Generational Gap — How Mental Models can help us Understand our Perceptions of The Environment

By Addison Schroder

Research Questions

1. What mental models do younger people vs. older people have about the environment?
2. What are the implications of this mental model for how the environment is percieved?

My plan is to use these drawings to compare and contrast the environmental perceptions of older people, (40 and above), and younger people, (20 and under). All of the younger participants are fellow college students, while the older participants have few similarities.

These drawings give us a window into the participants’ minds, and allows us to see what each individual considers “the environment” (i.e, their mental model of the environment). We can also use the content of the drawings to infer about their beliefs and values regarding the environment. To do so, I’ll examine whether the drawings contain natural or man-made elements, as well as determining whether or not they reference climate change. (For natural vs. man-made elements, drawings that contain both elements will be counted as 50/50).

Examples of natural elements: trees, bushes, animals, humans, the sun, the sky, rocks, rivers, lakes, oceans, weather, etc.

Examples of man-made elements: factories, streets, cars, water towers, sidewalks, tools, buildings, pollution, etc.

Younger Participants:

A driver throws litter out of their car, which a bird later eats and dies. :(

“Im the Lorax! I speak for the trees!”

A human chops down a tree, which is sent to a factory to become a book.

The Earth and its continents.

“Outside my window of Abel hall, with cars, streets, and tamed trees”

The page is “ripped” between a factory billowing smoke, and a nature path, with mountains, bushes, and trees.

“This is abel hall”

“Environment full of gases, plants connected to soil, + industrial areas w/ people”

Overall, the younger participants’ drawings of the environment feature a mix of natural and man-made elements. I expected to see a lot more trees, but instead there are buildings and polluting factories. Half of this group’s sketches contain both natural and man-made elements, while two of them are wholly natural, and the other two are wholly man-made, (50% natural, 50% man-made). This set of drawings features more unnatural elements and references to climate change than the older group. There were 4 direct mentions of climate change in the younger group’s drawings, which is 50% of the total.

Older Participants

“I drew an oasis with trees, fish, and birds”

“I drew trees, animals, mountains, a river, and the sky.”

“I drew some of the animals and plants nebraska”

“Reduce Reuse Recycle” shows a forest that has been cut down, with a factory billowing smoke that kills the birds.

“This represents how we build stuff and ruin forest and land for cities”

“Environment of my life lately”

“Different people’s opinions + viewpoints of the environment trying to own bigger % of my own [opinion].”

The older group’s drawings contained more natural elements overall than the younger group, but had fewer references to climate change. Three of the sketches contained both natural and man-made elements, while the other 4 contain only natural elements. (about: 78.5% natural, 21.5% man-made). Although, I think it may be fair to disregard the last two drawings, as they have little to do with what we’d consider the environment. Even so, these sketches present an important idea that our feelings and mindsets are also a part of our “environments”. Ex: a chaotic mind/life, or your opinions and how they change, could both be considered a part of your environment.

Speaking of mindsets, the older group seems to have less focus on climate change when they think of the environment. There are 2 direct references to climate change, and one indirect reference in the last drawing. (About: 28%-43%, depending on whether or not the last drawing is included).

Findings

I did observe a slight difference in both the amount of natural vs. man-made content in each of the groups’ drawings, as well as the amount of direct references to climate change. Overall though, I was impressed by the amount of climate change awareness shown in both groups’ mental models, and it gives me hope for the future knowing that older generations also widely accept the idea.

1. The younger group’s drawings featured more man-made elements, which make their mental model of the environment more humanistic and industrial than the older group. The younger group’s sketches also showed more examples of climate change, which gives their mental model a different context. The younger group’s mental model of the environment not only looks darker, but feels darker too, because of the looming threat of climate change that is portrayed. The older group also had these elements in their drawings, but to a lesser extent. Their overall mental model is more focused on the beauty of nature, and less focused on the tragedy that is occurring.
2. Although these findings don’t concretely prove anything, I think they still represent a real difference between the opinions of older vs. younger people about our environment and climate change. Older people grew up not even hearing about climate change, (or global warming back then), and still seem to hold that position more strongly than the younger generations. This would reasonably lead to the positon we’re in now: most of the younger generations are trying to raise awareness of climate change, while the many older generations try to stay with their polluting and profiting ways.

There are some younger people that also deny climate change, but I think that has more to do with the right/left political dichotomy than age. I’d be very interested to see this same sort of experiment performed again, but with a larger sample size, and this time, have the participants split by political affiliation. I think then, we’d see a much larger difference in the amount of references to climate change between the two groups.