An Empirical Analysis of the Influence of Values, Worldview, and Culture on the Psychological Processes in Transformational Adaptation

Conceptually, the literature highlights the interactions between three components i.e. social contracts, critical conscientiousness and leadership as vital in shaping adaptation outcomes and critical for transformational adaptation. Manifesting in these interactions are psychological processes like causal and responsibility attributions, and motivations that determine responses and effectiveness of adaptation activities and define adaptation as persistence, transition or transformation. These psychological processes are underpinned by intangibles like culture, values and worldview that influence decisions and prioritised activities but have received little empirical analysis on the mechanism of influence. Using a qualitative approach of interviews and document analysis and two low-income settlements affected by flooding in Lagos as context, this paper provides an empirical analysis of the influence of these intangibles on the psychological processes in and between the interactions of three components of adaptation. It discusses how the adaptation to flooding process in Owode-Ajegunle community aided transformational adaptation through a shift from traditional worldview, value and cultural norms to a postmodern worldview. This shift was motivated by tipping point leaders that utilised invited spaces of negotiations to challenge the social contract and revert responsibility to state actors. These engagements resulted in transformative actions of formal granting of rights to land that enabled transformation beyond climate change. For Iwaya community, a lack of reprioritisation of values stationed the community in traditional worldview and limited their ability to challenge the social contract. Change was mollified further by the worldview and values of the leadership, aiding the complexities of ‘learned helplessness’ and ‘resigned adaptation’ in the community. This supported the maintenance of the status-quo and adaptation as persistence and incremental adjustments. Hence, the paper highlights, the what, who and how of transformation in the adaptation process and indicates that even in the face of tipping point events, cultural norms, worldview and its prioritised values influences psychological processes that shape adaptation outcomes. It therefore reiterates the need for greater cognisance to the psychological dimensions in assessing adaptation outcomes.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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The datasets used in this study are openly available at [repository link] and the source code is available on GitHub at [GitHub link].

This work did not receive any external funding.