On Tuesday, April 19th at 7pm, Paul Slovic and his son Scott Slovic will present, “Numbers and Nerves: Addressing the Arithmetic of Compassion and the World’s Most Urgent Issues”.
Summary of the lecture:
This presentation by a father-son team will explore how the social sciences and the environmental humanities can come together to enable us to understand how information is presented and perceived in the contexts of genocide, the refugee crisis, global climate change, and other humanitarian and environmental challenges. Psychological tendencies such as psychic numbing, pseudoinefficacy, and the prominence effect limit our ability to apprehend information about important phenomena, while other cognitive processes accentuate our sensitivity to information. In this lecture, we will cover material from our 2015 book, Numbers and Nerves: Information, Emotion, and Meaning in a World of Data, and explain various applications to public policy and communication strategies for artists and writers.
Brief Biographies of the Presenters:
Paul Slovic is professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and president of Decision Research. Widely published in the fields of risk perception and decision making, his books include The Perception of Risk and The Feeling of Risk. He has received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association and was elected in 2015 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Scott Slovic is professor of literature and environment and chair of the English Department at the University of Idaho. He served as founding president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), and since 1995 has edited ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. He is the author, editor, or coeditor of twenty-three books, including Ecocriticism of the Global South and Currents of the Universal Being: Explorations in the Literature of Energy.
IMPORTANT INFO:
Tuesday, April 19th, 7 – 8:30 pm
The Browsing Room (Room 106), Knight Library
UO Campus
Reception to follow (all are welcome), with coffee/tea and cookies!
This event is free and open to the public.
