Delayed negative effects of IAS may also cause our inability to perceive the associated impacts of IAS on our lives. Inability to foresee long-term impacts and the inability to detect subtle deteriorating effects in the environment can be due to our tendency be subjected to temporal discounting, a term describing humans’ tendency to discount risks whose negative effects can only be felt in the distant future.
Tendencies to engage in temporal discounting can be traced back to our evolutionary roots. Evolutionary history reveals that in most part of our ancestors’ lives, they have been living in relatively stable and unchanging open environments. Therefore, it benefits them to focus their attention on the immediate dangers and threats and not on the long-term outcomes since most of them did not live long enough to be able to consider the future consequences. Since the negative impacts of IAS are often only felt in the long-run, we are often not able to perceive the impacts of IAS on our lives and hence the lack of attention paid on it.