Climate Change as a Predictable Surprise

In this article, I analyze climate change as a “predictable surprise,” an event that leads an organization or nation to react with surprise, despite the fact that the information necessary to anticipate the event and its consequences was available (Bazerman and Watkins, 2004). I then assess the cognitive, organizational, and political reasons why society fails to implement wise strategies to prevent predictable surprises generally and climate change specifically. Finally, I conclude with an outline of a set of response strategies to overcome barriers to change.

[1]  N. Shainess,et al.  Positive Illusions: Creative Self-Deception and the Healthy Mind , 1990 .

[2]  L. Ross,et al.  Self-interest and fairness in problems of resource allocation: allocators versus recipients. , 1997, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[3]  Peter H. M. P. Roelofsma,et al.  Anomalies in intertemporal choice , 1996 .

[4]  J. Baron,et al.  You Can't Enlarge The Pie: Six Barriers To Effective Government , 2002 .

[5]  Eric J. Johnson,et al.  The Construction of Preference: Do Defaults Save Lives? , 2006 .

[6]  E. Weber.  Experience-Based and Description-Based Perceptions of Long-Term Risk: Why Global Warming does not Scare us (Yet) , 2006 .

[7]  J. Crocker.  Biased Questions in Judgment of Covariation Studies , 1982 .

[8]  Shelley E. Taylor,et al.  Illusion and well-being: a social psychological perspective on mental health. , 1988, Psychological bulletin.

[9]  M. Bazerman.  Judgment in Managerial Decision Making , 1990 .

[10]  John A. Stoop,et al.  Predictable surprises: The disasters you should have seen coming and how to prevent them , 2005 .

[11]  Christopher Winship,et al.  The dangers of “strong” causal reasoning in social policy , 1999 .

[12]  Joanna Isobel House,et al.  Climate change 2001 : synthesis report , 2001 .

[13]  Student,et al.  PSYCHOLOGY OF PREFERENCES , 1982, Pediatrics.

[14]  Daniel Kahneman,et al.  Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias , 1991 .

[15]  David M. Messick,et al.  Equity theory: Psychological and sociological perspectives , 1983 .

[16]  William Samuelson,et al.  Status quo bias in decision making , 1988 .

[17]  Max H. Bazerman,et al.  Egocentric Interpretations of Fairness in Asymmetric, Environmental Social Dilemmas: Explaining Harvesting Behavior and the Role of Communication , 1996 .

[18]  A. Tversky,et al.  Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases , 1974, Science.

[19]  J. Suls,et al.  Flawed Self-Assessment , 2004, Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society.

[20]  J. Baron.  Judgment Misguided: Intuition and Error in Public Decision Making , 1998 .

[21]  D. Kahneman,et al.  Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias , 1991 .

[22]  David M. Messick,et al.  Estimating social and nonsocial utility functions from ordinal data , 1985 .

[23]  J. Baron.  Thinking About Global Warming , 2006 .

[24]  Kimberly A. Wade-Benzoni.  Thinking About the Future , 1999 .

[25]  G. Loewenstein,et al.  Behavioral Law and Economics: Explaining Bargaining Impasse: The Role of Self-serving Biases , 1997 .

[26]  Cass R. Sunstein,et al.  The Availability Heuristic, Intuitive Cost-Benefit Analysis, and Climate Change , 2006 .

[27]  Jonathan Baron,et al.  Behavioral Law and Economics: Reluctance to Vaccinate: Omission Bias and Ambiguity , 1990 .

[28]  George Ainslie,et al.  Choice and Consequence: Perspectives of an Errant Economist.Thomas C. Schelling , 1986 .

[29]  Ann L. McGill.  Context effects in judgments of causation. , 1989 .