How Psychology Can Help the Planet Stay Cool
'I'm not convinced it's as bad as the experts make out..．It's everyone else's fault..．Even if I turn off my air conditioner, it will make no difference.' The list of reasons for not acting to combat global warming goes on and on.
This month, American Psychological Association (APA) 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 used by companies or organisations to encourage climate-friendly behaviour．In addition, psychologist Mark van Vugt of the Free University of Amsterdam describes the elements of human nature that push us to act unselfishly.
Appropriate guides
As advertisers of consumer products well know, different groups of people may have quite distinct interests and motivations, and messages that seek to change behaviour need to be tailored to take these into account．'You have to target the marketing to a particular sector of the population,' says Robert Gifford of the University of Victoria, another of the report's authors.
The wealthy young, for instance, tend to be diet conscious, and this could be used to steer them away from foods like cheeseburgers--one of the most climate-unfriendly meals around because of the energy it takes to raise cattle．So when trying to convince them to give up that carbon-intensive beef pie, better to stress health benefits than the global climate.
Though conservative authorities have been known to attack such efforts, characterising them as mind control, experiments indicate that people are willing to be persuaded．'From participants in our experiments, we've never heard a negative feedback,' says Wesley Schultz of California State University．In fact, according to John Petersen of Oberlin College, we are used to far worse．'Compared to the overwhelming number of advertising, it seems milder than anything I experience in my daily life,' he says.
Good neighbours
Deep down, most of us want to fit in with the crowd, and psychologists are exploiting this urge to encourage environmentally friendly behaviour.
Researchers led by Wesley Schultz at California State University and Jessica Nolan, now at the University of Scranton, have found that people will cut their electricity usage if told that their neighbours use less than they do.
In one experiment, the researchers left information with households in San Marcos asking them to use fans rather than air conditioners at night, turn off lights and take shorter showers．Some messages simply stressed energy conservation, some talked about future generations, while others emphasised the financial savings．But it was the flyers(传单) that asked residents to join with their neighbours in saving energy that were most effective in cutting electricity consumption.
In another study, the researchers told households what others in their neighbourhood used on average．High users cut their consumption in response, but low users increased theirs．The problem disappeared if the messages were reinforced with sad or smiling faces．The smiles received by the residents who were already saving energy provided sufficient encouragement for them to keep doing so.
Information economy
Most people seem to conserve energy if provided with real-time feedback on how much they are using．But feedback can be too immediate.
For instance, Janet Swim has a General Motors car that shows her mileage(里程) per gallon each time she accelerates．It's just not very useful, she argues, because it's hard to place that momentary piece of feedback in the context of her overall driving behaviour and fuel