How can this be? Human decision making can be quite questionable at times. For example, it often seems to underestimate the long-term dangers of things like global warming and species extinction. This can make even major future threats seem insufficient motivation for determined action (Berger, 2009). In general, we see these types of typical, and often flawed, decision making patterns in many different contexts of our society (Eigenauer, 2018). For instance, Flyvbjerg (2009) showed that 9 out of 10 transportation infrastructure projects end up in large cost overrun, which did not improve over time, even over a period of 70 years. Other examples of persisting problems that for a major part follow from poor decision making are: improper and incorrect diagnoses as well as harmful patient decisions in medicine and health care (Croskerry, 2003; Groopman, 2007); overly optimistic growth assessments and ill-advised lending policies in global finance (Shiller, 2015); optimistic decision making in personal finance, like susceptibility to scams (Modic and Lea, 2013); against all knowledge continue a chosen course or investment with negative outcomes rather than alter it (Arkes and Blumer, 1985; Garland and Newport, 1991); perpetuating injustice through personal prejudice and unjust sentencing (Benforado, 2015); and accepting superstitions or conspiracy theories while rejecting scientific findings that contradict these beliefs (Yasynska, 2019).

In this article, we will focus on how the human brain and its evolved psychological characteristics affect people’s decision making. Effects of the workings of our brain and of our evolutionary heritage on decision making manifest most prominently in cognitive biases (Kahneman et al., 1982; Hastie and Dawes, 2001; Shafir and LeBoeuf, 2002; Haselton et al., 2005; van Vugt et al., 2014; Korteling et al., 2018). Cognitive biases can be generally described as systematic, universally occurring, tendencies, inclinations, or dispositions in human decision making that may make it vulnerable for inaccurate, suboptimal, or wrong outcomes (e.g., Tversky and Kahneman, 1974; Kahneman, 2011; Korteling and Toet, 2022). Well-known examples of biases are hindsight bias (once we know the outcome, we tend to think we knew that all along), tunnel vision (when we are under pressure, we tend to overfocus on our goal and ignore all other things that are happening), and confirmation bias (we tend to only see information that confirms our existing ideas and expectations). People typically tend to pursue self-interest at the expense of the community (Tragedy of the commons). We tend to over-value items we possess (Endowment effect) and we have a strong urge to persist in courses of action, with negative outcomes (Sunk-cost fallacy). What is more, biased decision making feels quite natural and self-evident, such that we are quite blind to our own biases (Pronin et al., 2002). This means we often do not recognize it, and therefore do not realize how our biases influence our decision making.

Cognitive biases are robust and universal psychological phenomena, extensively demonstrated, described, and analyzed in the scientific literature. In a wide range of different conditions, people show the same, typical tendencies in the way they pick up and process information to judge and decide. In line with their systematic and universal character, cognitive biases are also prominent in societal issues and policymaking (e.g., Levy, 2003; McDermott, 2004; Mercer, 2005; Baron, 2009; Flyvbjerg, 2009; Vis, 2011; Arceneaux, 2012; Shiller, 2015; Bellé et al., 2018). For example, Arceneaux (2012) has shown that in discussing political arguments, individuals are more likely to be persuaded by arguments that evoke loss aversion, even in the face of a strong counterargument. And it has been demonstrated in many instances that policy makers tend to make risk-aversive decisions when they expect gains, whereas when facing losses they accept taking more risk (e.g., McDermott, 2004; Vis, 2011).

There are already many publications on cognitive biases showing how human psychological tendencies underly the choices and behaviors of people (e.g., Kahneman et al., 1982; Shafir and LeBoeuf, 2002; Kahneman, 2011). There is also some literature on which biases and human mechanisms play a role in our difficulties with preventing climate change (e.g., Gifford, 2011; van Vugt et al., 2014; Marshall, 2015; Stoknes, 2015). However, there is still lack of insight into how biases play a role in the process of environmental policymaking and how this knowledge may be used to deal with the major systemic challenges that the modern world is confronted with. Despite their possible substantial effects on society and human wellbeing, cognitive biases have never been a serious matter of concern in the social and political domain (Eigenauer, 2018). In this paper, we will therefore analyze the constellation of psychological biases that may hinder behavioral and policy practices addressing sustainability challenges. We will also look for ways to mitigate the potential negative effects of biases through influence techniques, like nudging (e.g., Thaler and Sunstein, 2008).

Given the inherent constraints of our information processing system (i.e., the limited cognitive capacities of the human brain) our intuitive inclinations, or heuristics, may be considered effective, efficient, and pragmatic. And indeed, intuitive or heuristic decision making may typically be effective in; natural (primal) conditions with time-constraints, lack (or overload) of relevant information, when no optimal solution is evident, or when we have built up sufficient expertise and experience with the problem (Simon, 1955; Kahneman and Klein, 2009; Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier, 2011). In these cases, the outcomes of heuristic decision making may be quite acceptable given the invested time, effort, and resources (e.g., Gigerenzer et al., 1999).

The fact that heuristic thinking deals with information processing limitations and/or data limitations (Simon, 1955) does not alter the fact that many of our judgments and decisions may systematically deviate from what may be considered optimal, advisable, or utile given the available information and potential gain or risk (Shafir and LeBoeuf, 2002). This has been demonstrated by a large body of literature, showing how cognitive heuristics or biases may lead to poor decisions in a broad range of situations, even including those without complexity, uncertainty, or time constraints (Korteling et al., 2018). Imagine, for instance, a board of directors that has to decide about the continuation of a big project. Typically, the more they have invested so far, the less likely they are to pull the plug. This is not rational (and is therefore called the sunk cost fallacy), because what should matter is what the costs and benefits will be from this point forward, not what has already been spent. The Sunk-cost fallacy, like various other psychological biases affecting decision making, may continuously pop up in the world we live in. Examples are the Anchoring bias (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974; Furnham and Boo, 2011), Authority bias (Milgram, 1963), Availability bias (Tversky and Kahneman, 1973, 1974), and Conformity bias (Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004).

A large number of different biases have been identified so far and specific biases are also likely to occur in the domain of public decision making. By public decision making, we mean not only collective and democratic decision making, but also individual decision making. For different kinds and domains of decision making, different biases may occur. It may be expected that in decision making within the sustainability domain, certain (categories of) biases may more often occur than others. In this paper, we try to present the most relevant biases and the associated nudges, focusing on public decision making with regard to sustainability challenges.

Sustainability issues have characteristics that may evoke certain biases. Here, we define “sustainability” as: a balanced development in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development, and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet long-term wellbeing. First, on the basis of the literature (e.g., Schultz, 2002; Steg and Vlek, 2009; van Vugt, 2009; van Vugt et al., 2014; Engler et al., 2018; Toomey, 2023) and a workshop with experts we defined a set of general social-psychologically relevant characteristics or factors, like “experiential vagueness” or “long-term effects” or “threat of the status quo” that are associated with most sustainability issues.

Each characteristic of sustainability issues may relate to a few specific biases that may hamper sustainable choices and behaviors of people. For example, the long-term character of sustainability implies may be in conflict with our tendency to short-term thinking (Hyperbolic time discounting) or the tendency to underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster and its possible consequences, and to believe that things will always function the way they normally function (Normalcy bias). The subsequent identification of thinking tendencies and biases related to these characteristics was based on the literature entailing overviews of multiple biases (e.g., Korteling et al., 2020a), a Neuro-Evolutionary Bias Framework (Korteling et al., 2020a,b; Korteling and Toet, 2022), and on the literature on cognitive biases and sustainability challenges (e.g., Gardner and Stern, 2002; Penn, 2003; Fiske, 2004; Wilson, 2006; Steg and Vlek, 2009; van Vugt, 2009; van Vugt et al., 2014; Marshall, 2015; Engler et al., 2018).

Also, for each group of biases, some relevant intervention techniques that can be used, by for example government or policy makers, were briefly described. These interventions, incentives, or nudges, may be applied to mitigate the relevant biases or to capitalize on them for the purpose of stimulating decision making that is more in line with sustainability goals in the context of the current world. On the basis of a previous literature review (Korteling et al., 2021), we have chosen not to advocate specific educational approaches, aiming at bias mitigation training in order to foster sustainable decision making. Instead, our approach aims at interventions with regard to the context or environment in which people live order to promote more sustainable choices.

Finally, we will illustrate our approach with the help of an example: A conflict between personal versus community interest is a typical characteristic that is associated with sustainability issues. Natural selection has favored individuals who prioritize personal benefits over those of unrelated others (Hardin, 1968; van Vugt et al., 2014). This means that making choices in the public interest is often hindered by our personal interests (Step 1). Sustainability also often involves a trade-off between personal interests, such as driving a car or flying, against collective interests, such as fresh air and a peaceful environment. This conflict relates to the bias called the Tragedy of the commons, i.e., the tendency to prioritize one’s own interests over the common good of the community (Step 2). Because we share our genes with our relatives, this tendency may be countered by invoking kinship as a nudge. Pro-environmental actions or appeals may thus be more effective if they emphasize the interests of our ingroup, children, siblings, and grand-children (Step 3).

Social scientists have long been puzzled as to why people are so poor at recognizing environmental risks and ignore global environmental hazards (Slovic, 1987; Hardin, 1995). Such apathy is probably a product of our evolutionary heritage that produced a brain that is optimized to perform biological and perceptual-motor functions (Haselton and Nettle, 2006; Korteling et al., 2018; Korteling and Toet, 2022). For example, the vertebrate eye evolved some 500 billion years ago, compared to 50,000 years ago for human speech; while the first cave drawings are dated at 30,000 years, compared to the earliest writing system approximately 5,000 years ago (Parker, 2003; see also Grabe and Bucy, 2009). This comparatively more ancient visual perceptual and communicative apparatus enables us to quickly extract meaning from eye-catching images (Powel, 2017). In addition, there was always a tangible link between behavior and the environment. That is: if you do not eat, you will become hungry and search for food. If it starts raining, you may look for shelter in order to prevent becoming wet. A critical difference between the modern world and our ancestral environment is that we rarely see, feel, touch, hear, or smell how our behaviors gradually impact the environment (Uzzell, 2000; Gifford, 2011). Because our ancestors were not confronted with the relatively remote, slowly evolving, or abstract problems (Toomey, 2023), we probably are not well-evolved to be alarmed when confronted with potential or novel dangers that we cannot directly see, hear, or feel with our perceptual systems (van Vugt et al., 2014).

The human senses and nervous system show a gradual decrease in responsiveness to constant situations. In general, we are more sensitive to, and more easily triggered by, sudden changes and differences in the stimulus (contrasts). Because of this neural adaptation, we often may have difficulty with perceiving and appreciating slow and gradual processes of change. Therefore, the gradual changes that are implied in our environment, like global warming, are not very easily noticed. So, most people are generally not really alarmed by the gradual evolving and remote environmental challenges that the world is facing. This may contribute to the relatively low public interest in the issue of environmental threats such as global climate change, pollution of the oceans, extinction of species, the negative health effects of particulate matter, and decreasing biodiversity (Swim et al., 2011).

Sustainable choices are often only rewarded in the long-term future, while the costs and sacrifices have to take place in the present. Given two similar rewards, humans show a preference for one that arrives sooner rather than later. So, humans (and other animals) are said to discount the value of the later reward and/or delayed feedback (Alexander and Brown, 2010). In addition, this effect increases with the length of the delay. According to van Vugt et al. (2014), our tendency to discount future outcomes may have had substantial benefits in primitive ancestral environments, suggesting it is an evolved psychological trait (Wilson and Daly, 2005). If our ancestors had put too much effort into meeting future needs rather than their immediate needs, they would have been less likely to survive and pass on their genes in the harsh and unpredictable natural environment in which they lived (Boehm, 2012). Human psychology is thus naturally formed to maximize outcomes in the here and now, rather than in the uncertain future (van Vugt et al., 2014). Thus people in modern societies still may weigh immediate outcomes much more heavily than distant ones (Green and Myerson, 2004). This preference for today’s desires over tomorrow’s needs—and the conflict between people’s desire for immediate rather than delayed rewards—may be the cause of the persistence of many environmental problems.

Our brain tends to build general conclusions and predictions on the basis of a (small) number of consistent, previous observations (inductive thinking). A typical and flawed inductive statement is: “Of course humanity will survive. Up to now, we have always survived our major threats and disasters.”³ Even in highly educated and experienced people, inductive reasoning may lead to poor intuitive predictions concerning the risks in the (long-term) future (Taleb, 2007). We tend to focus on risks that we clearly see, but whose consequences are often relatively small, while ignoring the less obvious, but perhaps more serious ones. Next to such poor statistical intuitions, we have a preference for optimistic perspectives. This leads us to ignore unwelcome information and to underestimate the severity and probability of future (environmental) challenges and hazards (Ornstein and Ehrlich, 1989). This may be especially devasting when considering rare and unpredictable outlier events with high impact (“black swans”). Examples of black swans from the past were the discovery of America (for the native population), World War I, the demise of the Titanic, the rise of the Internet, the personal computer, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the 9/11 attacks. Many people ignore possible rare events at the edges of a statistical distribution that may carry the greatest consequences. According to Taleb (2007), black swans (or “unknown-unknowns”) rarely factor into our planning, our economics, our politics, our business models, and in our lives. Although these black swans have never happened before and cannot be precisely predicted, they nevertheless need much more attention than we give them. Also global warming may trigger currently unknown climate tipping points when change in a part of the climate system becomes self-perpetuating beyond a warming threshold, which will lead to unstoppable earth system impact (IPCC, 2021, 2022).

The modern global world we live in is very complex with many intricate causal relationships. Everything is connected to everything, making it very difficult to see what exactly is going on in this dense network and how the interplay of societal, technological, economic, environmental, and (geo)political forces develops. Our wealth and comfort are made possible by many “hidden” enablers, such as child labor in third world sweatshops and animal suffering out of sight in the bio industry. The complexity of interrelated and hidden causes, consequences, or remedies is also very prominent in sustainability issues. Sustainability issues are about by a fine-grained logistic infrastructure and sophisticated technological inventions and their massive application. For example, the energy transition involves complex socio-technical systems that usually involve a high degree of uncertainty about how this will ultimately work out. Our cognitive capacities to pick up and understand all this technical, statistical, and scientific information are inherently limited (e.g., Engler et al., 2018; Korteling et al., 2018). How can we intuitively calculate how much CO₂ emission reduction is required and how much (or little) certain technical or economical interventions contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases? Many people have also poor capacities for calculation and logic reasoning and a poor intuitive sense for coincidence, randomness, statistics, and probability reasoning (e.g., Monat et al., 1972; Sunstein, 2002; Engler et al., 2018). For instance, concepts like “exponential growth”—i.e., when the instantaneous rate of change of a quantity in time is proportional to the quantity itself—are generally poorly understood.

The inherent constraints of our cognitive system to collect and weight of all this information in a proper and balanced way may result in various biases preventing good judgment and decision making on the basis of the most relevant evidence. Our brain tends to selectively focus on specific pieces of information that ‘resonate’ with what we already know or expect and/or what associatively most easily pops up in the forming of judgments, ideas, and decisions (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974; Korteling et al., 2018; Toomey, 2023). The fact that other (possible relevant or disconfirming) information may exist beyond what comes up in our mind may be insufficiently recognized or ignored (Kahneman, 2011). This often may lead to a rather simplistic view of the world (e.g., populism). We trust and focus on what is clearly visible or (emotionally) charged, what we (accidentally) know, what we happened to see or hear, what we understand, what intuitively feels true, or what associatively comes to mind (the known-knowns). In contrast, we are rather insensitive to the fact that much information does not easily come to us, is not easily comprehensible, or simply is unknown to us. So we easily may ignore the fact that there usually is a lot that we do not know (The unknowns). This characteristic of neural information processing has been termed: the Focus principle (Korteling et al., 2018) or “What You See Is All There Is” (WYSIATI, Kahneman, 2011). An important consequence of this principle is that we tend to overestimate our knowledge with regard to complex issues about which we lack experience or expertise (Kruger and Dunning, 1999). A situation may also be deemed as too uncertain or complicated and a decision is never made due to the fear that a new approach may be wrong or even worse. An abundance of possible options may aggravate this situation rendering one unable to come to a conclusion. In sustainability challenges, people may thus be very motivated to improve the situation, but still can be hampered by uncertainty and lack of understanding to take action.

A basic premise of evolution is that all organisms strive for the continuation of their existence. This not only concerns the existence per se, but also the maintenance of stable living conditions (that are instrumental to this ultimate goal). For this reason (under normal circumstances and to prevent unexpected risk), we tend to strive at maintaining the present situation and to remain consistent with previous patterns (default effect). So, we easily accept, or prefer, to continue on the path taken and to maintain the status quo (default options) and we are afraid of choosing alternative, options that may turn out suboptimal (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979; Johnson and Goldstein, 2003; Chorus, 2010). Energy transition, as a possible solution of a future problem, is by many people experienced as threatening, not only to our established comfortable way of living, but to our individual and social basic needs as well. A transition to more sustainable practices may thus cause bad feelings of losing security and possessions, sometimes termed “fear of falling.”

In line with this, people have an overall tendency to experience the disutility of giving up an object as greater than the utility associated with acquiring it (i.e., Loss aversion). Thaler (1980) recognized this pattern, and articulated it as such: people often demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it. This is called the Endowment effect. In contrast to what most authors on cognitive biases suppose, we here speculate that the emotions that we feel when we anticipate possible loss of our assets are not the cause of our bias to avoid loss. Instead, they are the result of our pervasive bias for self-preservation and for maintenance our (neurobiological) integrity (Korteling et al., 2018). So in brief: we often prefer to hold on to the current situation and to continue on previous (al) choices. As such, we default to the current situation or status quo.

People are more focused on relative status than absolute status. This is, for example, demonstrated by the fact that people find an increase in wealth relative to their peers more important than their absolute wealth (Diener and Suh, 2000). In an experimental setting, researchers found that when presented with financial options, most people chose to earn less in absolute terms, as long as they relatively earned more than their peers (Frank, 1985). Not unrelated to our status-seeking tendency, humans tend to consume more than they need. In many historical civilizations, we find a penchant toward (excessive) consumption and showing of materials and riches (Bird and Smith, 2005; Godoy et al., 2007). From an evolutionary point of view, such displays of status may be rooted in a social advantage (Penn, 2003; Saad, 2007; Miller, 2009). Ancestors who strived for improvement of their situation and who tried to do better than their peers, probably have passed their genes better than those who had a more comfortable attitude. The wry side effects, however, are that the tendency to seek status through material goods—nowadays more than ever—may contribute substantially to the production of waste and the depletion of nonrenewable resources. Because we seek relative wealth, as opposed to seeking an absolute point of satisfaction, we are not easily satisfied and we tend to persistently strive for ever more status and wealth. Whether it be our smartphone, our sense of fashion, or our household appliances, they all rapidly become outdated as soon as newer or more fashionable versions enter the horizon. As economists say: we compare ourselves continuously with our neighbors; we want to “keep up with the Joneses.” Finally, items that are scarce or hard to obtain have typically more perceived quality and status than those that are easy to acquire. So many environmental problems can therefore be the result of a conflict between status-enhancing overconsumption versus having enough for a good life. This ‘Hedonic treadmill’ is encouraged by commercials offering us a never ending stream of new products that should make us, in one way or the other, happy and thus hungry to buy more.

Individual self-interest is often in conflict with the interest of the whole group. This is generally conceptualized as a social dilemma. This dilemma is usually referred to as the Tragedy of the Commons story (Hardin, 1968). This hypothetical example demonstrates the effects of unregulated grazing (of cattle) on a common piece of land, also known as “the commons.” In modern economic terms, ‘commons’ are any shared or unregulated resources to which all individuals have equal and open access, like the atmosphere, roads, or even the fridge of the office. Searching for direct individual profit, most individuals increase their use or exploitation of these common resources, thereby unintentionally causing it to collapse (Hawkes, 1992; Dietz et al., 2003). According to Hardin (1968) and van Vugt et al. (2014) the human mind is shaped to prioritize their personal interests over collective interests because natural selection favors individuals who can gain a personal benefit at the expense of unrelated others. Of course, there are situations under which the collective benefit will be prioritized over that of the induvial. But the conditions under which the human mind is triggered to prioritize the collective good over its own are generally less prevalent (Hardin, 1968).

According to Dawkins (1976), natural selection is the replication of one’s genes, which often comes at the expense of the survival of others’ genes. Power is thereby often instrumentally used for self-interest at the cost of others. So, survival of the species is not what primarily matters. However, this prioritizing of self-interest is dependent on the relationship of the individual to the group. In tight-knit communities where the individual knows himself to be dependent on the community, his behavior will be in line with this dependency and more likely be in favor of the in-group’s interests. When the individual does not feel this connection to an in-group (community), he is probably more likely to prioritize self-interest. Evidence for this strategy is seen in social dilemma research showing that most individuals tend to make selfish choices when they interact with other people in one-shot encounters (Komorita and Parks, 1994; Fehr and Gächter, 2002; van Lange et al., 2013). The evolutionary tendency to let self-interest prevail at the expense of others has direct implications for environmental practice, which often concerns the overexploitation of limited resources, such as the oceans, natural areas, fish stocks, clean air, etc. Consequently, many sustainability problems result from this conflict between personal and collective interests.

Social psychologists have long known that people tend to adapt to the choices and behavior of others (Asch, 1956). Our tendency of following the majority is adaptive since for most species, the costs of individual learning, through trial and error, are substantial (Simon, 1990; Richerson and Boyd, 2006; Sundie et al., 2006; Sloman and Fernbach, 2018). Also for our ancestors, living in uncertain environments it would probably be better to follow and copy others’ behavior than figuring things out for yourself (Kameda et al., 2003; Gorman and Gorman, 2016). This is therefore probably an ancient and natural adaptive tendency which may also help maintaining or strengthening a position within the social group (Korteling et al., 2020a). We thus easily follow leaders or people with high status and authority in groups. We adapt to people around us with which we feel connected, but have an aversion against strangers. We have difficulty being indebted to others and we like and support kind, attractive and agreeable people. This can lead, for example, to after-talk and blind copying of the behavior of others and the faithful following of persuasive and charismatic persons. In line with this, it has been found that green practices are more strongly influenced by the behaviors of our peers than by our personal attitudes toward conservation. For example, when people see that their neighbors are not conserving, they tend to increase their own energy consumption as well, even when they had been conserving energy in the past (Schultz et al., 2007). This herd behavior is unconscious, and is mediated by mirror neurons in the brain (Chartrand and Van Baaren, 2009). However, the unconscious nature of this herd behavior is often not acknowledged or even denied by the conformers themselves (Nolan et al., 2008) and is thus hard to battle. Our modern world is built on the basis of an enormous amount of unsustainable methods, tools, practices, and applications, so there is still a long way to go to achieve a sustainable world. Hence, the human tendency to copy the behavior of others and to regard other people’s behaviors as the norm and justification of undesirable behavioral choices can be very detrimental to the achievement of sustainable goals.

In the present paper we have described how ingrained cognitive biases in human thinking may counter the development of green policy practices aimed at fostering a more sustainable and livable world. We have focused our study on how the form, content and communication of information affects our decisions and behavior with regard to sustainability. The influence techniques advocated in this paper are informational and psychological interventions, incentives, and/or nudges that could be effective with regard to biased thinking in the context of the current modern world. In general, biased information processing has served us for almost our entire existence (e.g., Haselton et al., 2005; Korteling et al., 2018). However, these natural and intuitive thinking patterns may be very counterproductive for coping with the global and complex problems the world is facing today. The many possible incentives and nudges presented show that there are many ways to deliberately capitalize on biased thinking in people in order to promote more sustainable behavioral choices.

In previous publications we have explained how biases originate from ingrained neuro-evolutionary characteristics of our evolved brain (e.g., Korteling et al., 2018; Korteling and Toet, 2022). This neuro-evolutionary framework provides more fundamental explanations for human decision making than ‘explanations’ provided by most social- or psychological studies. These latter (social-) psychological explanations are more ‘proximate’ in terms of “limitations of information processing capacity” (Simon, 1955; Broadbent, 1958; Kahneman, 1973; Norman and Bobrow, 1975; Morewedge and Kahneman, 2010), two metaphorical “Systems of information processing” (Stanovich and West, 2000; Kahneman, 2003; Evans, 2008; Kahneman, 2011), “emotions” (Kahneman and Tversky, 1984; Damasio, 1994), “prospects” prospects (e.g., Kahneman and Tversky, 1979; Mercer, 2005). “lack of training and experience” (Simon, 1992; Klein, 1997, 1998). Our neuro-evolutionary bias framework explains in terms of structural (neural network) and functional (evolutionary) mechanisms the origin of cognitive biases, why they are so systematic, persistent, and pervasive, and why biased thinking feels so normal, natural, and self-evident. Given the inherent/structural (“neural”) and ingrained/functional (“evolutionary”) character of biases, it seems unlikely that simple education or training interventions would be effective to improve human decision making beyond the specific educational context (transfer) and/or for a prolonged period of time (retention). On the basis of a systematic review of the literature, this indeed appears the case (Korteling et al., 2021). When it comes to solving the problems of the modern world, it will probably be impossible to defeat or eliminate biases in human thinking. Thus, we should always be aware of the pervasive effects of cognitive biases and be modest about our cognitive abilities to solve complex long-term problems in an easy way.

So, the effects on decision making of bias-mitigation training interventions are likely to be rather ineffective, in the same way that it is difficult to get people to change their eating habits by persuading them that chocolate or meat does not taste good. What is more: denying the ultimate and deep-seated neuro-evolutionary causes of the particularities and limitations of human thinking, may hamper adequate development and usage of effective interventions. For example: if governments strive to decrease the demand for energy-inefficient jacuzzi baths, but they ignore the influence of human evolutionary biases, this might lead to an intervention strategy that fails. Perhaps the government would try to persuade people that buying energy-consuming baths is unwise for the future. But in the context of our tendency to discount the value of future consequences, such a strategy on its own is likely to be rather ineffective. It would probably be more effective to use our knowledge of cognitive biases to our advantage. For example, the fact that we compare ourselves to our peers (Social comparison) might lead to a campaign in which the purchase of sustainable solar panels or a sustainable heat pump or fancy e-bike is related to status and prestige. Likewise, it is better to convey pro-environmental messages in a simple, consistent, repetitive, and tangible way and to focus on the consequences (bad or good) of ones choices, rather than on complex intervening processes. Finally, it is better to communicate information about the many aspects of sustainability at different levels of understanding at the same time, i.e., from the instant aspects for the individual to the global consequences for the world of the future.

Above we have listed tips and tricks to provoke “sustainable decision making.” But as we write this, we realize all the more that this knowledge of how biases work, can be used for all kinds of purposes. In the ‘wrong’ hands, this knowledge about biases can be used to manipulate or incite the population to destructive. That is not even speculative, history has already shown this over and over again. Fossil industries that succeeded in holding back measures against global warming, doctors recommending brands of cigarettes, smear campaigns that led to witch-hunts, and anti-Semitic propaganda during World War II are just a few examples.

There is a serious ethical issue with using our knowledge of biases to our advantage (e.g., Bovens, 2009; Raihani, 2013). Who decides whether it is ethical to nudge citizens and use our knowledge of evolutionary biases to steer the choices and behavior of people? It sometimes may seem obvious that it is a good thing if you want to prevent incitement to hatred and violence, genocide or destructive such as smoking. But there is also a gray area. In the current pandemic, for example, we see that governments are doing their best to silence dissenting voices “for a good cause.” But counter voices also represent the basis of a democratic constitutional state, where counter voices must always be welcomed. Can we afford to go beyond our democratic boundaries, by nudging our citizens, for the sake of the climate? Our thought on this is as follows: Democracy means that everyone is allowed to make their voice heard about the goals that you want to achieve as a society. This report is about how to make your voice heard more effectively. It provides tools that everyone (not just politicians and policy makers) can use, for better or for worse. This applies to any instrument, AI, weapons, robots, ICT, etc.… The evil is not in the instrument, but in the purpose for which it is used. If we democratically choose to achieve certain goals, then it can be deemed defendable that governments use those instruments as effectively as possible to achieve those goals. It leaves people still free to choose their own path and goals.

Politics can ensure that we as humanity behave more sustainably. In that case, our societal and physical environment will have to be organized differently, for example with far-reaching legislation (eg CO2 tax), a different market-oriented economy and a different transport system. However, these changes are held back by our ingrained preferences for short-term thinking, maintaining the status quo, personal interest, or herd behavior, which may result in fears like losing jobs or losing freedom. These thinking tendencies and fears are exploited by the lobbies of many powerful (e.g. fossil) parties with vested interests. That is why we have to search for ways to get moving as a society. An important part of this is managing well-being, and thereby discovering that there are ways to live sustainably, and also to be happy. This means that, more than ever, there is a need for knowledge and a substantiated vision about the core values that represent us, as humans, and our world, about who we are, how we want to live and where we want to go. This is not just a vision with long-term goals for human well-being, but also one that builds on our natural needs and that takes into account the hidden and inherent systemic risks of the modern, globalized world. This is essential in determining the course and the agenda for the future of humanity.