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Inner Growth for Sustainability Transformation
Funding
Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony (Germany)
Duration
01.02.2024 - 31.01.2026
Motivation
At the current rate, most UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will not be met in time. Instead, the world is facing major environmental crises. An important reason is that we have not developed the inner capacity to deal with our increasingly complex environment, societal challenges and stressors to promote resilience and to co-create a more desirable future. “Inner Growth for Sustainability Transformation” addresses factors that induce cognitive plasticity in human agents, which is needed to achieve a (societal) sustainability transformation. The transformation requires an increased resilience of individuals and robustness of the social systems in which they partake. The project focuses on the transformation of individuals as well as groups/societies towards sustainable mind-sets and thus paradigm shifts, including pro-environmental and pro-social decision-making and behavior. It is inspired by the “Inner Development Goals“ (IDGs), a set of science-based transformative skills and inner qualities which have been postulated to be needed to achieve the SDGs and by the concept of “Positive Social Tipping Points” , a transformation framework for rapid and widespread societal shift towards sustainable behaviors, norms, or policies.
Aims
- conduct a systematic literature review on the role of visioning and future-thinking methods on pro-environmental behavior(al intentions)
- develop quantifiable, measurable indicators of cognitive plasticity
- test viable interventions that promote pro-environmental thought and decision-making as well as resulting behavior, such as, for example,
- (episodic) simulation of anticipated desirable future states through visioning exercises
- activating other-regarding preferences, e.g. through perspective taking
- self-extension through mindfulness/empathy for human but also non-human agents (other species, nature)
- acquiring cognitive/emotional/conative skills of the IDGs to e.g. increase individuals’ resilience
- co-opting mindful future thinking during current behavior, in a reflective cognitive loop, thus reducing future discounting
Team
“Inner Growth for Sustainability Transformation” is an inter- and transdisciplinary project encompassing behavioral economics, cognitive science, and systems sciences. It is a collaboration between the Department of Environmental Economics (Prof. Dr. Stefanie Engel, Dr. Franziska Gaupp, Dr. Marieke Baaken, former member Dr. Gabi Waldhof), the Department of Resource Management (Prof. Dr. Pahl-Wostl, M.Sc. Carolin Janssen) and the Institute of Cognitive Science (Dr. Annette Hohenberger).
