SOCIAL Environmental Psychology Flashcards
(22 cards)
What is environmental psychology?
The discipline that studies the interplay between individual and the built and natural environment.
-influence of environment on human experience, behaviour, well-being.
-influence of individual on environment- e.g. understanding + promoting sustainable behaviour.
What are pro-environmental behaviours?
-goal-directed behaviours- behaviours people adopt with explicit goal of doing something beneficial for the environment.
-behaviours that harm the environment as little as possible or even benefit the environment.
Detail the impact of human activates?
Carbon footprint is total amount of greenhouse gases (e.g. carbon dioxide and methane) that are generated by our actions.
Expressed in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).
Average carbon footprint for person in UK is 11.7 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) per year.
Best chance to avoid 2 degree rise in global temperature, average carbon footprint per year needs to go drop to under 2 tonnes by 2050.
How do you measure environmental behaviour?
Involve asking individuals to report whether they engage in specific environmental behaviours, how often, and/or to what extent.
What is the scope of self-report measures?
-Focused measures- target specific behaviours, e.g. recycling water use, or transport choice.
-Broad measures- assess range of behaviours, e.g. general ecological behaviour (GEB) scale.
-can measure peoples intentions or willingness to engage in future environmental behaviours. Often used to predict actual behaviours and understand motivational factors driving behaviour
What are the behavioural measures of environmental psychology?
-COST: ppt asked how much money would donate to environmental charities.
-EFFORT: ppt asked to screen long list of number for every page of numbers they complete, a donation made to environmental charity.
-TIME: ppt used navigation system to choose between different travel routes. Routes either long waiting time and large emission savings of short waiting time + small emission savings.
What are the observational models of environmental psychology?
Field setting:
-observing littering behaviour (e.g. local park).
-observing travel mode in morning commuters (e.g. % of people driving vs active travel).
In lab setting:
-assessing whether ppt turned off lab lights before switching to another testing room.
-asked ppt to dispose of material given for mock task + seeing if ppt put paper in recycling bin vs normal rubbish bin and awarding ppt point for every material correctly dispose of.
How do we measure outcome of people’s behaviour?
-indirectly measure people’s engagement in environmental behaviour by assess outcomes relating to these behaviours.
E.g. measure meter readings and water measurements.
How does a self-report measure of pro-environmental behaviour reflect actual behaviour?
-Kormos & Gifford (2014) conducted metanalysis of 15 studies (6260 ppt) comparing self-reported vs actual pro-environmental behaviour.
-Average correlation- r=.46, but
-only 21% variance in objective behaviour explained by self- reports.
-79% remains unexplained.
-slight tendency towards over-reporting behaviour.
How can the Dual process Theory drive pro-environmental behaviour?
Pro-environmental behaviour is driven by 2 distinct processes;
-1. fast, automatic, largely unconscious and affect-driven process (e.g. habits, emotions, impulses.)
-2. slow, deliberate, reasoned-based & conscious process (e.g. knowledge, attitudes, beliefs).
Distinction between if behaviour driven by automatic or more deliberate processes has important implications for interventions designed to promote pro-environmental behavioural change.
What is the knowledge-deficit assumption?
Early model of pro-environmental behaviour:
-knowledge-deficit assumption: people lack knowledge of pro-environment issues, and therefore need education to explain why, when, and how to act.
Are education/ information campaigns effective?
STAATS, Wit & Midden (1996) evaluated Dutch mass media campaigns (national tv, newspapers, billboard) aimed at raising awareness of global warming.
705 took part in pre-post design.
-questionnaire used to measure:
-knowledge assessed via a series of true-false questions.
-behaviour assessed via, self-report questionnaire of people’s engagement in 9 behaviour (e.g. reducing heat in homes, using public transport instead of car).
RESULTS: significant in knowledge about global warming among those who had seen campaign.
Little to no impact on people’s behaviour. Only slight increase in one of behaviours measured, this is among people who were already engaging in more pre-environmental behaviour before campaign started.
How can emotions influence pro-environmental behaviour?
How can feelings of disgust stops us living sustainably: behavioural immune system.
-disgust considered emotion that is associated with behavioural immune system.
-mechanism enabling people to detect presence of parasites or pathogens in environment + prompts them to avoid contact with those objects or individuals.
-often important for our health e.g. encourages us not to eat spoiled foods.
-however, can be over conservative such that people will avoid things even if they are likely to be safe.
What was Powell, Jones and Consedines study into ppt willingness to pay (WTP) for more sustainable alternatives?
Completed self-report measure of trait disgust: (on atypically shaped-fruit + veg and insect based foods).
-disgust propensity (how easily people are disgusted).
-disgust sensitivity (how unpleasant feelings of disgust is for them).
Detail Menegaki et al’s study into how we can overcome feelings of disgust?
Would you eat tomatoes grown using treated wastewater?
vs Would you eat tomatoes grown using recycled water?
Although two terms describe same commodity, willingness to use= higher with ‘recycled water’ descriptor.
Can sadness be a driver of pro-environmental behaviour?
Schwartz & Loewenstein (2017, study 1).
N= 738 ppt, chance to win £60 prize draw.
Randomly assigned to watch 1 of 3 videos:
1. sadness-evoking video showing how polar bears + penguins affected by global warming.
2. non-emotional video of person explaining science of global warming.
3. sadness- evoking video not related to global warming (video discussed child poverty).
Ppt entered number between 0-60 for their donations.
RESULTS= ppt who watched sadness-evoking global warming video entered donations that were 21% lager than ppt who watched non-emotional video (p=.05).
=no difference between 2 affective videos .
=sadness- inducing videos lead to greater donations to an environmental organization than nonaffective videos.
Are emotions that motivate pro-environmental action transient?
Schwartz & Loewenstein (2017).
N= 738 ppt, chance to win a £30 prize draw.
2 x 2 between subjects factorial design.
Emotional video: sad- evoking videos vs non-emotional video.
Time delay: donations made immediately after watching the videos vs one hour after watching the video.
Asked how much they would like to donate to WWF.
-if watched sadness evoking video more likely to donate more. But after 1hr no difference in donation amounts? Once emotions have cooled off after a delay, there is no difference in induced behaviour between affective and nonaffective messages.
Can making a commitment increase likelihood that emotional arousal will translate into actions emotions have cooled off?
N=579 ppt. Chance to win £60 prize draw.
Sadness- evoking video.
All ppt watched sadness-evoking video.
Randomly assigned to making commitment to donate or no commitment.
Commitment group: ‘we would like to ask how much you would like to donate in second part of study’. Ppt told ‘the amount is not binding’.
Dependent variables: all ppt recieved email 24 hours later + were asked to enter donation amount for WWF, out of the possible £60 bonus. 31% more likely to pay higher if asked to donate after watching vide, than control group asked 24hrs later.
=should lock in commitments when emotions running high.
What is anticipated emotions?
-Anticipated emotions- expectation that engaging in particular behaviour makes us experience positive or negative emotions.
-Research has shown anticipate emotions (e.g. to what extent people anticipate that they will feel happy proud, guilty, sad) can predict range of pro-environmental behaviours (e.g. intentions to use public transport).
-Emotions that a behaviour expected to elicit can serve as motive to further engagement in that behaviour= emotional motives.
What is the Power Emotional Motives?
research has shown emotional motives can, in some cases, outweigh instrumental consequences of pro environmental behaviour.
=anticipating experiencing positive emotions about reducing energy consumption found to be stronger predictors of people’s intentions to conserve energy than saving money.
-environmental campaign that resonate with people ‘feelings may be an important unexploited route to encourage pro-environmental behaviour’.
Why do pro-environmental behaviours elicit positive and negative emotions?
Hedonic= feel pleasure. View that emotions related to environmental behaviour have roots in behaviour being pleasurable or unpleasurable experience.
-> view on pro-environmental behaviour: may be inherently pleasurable. Research suggests organic good is perceived by some to be better tasting than non-organic food. But pro-environmental less pleasurable than short-cold shower.
Eudaimonic= feel pleasure. View that positive and negative emotions related to environmental behaviour have their roots in behaviour being a moral and meaningful experience.
-> view on pro-environmental: regarded as type of moral behaviour, cause acting pro-environmental can benefit quality of nature and well being of others. Thus acting pro-environmental may feel meaningful to those engaging in it cause contribute to greater good.
Outline the study into ppt hedonic and eudaimonia study?
Ppt asked to complete carbon footprint calculator to assess impact of behaviour on environment.
Told carbon footprint was either:
-49% lower than other students.
-49% higher than other students.
Those told their behaviour more pro-environmental than other perceived the temperature in the room to be hotter than those told their behaviour was more harmful than others.
