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Neil Lewis, Jr. | From Individual Behavior to Collective Action: Behavior Change in the Climate Crisis

Abstract: Climate change is fundamentally a collective problem—the issue will affect everyone in some way. Because of this, behavioral scientists have studied a variety of ways to get people from a broad range of backgrounds to engage with the issue of climate change; they have done this in attempts to mitigate (or adapt to) the climate crisis. Some have taken individual-focused approaches that target individual level behavioral changes, others have taken more collective approaches—attempting to mobilize large groups of people. In this talk I will present research on the efficacy of these different strategies, and their implications for interventions and policies to address the climate crisis.

Bio: Neil Lewis, Jr. (he/him) is a Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences, and Associate Professor of Communication, Medicine, and Public Policy at Cornell University and Weill Cornell Medicine. His research examines how people’s social contexts and identities influence how they make sense of the world around them, and the implications of those meaning-making processes for their motivation to pursue a variety of goals in life. He is interested in the consequences of those processes not only for individuals, but also for the communities, organizations, and societies in which those individuals are embedded. He is particularly interested in using the insights from research findings to improve educational, health, and environmental outcomes for individuals and societies. Lewis has received the Early Career Scholar Award from the International Communication Association, the Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions from the Association for Psychological Science, and the National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communication from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

 

This event is presented as part of the 2025 Perspectives on the Climate Change Challenge Seminar Series:

  • Most Mondays, Spring Semester 2025, 2:55-4:10 p.m.
  • Zoom Link

 

This university-wide seminar series is open to the public (via Zoom), and provides important views on the critical issue of climate change, drawing from many perspectives and disciplines. Experts from Cornell University and beyond present an overview of the science of climate change and climate change models, the implications for agriculture, ecosystems, and food systems, and provide important economic, ethical, and policy insights on the issue. The seminar is being organized and sponsored by the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering and Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.

Start Date: March 10, 2025
Start Time: 1:55 pm