Physicalism: Implications for social equality, mutual understanding, product adoption, industry disruption, the global ecology, performance consumption, and your favorite team

Abstract Physicalism is the belief that everything is physical or ensues from the physical. Lay consumers resist this view, preferring instead accounts that combine the physical with the nonphysical. Inasmuch as physicalism is foundational to science and many science‐based welfare‐enhancing applications, departures from physicalism often result in resistance to such applications, with vital consequences. We review prior research that uses physicalism to explain consumer behavior, but we argue that even larger returns to welfare would arise from examining consumer response to physicalist characterizations of the world. To do so, we document gaps between lay beliefs and the physicalist beliefs that underlie science and technology and describe how increased lay acceptance of physicalism would result in a more just, habitable, and adaptable world.