Great analysis, reminds me a bit of Moore et al.'s rather bleak results: www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

You might also be interested in my group's recent research on understanding and countering the "normalization" of climate change: rdcu.be/ePe20 and www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Cldn't have been possible without my awesome labmates like you!!

🥳🥳🥳

tagging @dwallacewells.bsky.social because your writings have been very inspirational for this research!

Really grateful to the NOMISFoundation and the editors of Science for this recognition.

This pattern extends beyond climate change from how we normalize inequality, public health, and gun violence. Anywhere slow change should compel us but doesn't.

Together, this research suggests that whether people stop noticing worsening conditions or appreciating improvements, the root problem is the same—a mind that recalibrates too quickly, misaligning emotion, attention, and action.

In another study, we examined hedonic adaptation and showed that the drive to always want “more” is computationally optimal, even at emotional cost. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

In one study, we examined the “boiling frog effect” and found that people perceive climate change as more impactful when shown binary data rather than continuous data, because binary data creates an illusion of sudden change. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I suggest that society’s failure to act on crises such as climate change reflects a deeper cognitive misalignment in how our minds perceive change over time. My research addresses this gap by combining perspectives from psychology, machine learning, neuroscience, and public policy.

In this article, I describe my lab's research on understanding how our minds get used to anything and why even crises start feeling normal.