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Social Issues and Personal Life: Considering the Environment
Author(s) -
Clayton Susan
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/josi.12237
Subject(s) - salient , social life , natural (archaeology) , public relations , personal life , sociology , psychology , social psychology , environmental ethics , engineering ethics , political science , social science , engineering , philosophy , archaeology , law , history
As an organization that promotes socially relevant research, SPSSI encourages psychologists to engage in individual behaviors—their research activities—that are connected to issues of social interest. Thus, it can be argued that one of SPSSI's goals is to strengthen the connection between social issues and personal life, broadly defined. Some of the most urgent and salient social issues currently revolve around the natural environment, climate change in particular. This is an issue which many people do not connect to their personal lives. In this article, after briefly explaining why environmental issues should be considered social issues, I discuss the way in which environmental issues relate to personal life, and use environmental issues to explore the connection between social issues and personal life. I argue that the ability to make this connection involves cognitive processes such as systems thinking, and encourage more research in this area.