The Role of Social Psychology in Acquiring Proenvironmental Patterns of Living

Abstract

Humans polluted the air, water and land of the planet to such an extent that they are always experiencing large-scale environmental crises. Environmental problems are ‘social issues’ because they are caused by human behavior. Social psychologists lead the way in helping people to acquire proenvironmental patterns of living. Although both environmental attitudes and behaviors, and their relationship are studied by social psychologists in the field, the emphasis of social psychologists is mostly on changing environment-related behavior in a positive direction and on strategies promoting proenvironmental behavior (van der Pligt, 1996). In the environmental literature there are a lot of theoretical and applied studies emphasizing the destructive effects of the environmental problems. The most usual environmental stressors in the literature are noise, climate changes, pollution and crowd, and the results of environmental stress are generally found physical illnesses, diminished altruism, learned helplessness and attentional problems (Ercan, 2021). The most studied topics in the literature are litter behavior, energy conservation, recycling, water use and car use. In addition, social psychologists have developed some more theoretical models (e.g., the models developed by Clayton, de Young, Kaplan) to promote proenvironmental behavior. What most social psychologists (e.g., McKenzie-Mohr, 2000; Stern, 2000) consider as a necessary step to promote environmentalism is the productive collaboration among different disciplines, i.e., a multi-disciplinary approach. The challenge of social psychology is to find ways to transform environmental concern into environmentally responsible behavior. The feeling of responsibility for the future generations is called ‘vertical responsibility’ (Ercan, 2021). Social psychology has yet much to do in order to benefit the whole world. The scope of the present review is to emphasize the role of social psychology in helping to solve environmental problems. For this purpose, the most prominent and recent research, and theories in the field were examined.