The Psychology of Sustainability

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

Episode 132

The Psychology of Sustainability 

With all the hype in the news media these days about nuclear war, economic recession, another banking crisis, food shortages, prolonged drought conditions, and yet another storm wreaking havoc, it is easy to overlook the biggest threat of all. 

Most scientific experts would agree that the biggest threat to our social structure and way of life is climate change. And we hear about this also everyday. But despite all the policy changes and improved technology, the underlying cause as well as the route to successful change rests in the domain of human perceptions, decisions and behavior. Changing these perceptions and behavior to something that favors sustainability is psychology comes into play. So stay tuned for episode 132. 

Welcome back everyone to the Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is E132 which is called The Psychology of Sustainability. 

What I want to focus on in this episode is how psychology plays an important role in sustainability and the behavior that favors such actions.  I am going to first discuss how psychology is often used against us because certain tactics are used to appeal to the irrational and emotional side of our nature. But then I want to turn that around and show how psychology can also be used to do just the opposite.  

I mentioned above about climate change actually being the biggest threat to our way of life. Even though things such as nuclear war, a meteor, an enormous volcanic eruption, or some other natural catastrophic event is always a possibility, I truly think it is the slow insidious changes in climate produced by human activity that will change our way of life and will result in our demise if it goes unchecked. 

It should be obvious that a significant part of what needs to be accomplished is reducing emissions, minimizing carbon and energy intensive activities, improved efficiency, and advanced decarbonization. Significant progress can be made toward this goal through targeted government policy changes, improved technology, and the implementation of carbon taxes. 

But the challenge is that this is not the whole picture nor is it the panacea.  At the very root of the problem is the pattern of behavior and consumption that got us in the predicament in the first place. While the world is falling apart around us we still persist in the behavior patterns that are the very foundation of the problem. 

The challenge is that most people are resistant to change and do not like being told what to do. I used to joke around with my friends that what the world needed was a good pandemic to make people truly appreciate what they had. However, with the COVID 19 pandemic the very opposite is actually what happened. Well I should say that is what I observed living in the United States. During and after the pandemic, instead of an atmosphere of appreciation that our society was not in ruins, people became even more angry and impatient. I would not only see this in the clients that I dealt with but also in public places such as restaurants and the supermarket. 

Obviously if we are going to change our behavior patterns and attitudes to something that promotes and sustains positive change it is going to have to done in a much different way other than just forcing people to do something. 

The field of psychology serves as a means of understanding human behavior and decision making. Human perceptions, decision making, and behavior also play an important part in sustainability. That is where psychology comes into play because it can be used as a practical tool to influence and enhance our behavior and decision making. This of course can be used against us but it can also be used to enhance negative behavior. 

Case in point: 

Whether you realize it or not, we are constantly surrounded by attempts to influence our decisions and persuade us to take certain actions. It is called advertising. The average American is faced with over 10,000 ads everyday. This advertising overload makes it difficult for a company to stand out in the crowd. Consequently, they have to use more subtle tactics and this is where psychology comes into play again. 

The psychology of advertising, as it is called, uses certain tactics in ads which encourage you to buy a product by eliciting a certain emotion. The psychology of advertising focuses on building empathy towards a product or service to encourage you to purchase. Techniques that are commonly used are things such as  cute animals, humor, creating excitement, preying on your fears, or even eliciting a heart-felt emotional response.

Furthermore, with the advent of the internet companies and social media platforms now save a lot of time and money on research by collecting data on people while you are surfing the web. 

It is almost as if you can never get away from it. Someone is always attempting to manipulate our behavior. This is why I say that advertising has by far been the most successful, long-standing, behavioral engineering experiment in human history. This is because advertising very cleverly uses cognitive psychology to manipulate our behavior all the while leading us to believe we are actually doing something good for ourselves. 

As far as sustainability is concerned, you could argue that simply increasing awareness through education would help to influence humanity’s behavior. But this is never enough because people do not always behave in a rational manner. People are so often ruled by their emotions, people act irrationally and even self sabotage. 

And just as an example, let’s take a look at some public health interventions. Unfortunately there are many examples of how these interventions start out with good intentions but have been mostly unsuccessful because they fail to change human behavior. But this is also because humans tend to be irrational. 

 To start with public health theories often make the mistake of assuming that humans are rational when we are not. For a number of reasons, many of our thought processes are automatic and our behaviors are ruled by emotions. This includes the emotional states that are created by advertising. 

So let’s take a look at a few public health issues and why these campaigns are typically unsuccessful. 

Attempts by public health organizations to discourage people from smoking focuses on using surgeon generals’ warning that smoking will cause lung cancer 20 years down the road. 

Other public health campaigns focus on what is called “investment behaviors.” Regular exercise and going to the gym will help prevent a heart attack 10 years from now.  Flossing and brushing your teeth will prevent dental bills a year from now. There are also campaigns that focus on things such as risky sexual behavior. 

The reason these campaigns fail to alter human behavior is due to what is called inter temporal choice. What this means is that the costs and benefits of many behaviors fall into different time periods. 

When a person lights up a cigarette they are rarely thinking about what is going to happen to them 20 years from now. When people fail to get regular exercise and eat properly they are not thinking about what is going to happen to them 10 years from now. Truly if we were perfectly rational beings we would factor in all possibilities regarding our behavior and make the right decision. But because there is a huge portion of the human brain that focuses only on the present,  we often act against our own best interest. 

As far as the United States is concerned, we just need to change our focus and stop thinking about health issues as being cancer and cardiovascular disease. It is smoking, over eating, and a sedentary lifestyle that is the cause of the largest portion of preventable diseases. In the end, it is personal decisions and lifestyle choices that are the major cause of our health problems. But it doesn’t stop there. 

We all likely remember the economic crash that occurred in 2008. Now there are many explanations for why this happened ranging from predatory lending practices to inappropriate government oversight. However, irrational decisions made by individuals also contributed a significant amount to the crash. Despite plenty of historical examples of bubbles bursting and plenty of warnings about the housing bubble about to burst, numerous people decided to invest anyway. They saw others making money and viewed that as being an opportunity. They acted on the emotions of greed and impatience and consequently many of these investors experienced financial ruin because they acted irrationally.  

But we also see similar irrational behavior when it comes to sustainability, a circular economy, sustainable development, and planning for the future of this planet. 

Let’s look at a couple of examples. 

Literally for decades various scientists, climatologist, geologist, environmentalists, and engineers have been warning about the continued drought in the American southwest that has been slowly dwindling the water reserves in Lake Mead, Lake Powell and the entire Colorado River basin. Despite this Phoenix, AZ is one of the fastest growing cities in the US. Just recently I read about yet another planned development where 10K homes are supposed to be built despite the fact that the Colorado River Basin is in a state of crisis. 

The first seminal paper about climate change was published in 1896. By the 1940s a direct connection was made between increase CO2 in the atmosphere and global warming. It is now literally reaching a crisis state. After 125 years people are now starting to take notice.

The cost of solar had gone down dramatically over the last 10 years. With improved technology solar panels are now more efficient than ever before and it actually costs less to build a maintained a solar generating plant than it is to operate a fossil fuel plant. It is also possible to run your entire household with renewable energy and still maintain the same lifestyle. In fact it is entirely possible to run and entire country off of renewable energy. 

Yes there will be challenges to running country off of renewable energy but the are also many benefits. The more obvious benefits of renewable energy are a supply of energy that never runs out, a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions, a less expensive form of electricity, cleaner air and water, and the creation of thousands of jobs. Despite these obvious benefits we focus on the up front costs, a break even point of about 10 years, and potentially a change in our lifestyle. If we looked at things rationally, our entire country would be well on its way to national energy independence.  
 

In the first two examples people have had ample opportunity to avoid a crisis but did nothing because we act irrationally and only focus on the present. Once again in the case of a renewable energy transition, there is still great political resistance because people only focus on their present profits instead of investing in renewable energy independent future. 

This type of behavior and decision making is also an indication that mainstream economic solutions for sustainable behavior such as carbon taxes will not be sufficient to alter our behavior. Similar to public health campaigns, these measures are often based on the assumption that people will act rationally. For example, the assumption is made that if a carbon tax is high enough people will simply stop purchasing products that are detrimental to the environment. This may hold true to a certain degree but this is not the entire picture. 

People may for example have a strong psychological attachment to a particular product such as a sports car. That emotional attachment will override the fact that they now have to pay a higher price due to the carbon tax. Once again, we are ruled by our emotions. 

In fact, by our very nature as humans, we are ruled by our emotions and are a bit irrational. Our emotions affect the way we think and push us toward thoughts and things that make us feel good. Yet we have the self perception that we are rational and make decisions based on sound logic and reason. But we don’t. 

As a result of this whenever something bad happens instead of blaming ourselves we blame outside forces. We contribute our failure to other people, bad luck, sabotage, the government. Most of the time we fail to recognize the fault is our own. Similarly, few people recognize that the condition of our planet is the cumulative result of individual choices. We just think things such as “How could the government let this happen? Why did ‘they’ not tell us before?” But much of this is the result of our irrational behavior and the fact that we do not always make the best decisions. 

Additionally you cannot even expect two people in an identical situation to make the same decision. This is because the decisions we make are based on a complex structure which is a combination of our understanding of morality and culture combined with past experiences. Humans make decisions based on collective experiences, our understanding of the rules for our culture, the opinions and point of view of those around us in a position of authority. We then fill in all the gaps with our feelings. 

The same holds true when it comes to sustainable behavior. The perception of sustainability is different for everyone since the environment is perceived by individuals in multiple different ways and understanding of the environment comes from a subjective perspective. This is because perception is conditioned by multiple factors unique to each individual. For example, educational level and cultural factors imprinted by society conditions our sensitivity and attitude toward the environment. Emotional experiences, sensory factors, and even our relationship to the environment also changes our perception.

But there is a positive side to this.  Despite the fact that we are irrational creatures and often fail to act in our own best interest, cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, which studies the influence of social, cognitive and emotional forces on our choices and decisions holds great potential to change our personal habits.

So, right about now you may be asking just how is that  going to happen. Just bear with me for a couple of more minutes.  

Undergraduate psychology courses have long been used to open the eyes of students too many critical issues in our modern society. For example racial and gender bias, cultural diversity, stress and coping, mental illness, conflict within groups of people, and even the principles of learning and education. I clearly remember during my undergraduate education that it was the psychology and anthropology courses that opened my eyes to a much broader perspective than II every had growing up in Tennessee. But despite the many benefits of these course what should be noted the conspicuous absence of any teaching about the human impact on the environment. 

The reason this is the case is that problems related to the environment are typically addressed in earth and environmental sciences or civil and environmental engineering. However, all human caused environmental problems are rooted directly in our behavior. It is our way of living that has created excess CO2 in the atmosphere, pollution, waste, environmental degradation, excessive population growth, as well as many other things. 

Human behavior is at the very foundation of these environmental problems. This is why science and technology are not the sole answer to our problems. That is why throwing money and technology at our problems is not going to produce lasting change. We are failing to address the underlying behavior. A good example is people losing weight by going on a diet. The  vast majority of people regain that weight within a year. Their attempts at weight loss were unsuccessful because they did not change the underlying behavior that caused them to gain weight in the first place. 

The same can be observed regarding our choices of sustainability. Human behaviors that affect the environment are driven by our perceptions, our values, our choices, decisions, attitudes and motivations.  What this means is that in order to create lasting and sustainable solutions there must first be a belief in the need for change as well as the will to make and sustain that change. The bottom line is that the very foundation of environmental problems lie with the domain of psychological sciences and the solutions to those problems are in the same domain. 

What that means is that in the same manner that advertising aims to be the architects of people’s decision, the same approach can be taken toward influencing people to make sustainable choices. 

Let’s take a look for a moment at one potential technique used in behavioral economics which has its foundations in cognitive psychology. This little trick is called default options. If default options are used properly then the natural choice can be a healthier one or a more sustainable one. 

For example when we have traveled in Costa Rica, recycling was always the default option. It was often difficult to find an actually trash can. But multiple types of recycling bins were all over the place and were made to be an easy option. 

What if McDonald’s made the default options for kids meals an apple instead of a bag of French fries. Instead of asking people if they want to supersize their meal what if fast food restaurants asked people if they wanted to downsize it instead. Another default option would be to simply make serving containers smaller. This is one reason why Europe has less of an obesity problem than the US because their cups, saucers, and plates are much smaller. 

Even public transportation can be a default options. In Japan practically no one works out in their leisure time and yet the average person remains lean and slim. This is because of the investments made in their culture. People have to walk between their homes and public transportation. They have to walk up and down stairs and platforms to access public transportation. 

What if the next time you go to purchase a new vehicle, instead of the default option being a big truck or SUV, you were first presented with an electric vehicle. What if when you purchased a new home, by default that home was already powered by renewable energy. What if when you purchase an existing home, the bank gave you a default option, and financial incentives, to make upgrades to run the home off of renewable energy. 

I discussed briefly in a previous episode about how our lives are so complicated because we objectify ourselves, meaning we started to view ourselves as separate from everything else, the trees, the animals, even the very universe. Then we started to question the meaning of our very existence. To compensate for that we resorted to creating “meaning” from the external world. To help drown out the anxieties of our questionable existence we started creating more and more things to consume, throw away, consume more, and just pretend this was a normal part of existence. But, in the end our objectification and our search for meaning in our lives put an end to a simple, uncomplicated sustainable lifestyle.

Truly our current economic system is built on growth and depends on a constant rate of consumption. But we have also known for more than 50 years now that this is not compatible with sustainable living. Humans actually need to see themselves are part of nature instead of separate from it. Instead of objectifying ourselves we need to place nature at the core of our social and economic interests. By starting with individual choices, then family, then community, and society we can actually produce some rather bold achievements. 

And once again that depends on changing our behavior. Obviously people do not like being told what to do. But psychology can be used as a tool to address our irrational nature and push us to make healthier sustainable choices. 

It has long been know that if people get a good feeling about a product their assessment of the benefits goes us and their assessment of risks go down. Cigarette ads often play up positive emotions about how much fun you are having while smoking their product. Those very same tactics could be used to promote sustainable living and sustainable choices. Ads could display vivid images laden with emotions about how happy people are working in their garden, riding their bike to work, taking advantage of renewable energy. There are so many other tactics that could also be used to instill healthier choices. 

Green growth is currently the leading strategy towards environmental sustainability. Green growth focuses on improved efficiency and use of advanced technology in decouple economic growth from the use of natural resources and environmental impacts. However, this is not the entire picture. The needed changes go well beyond technological advances. 

At this point I think it is useful to note that so far in this episode I have perhaps focused too much on the individual as the source of all of our environmental problems. But I also think that far too often the responsibility is put on the shoulders of the individual. For example, instead of companies packaging products in fully recyclable containers we are told we have to recycle because it is our wasteful behavior that results in all of the pollution. Therefore I think it is crucial to note that not all of the responsibility should be put on the individual. Turning this into individual responsibility and keeping it out of the political realm only reinforces our current economic system. 

Individual responsibility focuses on bottom-up change. That has to be in combination with top-down change through creating new laws and restrictions that lead to a long-term transformation. This is the instrument needed for societal transformation. 

Bottom-up change happens when more and more people adapt new behaviors and attitudes until a tipping point is reached which now becomes a new social norm. 

The field of psychology is an important tool that is needed to promote individual and societal behavior and help people move toward a more sustainable way of life even in our current economic system. The true strength of the psychology of sustainability is that it can address the growth component of our economic behavior. This is what will initiate the transformation to a more sustainable system and will help to address that irrational part of our nature. 

The vast majority of health problems in the United States are preventable. But we need to stop thinking of our health problems as some form of disease such as cancer or cardiovascular disease. We need to recognize that those diseases are the result of our individual choices. The same holds true with sustainability and our environmental problems. It is the result of our individual choices. Perhaps the answer to our present predicament can be found within the realm of psychology. Individual responsibility may not solve the whole problem but truly it is the one thing that can push us to the tipping point of a sustainable culture.

Well folks I think that is about it for this week. I truly hope you have enjoyed this episode and that it has give you a lot to think about. Perhaps this episode can help to tame down that irrational side of our nature and think more clearly about making a sustainable future the default option. 

I hope you will join me again next week. Until then, this is your host Patrick signing off. Always remember to live sustainably because this is how we build a better future. 

Patrick

Patrick