Psychologists To Examine Roots of "TreeHugging" Behavior
by Erin Courtenay - Madison, WI on 04. 5.06
Researchers in the UK at the University of Leicester recently launched a study designed to discover if certain individuals or groups of individuals are pre-determined to be environmentally-conscientious. According to the article at Innovations Report: "The study will examine regional and social differences in environmental attitudes and behaviour, with a view to understanding differences in outcome and developing effective interventions. The study will also be used to explore the link between personality and "green behaviour"." Researcher Adrian White adds that they "also hope to seek out whether there are distinct "types" of green? For example, recyclers who drive high fuel-consumption vehicles, those with energy efficient light bulbs but who take holiday flights every few months. We will identify whether there is one type of "green" or different types."
How come education, income, religious and ethical background are not included !?
Yeah, this seems a bit silly. The choices we make on a day to day basis have far more to do with practicality than anything else. Certainly education has a lot to do with it as well. Clearly people who have been educated to understand how their decisions affect their world will be able to make more informed decisions, but the biggest priority is feasability. If a sustainable solution seems to be too difficult, people won't choose it.
To me, the biggest need for research right now is figuring out how we can give people the resources for making good, sustainable, decisions. For example, we know that making quality public transit reduces personal car use and ownership even. There's no complicated psychology there, just cold hard transit. Another example is making local, fresh, organic foods available to everyone at a cost comparable to the industrial stuff.
Once we've gotten the resources in place, then it might be useful to do studies to find out how to best encourage people to be less frightened of change (for example, people get very defensive when you suggest to them that they could use public transit instead of driving their car). So maybe studies on why people change their minds might be good.
Hi,
My name is Adrian White and I am a researcher on the project mentioned above.
In relation to evgeny's point unfortunately what the media reports is very selective so readers don't get the full story. We are also looking at socio-economic, education and personality differences as well as the demographics mentioned in the story.
One of the reasons for doing this is to target information and public education funding more effectively. I agree that the provision of adequate facilities is important. For example the availablitiy of low energy lightbulbs has made a difference in the UK, yet there are big demographic differences in who uses them. Rather than expensively targeting everyone with messages promoting their use it is helpful to aim at groups who are slow to adapt. In this case men and the under 45s.
The other purpose of the study is to investigate the link between personality and environmentalism. Our background as researchers is in working with offenders. The theories we have used model destructiveness towards other people. We believe it may be the case that one has an orientation towards life as a whole. We know that cruelty to animals is strongly linked to cruelty to humans. If you treat the ecosystem in a thoughtless, selfish or destructive way then the same may be true of your interpersonal relationships.
The study is for UK residents. But if you are interested in having a look it can be found at www.biophilia.co.uk
Cheers, Adrian