On Tuesday I sat in on Dan Dolderman's class on Environmental Psychology (sorry, no better link). Wow. It looks to be a wonderful, insightful and important class that applies what we know about human psychology to taking meaningful action on environmental problems. In this post I'll describe what we learned about the theory of behaviour change, and the applied technique of Community Based Social Marketing.
The theory
The theory of planned behaviour is about the interplay between our intentions and our behaviours. The theory posits that there are three things that influence our intentions: our attitudes towards the behaviour, our sense of control and difficulty of the action, as well as how we understand other people's perceptions of the behaviour. So, for instance, you may value the idea of recycling, see it as something you can do easily enough, and since the rest of your street does it already you probably see it as fine to do in other people's eyes, and all of this means that you may choose to recycle.
The key insight here is that all of this works the other way around too: our behaviours influence our attitudes, beliefs, and values.
attitudes, beliefs, values <--> behaviour
This means that changing your behaviour by, for instance, making a habit of recycling, reinforces your perception of yourself as a person that recycles and other behaviours now appear possible that once seemed difficult or unnecessary. Taking on those behaviours further reinforce your self-identity and habits and so leading to even more possible changes in behaviour.
So what?
For environmentalism, it is this positive feedback loop that means small changes in "green" behaviour can lead to a whole shift in what actions a person takes in their daily life, to how they understand and value the environment. Cool!
As well, I think understanding this phenomenon is the antidote to the type of defeatist response to taking any action -- the whole "what does it matter if I change my light bulbs, it's not going to really matter... ". Behaviour change psychology tells us that regardless of the isolated environmental impact of a single action just getting started somehow pays future dividends in making it more likely you'll continue to make environmentally wise choices.
The take away for me here is that we should be vigorously encouraging and supporting people as they make small changes to their lifestyles. Those are the changes that matter even though the big changes loom, and seem more important and equally infeasible.
Raising awareness is only one factor...
The other aspect of this phenomenon we discussed is how many of the popular strategies activists, NGOs, and governments take to change other people's behaviours is based on raising awareness of an issue and providing solid information about the problem and what to do about it. These strategies really only influence our attitudes towards a behaviour (i.e. by trying to make us care about the problem enough to change). The theory of planned behaviour shows us that our attitudes are only one influencing factor and, most importantly, Dolderman says that it is a weak one. There are a whole range of possible ways we could be trying to affect change if we go beyond thinking about changing attitudes and start to think about how to influence our perceptions of control and societal norms.
That is an exciting thought to me.
One example of a more effective strategy -- and I believe the class is going to be centered around this method -- is the, poorly named, technique named Community-Based Social Marketing (it just sounds slimy to me). CBSM is about starting with direct contact among people in a community, and tackling those changes in behaviour that are most likely to succeed (they may not be the biggest ones). The success of a change builds social capital and capacity in the community for further change. I suppose it's like the positive feedback loop that occurs individually as we change our behaviours, only on a community scale. I don't know much more about CBSM, but I'll be sure to report back as the class continues.
As well, I think understanding this phenomenon is the antidote to the type of defeatist response to taking any action -- the whole "what does it matter if I change my light bulbs, it's not going to really matter... ". Behaviour change psychology tells us that regardless of the isolated environmental impact of a single action just getting started somehow pays future dividends in making it more likely you'll continue to make environmentally wise choices.
The take away for me here is that we should be vigorously encouraging and supporting people as they make small changes to their lifestyles. Those are the changes that matter even though the big changes loom, and seem more important and equally infeasible.
Raising awareness is only one factor...
The other aspect of this phenomenon we discussed is how many of the popular strategies activists, NGOs, and governments take to change other people's behaviours is based on raising awareness of an issue and providing solid information about the problem and what to do about it. These strategies really only influence our attitudes towards a behaviour (i.e. by trying to make us care about the problem enough to change). The theory of planned behaviour shows us that our attitudes are only one influencing factor and, most importantly, Dolderman says that it is a weak one. There are a whole range of possible ways we could be trying to affect change if we go beyond thinking about changing attitudes and start to think about how to influence our perceptions of control and societal norms.
That is an exciting thought to me.
One example of a more effective strategy -- and I believe the class is going to be centered around this method -- is the, poorly named, technique named Community-Based Social Marketing (it just sounds slimy to me). CBSM is about starting with direct contact among people in a community, and tackling those changes in behaviour that are most likely to succeed (they may not be the biggest ones). The success of a change builds social capital and capacity in the community for further change. I suppose it's like the positive feedback loop that occurs individually as we change our behaviours, only on a community scale. I don't know much more about CBSM, but I'll be sure to report back as the class continues.
2 comments:
This is fantastic, Jon, thanks for sharing it.
It reminded me of that other common objection to environmental activities: "I only have so much time (or money or patience or whatever) for green stuff, so I need to use it wisely." What you're saying here is that putting effort into these activities reinforces the behaviour itself, through a feedback loop, no?
I knew you'd like it, Jorge.
What you're saying here is that putting effort into these [green] activities reinforces the behaviour itself, through a feedback loop, no?
Yeah, that's how I understand it. Making small changes builds the capacity for further changes, so any change should be championed.
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