Social trap

In psychology, a social trap is a conflict of interest or perverse incentive where individuals or a group of people act to obtain short-term individual gains, which in the long run leads to a loss for the group as a whole.[1] Social traps are the cause of countless environmental issues, including overfishing, energy "brownout" and "blackout" power outages during periods of extreme temperatures, the overgrazing of cattle on the Sahelian Desert, the destruction of the rainforest by logging interests and agriculture, and, most importantly, climate change.[2][3]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Platt1973 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Costanza, Robert (1987). "Social Traps and Environmental Policy". BioScience. 37 (6): 407–412. doi:10.2307/1310564. ISSN 0006-3568. JSTOR 1310564. S2CID 59329509.
  3. ^ Raihani, Nichola; Aitken, David (2011-09-01). "Uncertainty, rationality and cooperation in the context of climate change". Climatic Change. 108 (1): 47–55. Bibcode:2011ClCh..108...47R. doi:10.1007/s10584-010-0014-4. ISSN 1573-1480. S2CID 153650312.