Song of the post: Charlie Parr – Over the Red Cedar

The annual pilgrimage of social science scholars and environmental advocates to the Sustainability Psychology Preconference at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology led to Atlanta this year. If you couldn't make it, here were some of the themes and discussions from the day.

Dr. Greg Walton started us off with his keynote address, exploring strategies to ensure the “sustainability” of environment behaviors over time. Many environmental actions need to be engaged in consistently over time to have a meaningful effect, such as the need to maintain efforts to save energy at home or travel efficiently. Truth be told, social scientists have not done a great job of assessing ways to effectively change environmental behaviors over the long-term. Dr. Walton reflected on recent research on “recursive change,” or creating physical structures and social contexts that help people maintain their environmental actions over time. For example, Dr. Walton discussed some of his work with colleagues focusing on “dynamic social norms,” or helping people appreciate how members of their community are increasingly trying to make a positive difference. By leveraging perceptions of community improvement, people can develop a desire to contribute to that positive change, potentially leading to the sustained environmental actions of many community members.

Our first session focused on innovative theoretical and methodological approaches to environmental psychology. Dr. Erin Hanh explored how children think about the environment in moral terms (e.g., is it wrong to harm the environment, and is it more or less worse compared to harming other people?), and how children’s stories can help children appreciate the importance of nature. Next, Dr. Paul van Lange examined why climate change is such a difficult dilemma to address, with a focus on how climate change is abstract, uncertain, extends far into the future, and requires cooperation across nations and social groups. Strategies that can help people overcome these difficulties include emphasizing local impacts of climate change, helping people appreciate the long-term implications of climate change, and including impartial mediators to help groups reach agreement on courses of action. Finally, Dr. Katherine Lacasse presented interdisciplinary research with climate scientists on how best to model the effect of people’s beliefs and actions on climate change outcomes, such as future global temperature change. Dr. Lacasse’s work with her colleagues is at the forefront of trying to improve climate change modeling that has largely ignored the specific human dimensions of the drivers of climate change outcomes.

The second session explored innovative interventions aimed at helping people improve their environmental actions. Nathan Walter explored the relevance of self-affirmation for increasing environmental behaviors and policy support. Self-affirmation is a popular approach to behavior change in other domains, and focuses on the idea that before providing people with “threatening” information (e.g., how climate change will affect their lives), it may be more effective to provide people with self-affirming information about themselves or the world (e.g., that they are good people) to make it more likely they will feel comfortable processing subsequent threatening information. Afterwards, Dr. Sander van der Linden discussed how positive emotions and intrinsic motivation may motivate long-term environmental action, including the “warm-glow” feeling that people may feel after engaging in a positive environmental action, such as saving energy. Third, Dr. Nicole Sintov explored how helping people compost their food waste at home may help them think more broadly about reducing waste, and how this can “spill over” such that people not only compost at home, but also look for other ways to reduce waste at home (e.g., turning off unused lights).

The final session of this year’s preconference pondered insights to be gained by greater cross-pollination from public engagement efforts and environmental research. Dr. Toby Bolsen considered how efforts to politicize climate change science undermines messages about the overwhelming scientific consensus regarding human-caused climate change. However, warning people about politicization efforts ahead of time can weaken the effect of these politicization efforts. Next, Dr. Reuven Sussman explored the balancing act in the energy efficiency world of using social-scientific theory and rigorous methodologies while also pursuing pragmatic and effective energy interventions and policies. Finally, Dr. Irina Feygina outlined how to use research insights to promote effective climate change communication strategies, including highlighting the health, economic, and social implications of climate change.

Per tradition, we also had brief data blitz talks and poster presentations covering a wide range of topics touching on social science and sustainability. If you would like to look over some of the invited speakers’ slides, data blitz talks, or posters, many of presenters have generously allowed us to share their presentation materials, which can be accessed here. 

Next year we’ll be gathering in Portland, Oregon for the 8th annual Sustainability Psychology Preconference at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. We hope to see you there!

Song of the blog: Beastie Boys – Sounds of Science

I’m a scientist. I’m also an advocate. When I have the chance, I push for policies directly linked to the issues I professionally study. I support science-based approaches to changing human behavior linked to climate change, increasing volunteer engagement, and helping people live healthier lives. That may strike some as a conflict of interest. Some individuals believe scientists are supposed to be completely objective about, even detached from, the societal implications of their research. Truth should be the only goal of science, not policy!

Well, I obviously disagree. I mean, I blog about science and policy often. But, I want to briefly chat about one reason why some folks believe scientists should not be engaged in policy advocacy. Some in the public and the scientific community believe that when scientists are policy advocates, it undermines public support for science. The public, they believe, want scientists to focus on science and leave the politics and policy to others. The more scientists advocate for policies, the more people distrust their scientific intentions and the soundness of their research.

I think there’s real heft to this argument. We live in an increasingly polarized society. Recent polling suggests that in the United States, a majority of Republicans (58%!) state that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country. Commentators have tried to understand why Republicans increasingly distrust higher education (dislike of “safe spaces” and “political correctness”? perceptions of liberal professors? appreciation of the Trump administration’s ambivalence toward colleges and universities?). There’s also a nationwide trend in the U.S. toward dislike of expertise, something scientists have almost by definition. In this kind of context, can scientists advocate for policies without this advocacy being interpreted as a biased gesture? Will they be viewed as overstepping their bounds?

Let’s use the March for Science back on April 22nd as a test case. Over a million people across 600 cities around the globe marched to show support for science, including science-informed policies. And now, organizations like 314 Action are supporting scientists in their bids for public office. Scientists joined the efforts, obviously, but some scientists chose to stay on the sidelines. Scientists also did a bit of science on the march itself (of course they would). Survey research following the march found that 48% of survey respondents supported the goals of the science march, 26% opposed the goals, and 26% did not know enough to report beliefs about the march.

But, as you might expect, there was a divide. Sixty-eight percent of Democrats supported the march, while only 25% of Republicans supported it. On the surface that appears highly alarming. But, when respondents were asked whether they believed the march hurt public support for science, only 7% of respondents said the march hurt. Forty-four percent said it helped increase public support, and another 44% said the march would make no difference.

As a scientist who engages in policy advocacy, I found that to be somewhat of a relief. A divided country has divided opinions in it, sure. But, people tended to think the March for Science would help science’s standing with the public, or that it would have no effect. And, interestingly, recent experimental evidence tells a similar story.
 
Research by John Kotcher and his colleagues randomized a nationally representative sample of people to reading about different messages that posited a scientist advocating for a policy. In all of the messages, a scientist discussed climate change. In the most neutral message, people randomized to that condition read a message from a climate change scientist that simply stated that there was a recent scientific finding that CO2 recently reached 400 parts per million. So, a message with no actual policy advocacy. Some people were randomized to reading a scientist’s message about the pros and cons of various climate change policy options. Yet others were randomized to reading a scientist’s message about addressing climate change without a specific policy in mind. Finally, other people were randomized to reading a scientist’s message advocating for a single, specific policy (either limiting carbon emissions from power plants or building more nuclear plants). Did people dislike when the scientist spoke of policy, particularly supporting specific policies to address climate change?

Not really, actually. As you can see in Figure 1, borrowed from the paper, the only time people did not find the scientist to be credible was when they were randomized to reading about advocacy for the nuclear policy. They didn’t mind when scientists advocated for using policy to address climate change in general. Nor did they mind when scientists advocated for reducing carbon emissions from power plants. And, none of the messages led to lower levels of general trust in the scientific community or lower levels of support for public funding for climate science.
 
So, those wary of scientists advocating for policy may have reason to be optimistic. Admittedly, these are just a couple of scientific studies, so there’s undoubtedly more nuance under the surface. Why were people wary of a scientist advocating for use of nuclear power to help reduce carbon emission? Perhaps because people are generally pretty wary about the risks associated with nuclear power, and just because a scientist advocates for a policy it does not mean people throw away their personal beliefs about that policy approach. But, I’ve long been of the opinion that the people discussing and advocating for policies should be experts in the science relevant to those policies. I’m always open to changing my mind, but my read of this research area is that the public tends to agree.

What do you think?

Song of the blog: Bakermat – Teach Me

We often urge people to help others. Help the friend who needs a last minute babysitter. Help the family member who needs financial support. Help the tourist who doesn’t know how to get around your city. Help the refugee struggling to make a home in a new country.

Sometimes helping someone can be a simple, momentary task. And sometimes, it can be a lifelong struggle. As a culture, we talk more about whether to help, and less about how to help. Sometimes we help others by quickly, and often temporarily, solving their problems. And sometimes we help people by teaching them new skills (“empowering them”), which allows them to better take care of themselves down the road. The former – a quick fix to someone’s problem – is sometimes called “dependency-oriented helping.” The latter – helping someone gain skills that will help them in the future – is sometimes called “autonomy-oriented helping.” These terms map onto the classic adage “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

In some situations, dependency helping may just make the most sense. A person who is literally starving in front of you needs food immediately. A refugee escaping violence needs a safe home. A disaster survivor needs medical assistance. But, sometimes there is an opportunity to provide a more autonomy-oriented response to someone’s plight. People experiencing homelessness need support finding housing, a stable income, and, if need be, ways to cope with the conditions that contributed to their homelessness in the first place. Refugees need help learning the ways of their new land, but also a welcoming environment that allows them to still be true to their values and culture. In some of those situations, there may be an opportunity to provide help that is more autonomy-oriented or dependency-oriented.

Along with my colleague Drs. Joe Vitriol, Patrick Dwyer, John Kim, and Mark Snyder, I recently published a paper in the European Journal of Social Psychology (accepted version here) where we explored how people vary in their preferences to provide dependency- or autonomy-oriented help to others in need. We developed a new measure of people’s helping preferences (which you can take here) to help us understand what characterizes people who prefer to provide either dependency- or autonomy-oriented help to others.

By surveying 1,700 adults across three studies, a number of interesting trends emerged. First, it is worth mentioning that although we developed our helping measure to assess people’s willingness to provide dependency or autonomy helping, a third helping characterization emerged, distinct from dependency and autonomy orientations. In our measure, some items refer to reasons why people prefer not to help others at all, and it turns that these eight items concerning negative beliefs about helping clearly suggested a third type of individual, those “opposed to helping.” So, this allowed us to locate individuals on three types of helping characterizations: willingness to provide dependency help, willingness to provide autonomy help, or a lack of willingness to help others at all.

So what did we learn about the types of people who prefer to provide dependency help, autonomy help, or no help at all? Those who preferred to provide autonomy-oriented help to others were high in empathy, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to new experiences (these last three traits being part of the “Big Five” personality traits), self-efficacy, and self-esteem. People who preferred to provide dependency-oriented help were still high in empathy and agreeableness, but also stated they felt uncomfortable in helping situations and did not feel responsible for helping society. Meanwhile, people who stated they were opposed to helping others were low in empathy, felt little responsibility to help society, felt quite uncomfortable in helping situations, were low in agreeableness and conscientiousness, and were not open to new experiences.

One way to think about helping interactions is to focus on the type of people who want to help others. But, helping often takes place between members of different groups (e.g., between individuals of different cultures, races, genders, or religious beliefs). People who preferred giving autonomy-oriented help believed that group status is malleable (e.g., people perceived as “other” can over time be viewed as a fellow group member), disliked hierarchical structuring of society that allows certain groups to dominate other groups (low on “social dominance orientation”), and felt positive about marginalized members of society (e.g., Muslims, members of the LGBT community, immigrants). People who preferred giving dependency-oriented help were ambivalent about the hierarchical structure of society and group malleability, but had weakly positive feelings toward members of marginalized groups. However, people who preferred not to help others strongly believed that society should be structured hierarchically so that certain groups are disadvantaged (high in “social dominance orientation”), believed social groups were set in stone and not malleable, and tended to hold strongly negative feelings toward marginalized members of society.

So, this gives us a clearer picture of the types of people who prefer to give dependency-oriented help, autonomy-oriented help, or prefer to not help others. Do people follow through on these orientations? In one study, we found that people who preferred not to help others reported being unlikely to have volunteered in the past. We also found that people who preferred giving dependency-oriented help were more satisfied with volunteering when they were providing dependency-oriented help, and people who preferred giving autonomy-oriented help were more satisfied with volunteering when they were providing autonomy-oriented help.

Finally, in an experimental study we found that autonomy-oriented individuals who read about nonprofit organizations that had a stated goal of empowering helpees (“autonomy-oriented nonprofits”) were interested in volunteering to help that organization and believed it to be an effective organization at addressing social ills. Meanwhile, dependency-oriented individuals who read about nonprofits that had a stated goal of addressing immediate needs of helpees (“dependency-oriented nonprofits”) were interested in volunteering with that organization and believed that organization to be effective. People high in opposition to helping didn’t think any of the volunteering options were effective and didn’t have any interest in helping these organizations. So, how we frame a volunteering effort may influence our ability to mobilize different types of individuals.

Now, all of the measures we used in this study were self-reports – we were unable to directly observe individuals so it’s possible people who were autonomy-oriented, for example, over-reported their interest in autonomy-oriented helping opportunities. Future work needs to replicate our findings with actual behavior.  Additionally, can we inspire people to provide people autonomy-oriented help when possible, particularly individuals already inclined to help others through dependency-oriented helping? Perhaps by trying to induce empathy, or making the autonomy-oriented helping strategy more apparent, we could improve the quality of helping interactions. Finally, how can we empower helpees to demand autonomy-oriented help, and not just dependency-oriented help, which may sometimes reinforce opportunity and status differences between helpers and helpees? These questions, and others, are worthy of future exploration.

What do you think?