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What Makes People Act on Climate Change, according to Behavioral ScienceCan you smell the whiff of Chinese social credit systems - in which the government increasingly becomes involved in bullying people who don't conform to the direction of their leaders?
To get people to shift to more climate-friendly behavior, what works best? Education? Payments? Peer pressure?
By Andrea Thompson on April 19, 2023
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Though education can be necessary to make the public aware of a problem in the first place, "we find over and over again that it's not very effective" at actually changing behaviors, says study co-author Magnus Bergquist, a psychologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. It's similar to how knowing that we should exercise more or drink less alcohol doesn't mean we will do so, he explains. "Just knowing what's right, or healthy, or environmentally friendly isn't really a sufficient model for changing behaviors," Bergquist says.
On the flip side, the new research found social pressure had the strongest effect on behavioral change. Such pressure can take passive forms, such as the sight of a larger number of our neighbors adding solar panels to their houses or purchasing electric cars, or more active ones, such as home energy reports that compare our energy use with our neighbors'.
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"My body should go to science, my soul to [Secretary of Treasury] Andrew W. Mellon, and sympathy to my creditors."Even in his last moments, Lytle wanted his corporeal remains and soul utilized by the world he was leaving. A century later, men still carry this burden — their self-worth is tied to their usefulness.
During the years 1870-80 I had many opportunities of witnessing interesting phenomena in the houses of various friends, some of which I have not made public. Early in 1874 I was invited by John Morley, then editor of the Fortnightly Review, to write an article on "Spiritualism" for that periodical. Much public interest had been excited by the publication of the Report of the Committee of the Dialectical Society, and especially by Mr. Crookes's experiments with Mr. Home, and the refusal of the Royal Society to see these experiments repeated. (Italics, mine.)Who is Mr. Crookes? And what were these experiments that the Royal Society did not even want to witness? Remember: curiosity is a condition "sine qua non" of a true scientist! The Royal Society was not curious? Why? Perhaps the experiments of Mr. Crookes were not worthy of the attention of the learned society, because they did not suggest anything new?
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