Bringing Out the Best in People: a Psychological Perspective

David Orr’s (2008) call for a greater role for psychology in efforts to ensure “a decent future” for humanity is right on. Psychology has much to offer to the understanding of and approaches to survival and sustainability. Furthermore, Orr is correct that people in the field should have made psychology’s potential contribution more visible. Unfortunately, despite the strong efforts of the Society for Conservation Biology’s Social Science Working Group, the psychological sciences are less evident than other social sciences. Psychology has been far too slow to identify opportunities where its perspective could have important impacts on conservation. There are many ways to consider psychology’s potential contribution. Although Orr casts these in terms of the study of “mind,” we have found it more effective to talk about “human functioning” and specifically to consider what brings out the best in people. Many of Orr’s examples point to the opposite—situations (e.g., Milgram study) that have brought out undesirable qualities in people. Although situations are important influences, it is by no means the case that their outcomes are uniformly (or even predominantly) negative. Rather, there is a wide range of situations that can bring out the best in people. This is a particularly critical issue when one thinks about endangered environments. Natural environments, for example, have been repeatedly shown to have the capacity to bring out the best in people even when nature is no more than the view of a tree from a window (Kaplan 1993; Frumkin 2001; Kaplan & Kaplan 2005). As for an emphasis on human selfishness and self-interest, this too provides only a partial view of our species. It is true that advertising and the media have adeptly orchestrated a materialistic culture in which consumption has become an escapist distraction relative to the values that are essential for a sustainable world. Here, perhaps, neoclassical economics helps explain behavior. The behavioral economists, however, have identified a broad range of circumstances in which people do not maximize their personal gain, but rather are cooperative and reasonable (Hammerstein & Hagen 2005). For example, research on how people deal with antisocial behavior shows that punishing violators is experienced as pleasurable even when it costs in terms of one’s material standing (Angier 2002). The vast body of research on human well-being has identified many dimensions of this complex domain, including hedonic pleasure, emotional well-being, psychological capital, and character strengths (e.g., Ring et al. 2007; Kesebir & Diener 2008; Ryff & Singer 2008). Particularly pertinent to the discussion here is that many human qualities are inconsistently exhibited within the same person across time and circumstances. In other words, the dimensions of well-being or of what people find satisfying are not immutable; rather, they are strongly influenced by context or situation (Luthans et al. 2007). From our perspective this is central to the issue of what brings out the best in people. In our experience psychology can provide a better understanding of the contexts, or environments, that are more likely to achieve survival and sustainability. Such outcomes, however, are not necessarily or primarily concerned with individual well-being. Maximizing individual well-being can, and often has, come at a great cost; vast global inequities are an iconic expression. Rather, we see that a more benign and more effective route to well-being involves maximizing the larger social good. The agenda must be to foster reasonableness (e.g., being responsible, cooperative, and tolerant). There is reason to believe that a great deal of human satisfaction and well-being flows from participation in actions that improve the lives of others. The reasonable person model (RPM) is a framework we have been developing for understanding these bringing-out-the-best-in-people contexts (Kaplan & Kaplan 2003; R. and S. Kaplan, unpublished data). These contexts are ones that help meet basic human needs, and the needs are conceptualized in terms of one of the most pervasive characteristic of the species—concern about and dependence on information. Information is what we store, trade, hide, and act on. We are overwhelmed by it, yet endlessly seek it. We cannot act without it.