Psychology and the Transition Toward a Sustainable Global Future

Psychology is the study of human consciousness, cognition, emotion and behavior. Research in psychology explores the spectrum of human consciousness, cognition, emotion and behavior from their objective biological origins to the more subjective descriptions of the human experiences that influence them. Psychology is about how individuals develop, change, experience, express, seek and are able to retain their autonomous individual consciousness, cognition, emotion and behavior while under the influence of their immediate communities as well as the increasingly influential shifting global societies and cultures to which they belong while, at the same time, co-creating these communities, societies and cultures in terms of the collective consciousness, cognition, emotion and behavior.

Psychology can serve a critical role in helping to achieve a global transition toward a sustainable future because broad-based changes in human behavior are urgently needed across global societies. However, while the needed changes are for the most part well known by humans in thought, these thoughts have not yet translated into the requisite levels of human behavior.

Furthermore, given the limited efficacy to date of innovation in science and technology, governance through policy, corporate leadership, and public education to change human behaviors toward those deemed most equitable with a sustainable future, the scientific exploration in psychology of human consciousness, cognition, emotion and behavior as it pertains to their origins, causes and modifiers on both an individual level, in terms of personality and identity and the broader social level, as members of the collective community or global citizenship in relation to sustainability and sustainable development, is an urgent imperative.

EJ Wensing

US Virgin Islands

ejwensing@ecosphere.net