Faculty Affairs and Academic Programs
Rachit Dubey
Social Sciences; Public Policy; Public Affairs
Department of Communication
UCLA
Countering Climate Normalization: Experimental Studies of the Shifting Baselines Syndrome
Climate disasters that would have seemed extreme by historical standards are now routine: costing $180 billion annually in the U.S., with Arctic sea ice down 45% since the 1980s, and once-in-a-lifetime heat waves now commonplace. Yet climate change remains low on voters' priority lists, and policy responses remain tepid. While such failures are often attributed to political or structural forces, they also reflect a deeper cognitive misalignment in how societies gradually normalize deteriorating conditions and lose the ability to recognize long-term decline. A 20-year-old today has never experienced pre-2000s climate; their definition of "normal" is already shifted toward a degraded baseline. This "shifting baselines syndrome", where societies accept inherited degradation as normal, appears central to climate apathy and may underlie broader societal disengagement from inequality and public health crises. Yet, despite its far-reaching implications, the cognitive mechanisms driving this collective forgetting remain experimentally unstudied. This project develops the first experimental paradigm to study intergenerational normalization through controlled experiments simulating generational dynamics. I will: (1) study how limited historical exposure systematically shifts baseline definitions; (2) use computational modeling to isolate which cognitive processes drive normalization; and (3) test three theory-driven interventions to prevent baseline drift. With federal climate research funding eliminated and action windows closing, this work provides urgently needed tools to counteract a critical psychological barrier to climate action.
