In the face of global climate change, investigating pro-environmental behaviors and perceptions of the human-nature relationship is increasingly important. We investigated perceived asymmetries in how humans and nature impact each other across two studies. Participants (N=331) rated the degree to which they believe humans and nature impact each other (Study 1) and were asked to list and assess instances of human-nature and nature-human impact (Study 2). Study 1 results suggest that participants generally perceive humans to have a stronger impact on nature than vice versa, whereas Study 2 results suggest that participants perceive humans to have a strong-negative and a weak-positive impact on nature and nature to have a similarly strong-positive and weak-negative impact on humans. These findings suggest that while humans’ relationship with nature is broadly perceived anthropocentrically and unidirectionally, when probed about specific human-nature impacts, the human-nature relationship is perceived as bidirectional, but still unbalanced.

This study examines how mental models of the Human-Nature Relationship (HNR) predict pro-environmental behavioral intentions directly and mediated through anthropocentric and biocentric environmental attitudes. We found that behavioral intentions relevant to environmental protection were directly predicted by two aspects of HNR: human superiority beliefs (negatively) and perceived human impact on nature (positively). Protection intentions were also indirectly predicted by these variables, as well as perceived impact of nature on humans (positively) via their association with biocentric attitudes (SRMR= 0.040). In contrast, no component of HNR directly predicted behavioral intentions relevant to environmental investment, although all three showed the same pattern of indirect association via biocentric attitudes (SRMR= 0.036). Results suggest that mental models of the human-nature relationship provide a cognitive foundation for environmental behavioral intentions both directly and through their association with environmental attitudes. These findings have implications for pro-environmental interventions that deal with conceptual and attitudinal change.

Conceptions of social disparities as natural and biologically-caused, known as “essentialist” conceptions, support the maintenance of social disparities. Surprisingly little research has examined whether formal educational experiences – directly teaching people about the nature and origins of social disparities – can reduce essentialist conceptions. We investigate how social science coursework (e.g., sociology, history, anthropology) impacts (a) essentialist vs. structural explanations for racial disparities, and (b) social essentialism more broadly, in a diverse group of undergraduates (n = 246). Results suggest that students who have completed such coursework show reduced endorsement of essentialist explanations for racial disparities, but enhanced endorsement of other dimensions of social essentialist thought (e.g., the view that social categories are meaningfully distinct from one another). Thus, social science coursework may have a nuanced impact on social essentialism. We discuss the questions these results raise regarding the relations between explanatory thinking and other dimensions of social essentialism.

Intuitive conceptual systems impact how university students learn formal biological science. One such conceptual system--anthropocentric thinking--involves anchoring our understanding of the biological world in human terms. Prior research indicates that anthropocentric thinking, like other intuitive conceptual systems, can engender misconceptions, but also varies with richness of informal biological experience. To examine the impact of informal experience on anthropocentric thinking and formal biology learning, we assessed students from a rural institution (n=212) and an urban institution (n=188) on their use of anthropocentric reasoning and their agreement with biological misconceptions using both qualitative coding of free responses and quantitative analysis of close-ended measures. Our findings indicate linkages between anthropocentric thinking and misconceptions in both populations, with no clear differences between urban and rural students. This work demonstrates the ubiquity of anthropocentric thinking in US undergraduates and underlines the implications of intuitive thinking for STEM learning.