Intergenerational apology
Article at Oxford Research Encyclopedia.
Guilt has tended to align with the individualization of responsibility for climate change… Shame has been used…as a primary tactic against fossil fuel producers, peddlers of climate denial, and industry-backed politicians.
Read it here
Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge Grand Prize Winner
Jennifer Jacquet and Sunandan Chakraborty’s project at NYU was selected as one of 4 Grand Prize Winnersin the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge, a USAID initiative that is being implemented in partnership with the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian Institution, and TRAFFIC.
Put an end to roadside zoos
Contrary to how it might feel, fondling dangerous animals only accentuates the divide between us and them. Haven’t we done enough to force that divide already? Read more at The Guardian.
Article with Dale Jamieson on the potential for shame to put downward pressure on emissions in Nature Climate Change.
It becomes more difficult not to fulfill one’s commitments if others are fulfilling theirs, and easier to avoid one’s commitments if others are avoiding theirs.
Read it here.
Human Error (Survivor Guilt in the Anthropocene)
Response to Naidoo et al.’s article on “Complementary benefits of tourism and hunting to communal conservancies in Namibia” in Conservation Biology.
Conservation decisions are not and should not be driven by economic benefits alone.
Read it here.
Very Bad Wizards talk shame
Psychologist David Pizarro and philosopher Tamler Sommers talk shame with Jennifer Jacquet, including the pros and cons and the difference between shame and guilt. Is shaming effective for generating social progress or getting tax cheats to pay up? Is twitter shaming on the rise or on its way out? And what does David do when he’s alone in the dark? Listen here.
Article for the Culture & Conscience series at the Center for Humans and Nature.
If we assume our evolutionary predispositions represent hardware, we can consider both culture and the conscience as software.
Read more here
The shaming of Walter Palmer for killing Cecil the Lion
Rather than simply ruining the life of one dentist, some arguably good things have come from this case.
Read more at The Conversation.
Public shaming can make the world a better place
The discussion about 21st-century shaming usually turns to cases in which an otherwise well-behaved person posts a tweet or photograph that results in excessive punishment by an anonymous and bloodthirsty online crowd which ruins that person’s life for a while. Many people, myself included, object to this form of vigilantism. But other examples of shaming — singling out big banks for environmental destruction, exposing countries for refusing to end forced labour or calling out denialists who undermine action on climate change — challenge the mistreated tweeter as shaming’s stereotype. What shaming largely is, after all, is not necessarily what shaming might be. Read more at WIRED.CO.UK.
Response to Kline’s article How to learn about teaching: An evolutionary framework for the study of teaching behavior in humans and other animals in Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
One of the challenges to an evolutionary framework for the study of teaching behavior will be to distinguish, if possible, between teaching… and punishment.
Read more here.
Is Shame Necessary in Harper’s
The Deep, Dark, Ugly Thing — Can shame shape society? by Laura Kipnis.
Is Shame Necessary in The Brooklyn Rail
“Guilt only needs to be addressed by the self, whereas shame can force change in others’ behavior. Shame can scale and its target need not be human. A company or an industry can be shamed, but they cannot feel guilty as these entities lack consciences. This important distinction is central to Jacquet’s thesis: abandon guilt and turn to shame as the tool for resolving collective action problems.” Read more in The Brooklyn Rail.
Is Shame Necessary? at Gawker
Article for the Mind & Morality series at the Center for Humans and Nature.
We are not built to solve climate change, but we were also not not built to solve it.
Read more here.
Through the Wormhole
Research featured on Through the Wormhole’s Season 5 episode “Is Poverty Genetic?”. A clip from the entire episode is here:
DLD 2014
Talk at DLD 2014 in Munich, Germany.
The anthropocebo effect: a psychological condition that exacerbates human-induced damage — a certain pessimism about humanity that leads us to accept humans as a geologic force and destruction as inevitable.
Jacquet, J. (2013) The Anthropocebo Effect. Conservation Biology 27:898-899. Response to the Edge.org annual question.
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria
Work on intergenerational discounting and climate change featured on Fareed Zakaria’s Global Public Square on CNN.
dctp.tv scham online
A talk with dctp.tv about scham online.
AnOther w/Brian Eno
“Here, [Brian] Eno and Jacquet share an emailed conversation about their collaboration.”
BBC One Planet interview.
Jellyfish burger
Jellyfish burger by Dave Beck & Jennifer Jacquet. This image won honorable mention for illustration in the NSF’s 2010 visualization competition.
How do we encourage personal savings and investment? Answers to this question, revealed through new analyses in experimental economics, provide insight into how to encourage collective savings and investment in our future through ecological conservation. There are three lessons to be learned.
Jacquet, J. (2009) What can conservationists learn from investor behavior? Conservation Biology 23(3): 518-519.
