You want people to do the right thing ? Save them the guilt trip!
Major global problems such as racial injustice or climate change often seem insurmountable. It’s hard to believe that our individual actions can make any real difference. Yet we know that many social dilemmas are overcome only through collective action. They call for people to make behavioral changes without any direct personal benefits – in fact, these changes often come at a personal cost. So, what might motivate people to adopt such a ‘prosocial’ mindset?
Researchers have explored a range of answers to this puzzle. A central line of enquiry relates to emotions and self-perception. There’s a close link between emotions and behavior: feelings motivate us to pursue goals, seek positive reinforcement and avoid punishment. But which emotional route is the most promising – to make people feel bad about their shortcomings, or to encourage them to have a positive self-image because they’ve done ‘the right thing’?
There are good arguments both ways. Guilt can be a powerful motivator for action; the feeling of wanting to ‘make up’ for something can lead to reparative action. On the other hand, feeling good about our actions and what they reflect about who we are can elicit positive emotions. These feelings can then provide us with the energy and mental resources to engage in difficult problems, or to ‘give to others.
It’s important to distinguish here between guilt that arises internally, and guilt that’s externally induced. If we feel guilty about failing to recycle our plastics or adopt a vegetarian diet, we might be motivated to engage in reparative action. But if someone buttonholes us over dinner and tries to make us feel bad about our lifestyle choices, the picture might look very different; we might become defensive and try to justify our actions, which drives us further away from changing the way we behave. These scenarios then raise doubts about whether negative self-directed emotional appeals will be effective at promoting prosociality.
In a study conducted at Columbia University in New York, people were set out to test the consequences of positive versus negative self-directed emotions. Participants were prompted to think about either how guilty they felt about non-environmentally friendly behavior, or how proud they might be for acting to preserve the environment. They were then asked a range of questions, such as whether they would pay increased rent to have more energy-efficient appliances, how likely they were to take public transport, and whether they’d be willing to use reusable shopping bags and mugs. Those participants who had been thinking of how proud they would feel about themselves chose to have a higher number of energy-efficient appliances compared with those participants who had been asked to think about personal guilt. Furthermore, participants in the pride group expressed higher intentions to engage in green behaviors compared with those in the guilt group. These findings suggest that inducing people to consider positive rather than negative self-directed emotions might recruit more people to a climate-change mitigation agenda, and to prosocial behavior more broadly.
This potential advantage – of appealing to positive emotions over negative ones – links up with what we know about human self-perception. Having a positive self-image about who we are and what we do is a fundamental human need. When we’re balanced and on good terms with ourselves, we are more energetic and have greater cognitive and emotional resources. By contrast, when we feel bad about ourselves, it’s much more difficult to be prosocial – especially if those feelings and actions aren’t geared towards friends and family, but a removed, impersonal ‘greater good’. Satisfying our important internal needs as emotional creatures can help us free up prosocial resources for others.
Feeling good about ourselves can translate into acts of kindness towards others, for the benefit of society at large
A positive self-image can create a flywheel effect, in which the resulting prosocial behavior sends a social signal to others. If others discriminate less, we are less likely to do so; if people in our social groups recycle more and watch their carbon footprint, we are more likely to do so. Getting a critical mass to ‘join in’ and acknowledging problems can, over time, help to shift norms – which are drivers, not just inhibitors, of human behavior.
The potential of positive self-directed emotions has largely not been embraced by activists. The worry could be that it might make those engaging in the cause appear self-satisfied or selfish. But these studies suggest that, instead of focusing on ‘doom and gloom’ messaging that zooms in on people’s shortcomings and risks alienating them, policymakers and strategists might find that positive messaging, speaking to people’s positive sense of self, might be a more powerful lever of behavioral change.
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