Are Humans Part of the Natural World? U.S. Children's and Adults’ Concept of Nature and its Relationship to Environmental Concern

Abstract

AbstractUnderstanding factors that promote conservation attitudes is essential given ongoing environmental crises and the need for sustainability. Our research adopted various close‐ and open‐ended tasks to explore: the extent to which U.S. urban adults (Study 1) and children (Study 2) have a basic conception of humans as part of nature, cognitive factors that predict more human‐inclusive concepts of nature, and, finally, the relationship of their nature concepts and other individual differences to environmental moral concern and biocentric reasoning. General environmental moral concern and biocentric moral reasoning were a focus because both variables have previously been linked to sustainable attitudes. Across studies, adults and children did not tend to categorize humans as part of nature except when induced or disposed to attribute mind or life to nature. Among adults, a human‐inclusive nature concept did not predict environmental moral concern or biocentrism. However, the degree of exposure to nature was positively predictive while a cluster of beliefs about humans as intrinsically unique, superior, and influential (human exceptionalism) was negatively predictive. Among children, a basic human‐inclusive concept of nature was related to environmental concern but only among children who also tended to reason in ecological terms. These findings have important implications for sustainability efforts: They suggest that environmental moral concern and biocentric attitudes may be enhanced over‐development by nature exposure and interventions that enduringly promote human‐inclusive concepts of nature and ecological‐systems understanding. Such intervention effects might be achieved by selectively inducing individuals to attribute mind and life to non‐human natural phenomena and scaffolding accurate mechanistic understanding of evolution and common ancestry, which may also help to inhibit the development and deleterious effects of human exceptionalism.