Stories tagged with behavior

The Behavioral Aspects of Peak Oil: Basic Contingencies

Posted by Prof. Goose on June 19, 2007 - 11:14am
Topic: Sociology/Psychology
Tags: athabasca, avoidance response, behavior, delay parameter, peak oil, risk acceptance, risk aversion [list all tags]

This is a guest post by Lyle Grant, a Professor at Athabasca University's Centre for Psychology and co-author of Principles of Behavior Analysis. Since discovering the issue of peak oil his work has largely concerned the psychology of sustainable living.

In behavioral terms, peak oil is an aversive consequence. The Hirsch report's crash program is an avoidance response that will prevent the worst of the aversive consequence from occurring. Meeting the challenge of peak oil is therefore a problem of engaging in successful avoidance responding.

Peak oil is an especially difficult problem due to (a) the nonrecurring nature of peak oil, (b) the delay of the aversive consequence, (c) the variability in the predicted date of peak oil, (d) the predicted aversiveness of peak oil, and (e) the nature of avoidance responding.

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