Addressing climate change with behavioral science:A global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions' effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior-several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people's initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors.</p

Addressing climate change with behavioral science: a global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior—several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors

Addressing climate change with behavioral science:A global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions' effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior-several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people's initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors.</p

Interkulturelle Kompetenz – Schlüsselqualifikationdes 21. Jahrhunderts

Dieser Beitrag beruht auf der Annahme, dass der konstruktive Umgang mit kultureller Differenz zu den Schlüsselqualifikationen des 21. Jahrhunderts gehört. Eingangs soll die wachsende Bedeutung Interkultureller Kompetenz begründet werden. Danach wird ausgeführt, was darunter zu verstehen ist

Abnormal Movement Preparation in Task-Specific Focal Hand Dystonia

<div><p>Electrophysiological and behavioral studies in primary dystonia suggest abnormalities during movement preparation, but this crucial phase preceding movement onset has not yet been studied specifically with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). To identify abnormalities in brain activation during movement preparation, we used event-related fMRI to analyze behaviorally unimpaired sequential finger movements in 18 patients with task-specific focal hand dystonia (FHD) and 18 healthy subjects. Patients and controls executed self-initiated or externally cued prelearnt four-digit sequential movements using either right or left hands. In FHD patients, motor performance of the sequential finger task was not associated with task-related dystonic posturing and their activation levels during motor execution were highly comparable with controls. On the other hand reduced activation was observed during movement preparation in the FHD patients in left premotor cortex / precentral gyrus for all conditions, and for self-initiation additionally in supplementary motor area, left mid-insula and anterior putamen, independent of effector side. Findings argue for abnormalities of early stages of motor control in FHD, manifesting during movement preparation. Since deficits map to regions involved in the coding of motor programs, we propose that task-specific dystonia is characterized by abnormalities during recruitment of motor programs: these do not manifest at the behavioral level during simple automated movements, however, errors in motor programs of complex movements established by extensive practice (a core feature of FHD), trigger the inappropriate movement patterns observed in task-specific dystonia.</p> </div

Within-group Activity during Preparation of Movements.

<p>Within-group activity during preparation of movements in healthy control subjects (CONTR; A and C) and focal hand dystonia patients (FHD; B and D). Activation during motor preparation (PREP) of self-initiated (Free; A and B) and externally cued (React; <b>C</b> and <b>D</b>) conditions. Voxels surpassing a height threshold of p < 0.001 (FDR-corrected) and an extent threshold (cluster size) of k=10 are superimposed on the MNI-T1-template of SPM5, and color coded for right hand (red), left hand (green) and common activations (overlay; yellow). Coordinates shown (x, y, z) are in MNI-space.</p

Between-group Activation Changes during Preparation of Movements.

<p>Decreased activity in patients (FHD) compared to controls (CONTR) during motor preparation (PREP). p<.001 (uncorrected), extent threshold 10 voxel. Right hand (red), left hand (yellow). <b>A</b>: Self-initiated <b>B</b>: Externally cued <b>C</b>: Reduced self-initiation-related activity (white: p<0.005). Note effector independent distributions. Coordinates shown (x, y, z) are in MNI-space.</p

Experimental Paradigm.

<p><b>A</b>: Experimental paradigm (trial). Black arrow: finger sequence. React-condition (upper bar): movement onset is delayed with respect to the cue (green). Free-condition (lower bar): movement onset triggers color change (green). <b>B</b>: Phases modeled for data analysis: preparation (PREP), execution (EXE).</p