APS Fellow Talks Psychological Science With the Dalai Lama

APS Fellow and Former Board member Elke Weber, Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University, and other behavioral and environmental scientists met with the Dalai Lama at the 23 Mind and Life Meeting in Dharamsala, India.

The conference, titled “Ecology, Ethics and Interdependence” provided an opportunity to discuss environmental ethics and allowed for a dialogue between top scholars, activists and ecological scientists. Weber is an expert on behavioral models of decision-making under risk and uncertainty She studies psychologically and neurally plausible ways to model individual differences in risk taking and discounting, specifically in environmental decisions.

Watch the full Mind and Life dialogues through this New York Times blog.

Session 7 of “Ecology, Ethics and Interdependence” features Elke Weber discussing the interconnection between individual choices and environmental consequences with the Dalai Lama:

The Mind and Life Institute is a non-profit organization that seeks to understand the human mind and the benefits of contemplative practices through an integrated mode of knowing that combines first person knowledge from the world’s contemplative traditions with methods and findings from contemporary scientific inquiry. The Mind and Life Dialogues began in 1987 as a joint quest between scientists, philosophers and contemplatives to investigate the mind, develop a more complete understanding of the nature of reality, and promote well-being on the planet.