Barack Obama's hopes of change are all in the mind

The US president-elect needs to tackle human behaviour before he can tackle climate change, says psychologist Adam Corner
Adam Corner, guardian.co.uk 27 Nov 08;

Barack Obama swept to power on a platform of change, with bold promises including an 80% reduction in US greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Clearly, though, targets and intentions are only part of the story when it comes to tackling climate change.

For America to reduce its emissions by four-fifths, an awful lot of citizens are going to have to be persuaded to change their behaviour — something notoriously difficult to achieve.

While the effect that human activity has on the environment is a question for climate scientists, the effect that humans have on each other is something that social scientists are better qualified to assess. The good news is that the process of persuasion is one that has been studied for nearly 50 years by psychologists. The bad news is that persuading people to change their environmental behaviour is not as straightforward as one might hope.

Many environmental appeals involve what social psychologists refer to as "social norms" — the standards that we use to judge the appropriateness of our own behaviour. The basic premise underlying these appeals is that people tend to act in a way that is socially acceptable.

So, if a particular behaviour (littering, for example, or driving a car with a large engine) can be cast in a socially unacceptable light, then people should be less likely to engage in that behaviour. However, a growing body of research suggests that attempting to change environmental behaviour using social norms is fraught with pitfalls and traps, so that even the best-intentioned persuasive appeal may backfire.

As Robert Cialdini and his colleagues at Arizona State University have demonstrated, the problem with appeals based on social norms is that they often contain a hidden message.

So, for example, an environmental campaign that focuses on the fact that too many people drive cars with large engines contains two messages — that driving cars with large engines is bad for the environment, and that lots of people are driving cars with large engines. This second message makes it unlikely that the campaign will work. Worse, it might even make it counterproductive: by conveying how common the undesirable behaviour is, it can give those who do not currently engage in that behaviour a perverse incentive to do so. Everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn't I?

Of course, this isn't a problem confined to environmental campaigning. Recent TV licensing adverts cheerfully inform would-be television watching criminals that more than 15,000 licence-evaders were caught during Wimbledon 2008 alone — 15,000 during one tennis tournament? And that's only the ones they've caught? That's an awful lot of people not paying their TV licence, and a powerful statistic with which to "normalise" one's own behaviour.

But whereas the Orwellian TV licensing adverts can only threaten £1,000 fines, much more is at stake when it comes to getting environmental messages right. Fortunately, there is a way of harnessing the power of social norms, so that the dreaded "boomerang effect" doesn't occur.

In a recent experiment, psychologists examined the influence of social norms on the household energy consumption of residents of California. The researchers, led by Wesley Schultz, picked houses at random and then divided them into groups depending on whether their energy consumption was higher or lower than the average for that area. Some low-energy-use households received only information about average energy usage — thereby setting the social norm.

A second group of low-energy households had a positive "emoticon" (happy face) positioned next to their personal energy figure, conveying approval of their energy footprint. A third group of over-consuming households were shown their energy usage coupled with a negative emoticon (sad face), intended to convey disapproval of their higher-than-average footprint.

The researchers then measured energy consumption in the following months. As one might expect, the over-consuming households used the social norm as a motivation to reduce their energy use, but under-consuming households that had received only the social norm information increased their energy use.

Crucially, though, the under-consuming households that had received positive feedback did not show this boomerang effect: the addition of a smiley face next to their energy usage made all the difference. Despite the simplicity of the feedback, households that felt their under-consumption was socially approved (rather than a reason to relax), maintained their small energy footprint. This suggests that using social norms can be effective — but only if they are used in the right way.

Castigating the "majority" of people for driving cars with large engines, without simultaneously praising those who have chosen smaller models could spectacularly backfire. Environmental campaigns using social norms will have to be supplemented with information targeted at specific groups about the desirability of their particular behaviours. If people are doing something positive, they need to know about it.

To hit his carbon targets, Obama needs psychologists on his team, not just energy experts and economists. Otherwise "Yes We Can" will too often become "Yes we could, but now we know what everyone else is doing we maybe won't bother".

Adam Corner is psychologist at Cardiff University. His research interests include the communication of climate change.