Abstract

WITH THE INCREASING dominion of the human species over the planet’s ecology, the study of human cognition has taken on new significance. The growth of human population and activities now affects the general ecology to a significant extent (Erlich, 1988; McMichael, 1993; Nisbet, 1991). For this reason, the ways in which people reason and make decisions have become matters of global import. As a striking indicator of where we rank on the scale of global cataclysms, consider the rate of species extinction. According to Kempton, Boster, and Hartley (1994, p. 27), “With human-caused intervention, current rates of extinction are estimated to be somewhere between four thousand and twenty-seven thousand per year” (against an estimated background rate of less than one per year) (also see Wilson, 1992; World Resources Institute, 1992, p. 128; Peters and Lovejoy, 1990). They note that this rate of extinction is typically associated with transitions from one geological age to another. By this criterion, the current explosion of human population and human activities assumes a magnitude formerly reserved for major geological events. In order to understand and affect these processes, we must first establish the current forms. This chapter presents some initial studies of mental This research was supported by NSF grant BNS-87-20301 and ONR grant N00014-92-J-1098.