How Psychology Can Help the Planet Stay Cool

Excerpt from the New Scientist, 19 August 2009

'"I'M NOT convinced it's as bad as the experts make out... It's everyone else's fault... Even if I turn down my thermostat, it will make no difference." The list of reasons for not acting to combat global warming goes on and on.

This month, an American Psychological Association (APA) task force released a report highlighting these and other psychological barriers standing in the way of action. But don't despair. The report also points to strategies that could be used to convince us to play our part. Sourced from psychological experiments, we review tricks that could be deployed by companies or organisations to encourage climate-friendly behaviour...

Though conservative pundits have been known to attack such efforts, characterising them as psychological manipulation or "mind control", experiments indicate that people are willing to be persuaded. "From participants in our experiments, we've never heard a negative backlash," says Wesley Schultz of California State University in San Marcos. In fact, according to John Petersen of Oberlin College, Ohio, we are used to far worse. "Compared to the barrage of advertising, it seems milder than anything I experience in my daily life," he says...

Here & Now

People have to be persuaded to act on climate change even though the benefit won't be felt for decades. Research by David Hardisty and Elke Weber of Columbia University in New York suggests ways to achieve this.

Hardisty and Weber have found that people respond in exactly the same way to decisions involving future environmental gains and losses as they do when making financial decisions (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, vol 138, p 329). This allows psychologists' knowledge of how to manipulate financial decision-making to be brought into play....

Social Networks

As social animals, we like to interact with others and take inspiration from their actions. Psychologists are working out how to exploit this to spread behaviours that will help limit climate change. "My sense is that social networks are going to be important," says Swim.
Allowing people to document successes in saving energy on their Facebook pages could drive change among their friends, and the Oberlin team is considering integrating this into its urban residence experiment.

Tawanna Dillahunt and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, think such opportunities presented by Facebook can be combined with our liking for furry animals. Inspired by the attachment that people can develop towards Tamagotchi virtual pets, the team is testing the persuasive power of a "virtual polar bear" standing on an ice floe that grows bigger as people adopt environmentally friendly behaviours such as taking shorter showers. Initial results suggest the polar bear has pull.'