Two of humanity’s greatest challenges are gross inequality amongst humans and the biodiversity crisis. Too often, efforts to lessen inequality jeopardize biodiversity and vice versa. Attitudes about social injustice and biodiversity loss are importantly influenced by religion, belief in science, and one’s purpose in life – as those phenomena are mediated though one’s culture. Better understanding how these relationships could evolve is essential for lessening inequality and biodiversity loss. To this end, we propose three complementary research projects:

(i) a cross-cultural survey designed to reveal critical patterns about how variance in religiosity and belief in science across cultures is associated with attitudes pertaining to adjudication of competing interests between social justice and protection of biodiversity.

(ii) a cross-cultural experiment on subjects – whose identities vary with respect to the influence of religion and belief in science – to understand how attitudes for coexistence between humans and biodiversity might evolve in response to mindfulness-based cognitive therapy aimed at developing a deeper sense of purpose-in-life;

(iii) a cross-cultural experiment assessing how attitudes for and against coexistence with biodiversity evolve in political environments where citizen-advocates are motivated and influenced by religion and science.