Search

Summary

The belief–action gap was originally conceptualized by psychologists who aimed to ground behaviour in beliefs but found that their models had little predictive value. The recurrent use of this concept often comes with the assumption that human behaviour is somewhat irrational or weirdly misaligned with their beliefs. This gap is particularly striking in the environmental domain, where many people seemingly think one way but act another. In this chapter, we review a number of factors that hinder general beliefs from translating into actual behaviors. We emphasize the existence of measurement issues, information deficits about the exact impact of one’s actions, structural factors, and psychological factors that together impact the robustness of the association between beliefs and actions. In particular, socio-cognitive factors have a massive impact on people’s decisions to act in ways that are aligned with their deep-seated beliefs. Once all these factors are properly taken into account, it becomes clear that the belief–action gap is not a token of human irrationality but should in fact be expected.

We applaud Boyer & Petersen's (B&P's) article on economic folk beliefs. We believe that it is crucial for the future of democracy to identify the cognitive systems through which people form their beliefs about the working of the economy. In this commentary, we put forward the idea that, although many systems are involved, fairness is probably the main driver of folk-economic beliefs.

When designing public policies, decision makers often rely on their own behavioral preferences. Pepper & Nettle's (P&N's) theory suggests that these preferences are unlikely to be appropriate when applied to a different environment (e.g., a low-income environment with fewer career opportunities). This theory has profound implications for the design and ethics of public policies.

Search Results

Refine search

Refine search

Actions for selected content:

3 results

Chapter 24 - The Belief–Action Gap in Environmental Psychology: How Wide? How Irrational?

Summary

Fairness, more than any other cognitive mechanism, is what explains the content of folk-economic beliefs

Evolutionary approaches to deprivation transform the ethics of policy making

Search Results

Refine search

Refine search

Actions for selected content:

Save Search

3 results

Chapter 24 - The Belief–Action Gap in Environmental Psychology: How Wide? How Irrational?

Summary

Fairness, more than any other cognitive mechanism, is what explains the content of folk-economic beliefs

Evolutionary approaches to deprivation transform the ethics of policy making