology among other fields to teach students about how and to what extent decisions we face in everyday life, directly or indirectly, influence life on earth, and how negative impacts can be mitigated by understanding the neural bases of human decision making.
Instructor
Soltani