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Dr. Jeff Joireman,
spent one year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Free University of Amsterdam as a graduate student and earned his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Delaware in 1996, where he studied cooperation in social dilemmas. Before moving to WSU in 2002, Dr. Joireman taught for six years in Seattle where he studied commuting decisions, willingness to fund improvements in public transit, and pro-environmental activism. At WSU, Dr. Joireman studies decision-making in resource dilemmas that are experimentally created, with a special focus on how decision makers respond to warnings about depleting resources. He has published over 20 articles in peer-reviewed journals including Environment and Behavior, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. He also recently co-edited a book entitled Understanding Behavior in the Context of Time: Theory, Research, and Application. Dr. Joireman serves on the editorial board for Group Dynamics, is an ad hoc reviewer for over 15 other professional journals, and has served as a U.S. Forest Service consultant on how to improve the transfer of scientific findings to policy makers and the public.
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Psychology
Jeffrey Joireman
Environmental Problems as Social Dilemmas: Avoiding Temporal Myopia
download a printable pdf
Many actions that promote the long-term wellbeing of the environment come at an immediate cost to the individual. Unfortunately, because humans have a tendency to discount the value of future outcomes, immediate concerns often overshadow long-term collective interests. As a result, a major goal of researchers interested in promoting the wellbeing of the environment is to overcome such shortsighted thinking, or ‘myopia for the future.’
Dr. Joireman conducts research aimed at encouraging behaviors that promote the long-term wellbeing of the environment. His basic research focuses on decision-making in regard to resource dilemmas that are experimentally created. In this paradigm, decision makers must decide how much of a common resource to harvest. Remaining resources are multiplied by a replenishment factor to arrive at the pool size for the next round of decisions. Optimal use of the resource requires that decision-makers take a long-term perspective.
Most recently, Dr. Joireman and his colleagues used this paradigm to study how various types of warnings about “the state of the resource” impact harvesting decisions. This research revealed that decision-makers are willing to reduce consumption after an initial warning, but show little response to a subsequent warning, just as people eventually learned to ignore the proverbial “boy who cried wolf.” These findings hold important practical implications given that the public often endures repeated warnings about depleting natural resources, even while resources do not appear to be in any immediate danger of running out.
Dr. Joireman’s applied research focuses on people’s commuting preferences, support for improvements in public transit, and pro-environmental activism. Each line of research shows that people who act in a pro-environmental manner tend to have a greater concern for future consequences. One aim of Dr. Joireman’s research is to find ways to heighten decision-makers’ concerns with future consequences and translate those concerns into pro-environmental actions.
Contact
Information
Jeffrey Joireman, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Psychology
Washington State University
PO Box 644820
Pullman, WA 99164-4820
Telephone: 509-335-0191
E-mail: joireman@wsu.edu
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