Human populations respond to the challenges arising from the natural environment by modifying their world through the process of niche construction (Kashima et al., 2019; Laland et al., 2000). The human‐made niche then becomes the environment to which humans have to adapt, which includes not only the built environment and physical artefacts, but also social, economic, and political environments. After three and a half centuries of fossil‐fuel‐based niche construction since the start of the First Industrial Revolution, human industrialization and global expansion have gone very far in the 21st century CE. So much so, that the ongoing human activities are now threatening to irreversibly alter the biophysical processes that have maintained the Holocene Optimum, the planetary climate optimally suitable for human thriving. By now, humanity has become a dominant force in shaping the planetary ecosystem, even to the point where some have proposed that the current geological epoch should be renamed the Anthropocene (for brief discussions, see Kashima, 2020; Kashima, O’Brien et al., 2021).

Despite—or perhaps because of—the significance of these human activities, numerous challenges arise for humanity from the complex interplay within the planetary social‐ecological system in which globalized humanity participates. The COVID‐19 pandemic is an obvious example. Although numerous pathogenic microbes pass from non‐human species to humans, thanks to voluminous and rapid human global mobility, there are greater chances of them spreading around the world than before. Not only microbial challenges, but macro‐level extreme weather events such as super typhoons can threaten human populations thanks to the ongoing climate change. To many more challenges that are likely to come our way, humanity will have to respond by reconstructing our niche, using the material and energies available, and configuring and reconfiguring the human‐made environment—that which we humans create and recreate in our daily activities.

Then, how do and should we construct and reconfigure our niche to meet the challenges of the 21st century? These questions set a perspective from which to critically reflect on social psychology today.