(00:01): 

Well, I'm in over my head. No one told me I'm trying to keep my footprints small as harder than I thought it could be. I'm in over my head. What do I really need? Trying to save the planet oh will someone please save me? Trying to save the planet oh will someone please save me? 

(00:25): 

Welcome to In Over My Head. I'm Michael Bartz. My guest today is Linda Steg. Linda is a professor of environmental psychology at the University of Groningen. Professor Steg is internationally recognized as one of the most prominent experts in her field, being among the most cited scholars and social sciences worldwide. Her groundbreaking work investigates the factors affecting human behavior regarding the environment and energy. Linda has been named eight times by Thompson-Reuters as one of the world's most influential social scientists and has been appointed night of the order of the Netherlands Lion. In 2020, she was awarded the Stevin prize, one of the highest scientific distinctions in the Netherlands. Welcome to In Over my Head, Linda. 

(01:02): 

Thank you for inviting me. 

(01:04): 

So in talking about changing minds, the role of emotions really interested me since they tap into a deeper level than simply knowing the facts. Some of your research has looked at how we can effectively use emotions to motivate change. So I'm looking forward to discussing this with you. Generally, how are emotions unique when it comes to getting us to take action on climate change? 

(01:22): 

Emotions are an important driver of actions as well. We don't only act cause we think in a certain way, which we call cognitions, but the feelings that we experience might be a strong motivator for action. Even though we might not be able to tell other people why we act. And emotions can be elicited. For example, when something that you strongly fail is being threatened, it might give you a negative feeling and then you're motivated to reduce that negative feeling and to get rid of it even. And that can be acting on climate change. 

(01:59): 

Yeah. And when I think about emotions, it's this very visceral reaction, right? It's, it's not necessarily intellectual, I guess. So what's going on cognitively when we're reacting emotionally to a message? 

(02:12): 

Yeah, there, there's this big discussion on what comes first and what comes next, right? Do we first think about it and then experience an emotion? Or is the emotion the immediate response and that you later think about why this emotion was elicited? And I think that the evidence goes both ways. So both can happen, but it can be that if you, for example, you might feel guilty if you don't act financially. So like a big issue nowadays is chain. You feel guilty when you are intending or planning or actually flying. 

(02:44): 

Yeah, no, for sure. And it's that, yeah, especially I think that feeling of guilt is very common. Like when you're doing a a pro-environmental activity, you also feel that good feeling, right? So it kind of goes both ways. 

(02:55): 

Yes, exactly. And that's also what we find in our research, that when people feel, feel good about your behavior, they're more likely to do so again. And when they anticipate feeling good, it can be an important driver for actions. Even more important than a cognitive factor, like whether you think it's worth the effort. So these feelings are quite a strong driver. And the interesting thing is that many people have the idea, the assumption, at least policymakers have it, that acting pro and financially illicit negative feelings because it's, it's a hassle. And it might be inconvenient and people might think, oh, it's not pleasurable to do so. But what actually the literature suggests that evidence suggests that acting for financially may make us feel good. And that's mostly not because it's pleasurable, but because it's meaningful and people find it important to contribute to a greater good, to feel meaningful and feeling meaningful elicits positive emotions. That implies that acting on climate change, acting financially, can actually enhance our wellbeing. And more often, like I said, if people anticipate feeling good about acting pro and financially, they are also more motivated to act accordingly. So emotions are an important role and it's not, that's doing something for the climate or the environment makes us feel horrible, rather the opposite. 

(04:21): 

Yeah. But I guess on the other side too, you know, yeah, you talked about that guilt, there's those negative emotions associated with it as well. I guess let, let's look at maybe despair for instance. If you were feeling kind of hopeless, that's also an emotion too, right? So how does that factor into things? 

(04:37): 

Yeah, that's an important emotion and you, you hear a lot about it, right? Especially young people are, are starting to feel hopeless. Like, oh, we can't ever say solve this issue. Feeling hopeless is not a very good emotion for promoting climate change because people might get paralyzed, right? And you mostly feel hopeless because you see a big problem, but you don't see that there is a way to solve it, to reduce it. So it is important to not only elicit the threats to make pe people feel anxious, for example, on climate change. It's always important in those cases also to give people a sense of agency so that they understand that their actions will matter and that others are also likely to act to help reduce these problems. So only making people anxious without giving them a sense of agency is not a good thing. So, and there's many things that people can do and there are many people already taking action. So these are things that we should emphasize as well 

(05:44): 

Ok. In reading some of your research, it also talked about how people who are pro-environmental are more likely to feel these feelings, right? So it kind of, if you're already an environmentalist, it's gonna have a different reaction than maybe, maybe if you don't see yourself that way, right? 

(05:59): 

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, because if you care about the environment, you're more likely to feel meaningful if you do act pro environmentally, right? Because this, this is something that is more important for you in the first place. But the interesting thing is that you indicated that when people see themselves as more a pro environmental person, right? This is something that you can build as well. Strengthen by making people aware of the many things that they already do to protect the environments. And almost all, if not really all people do many things that help benefits the environment that would reduce environmental problems. And if we emphasize this, people realize like, oh, apparently I'm someone who thinks this is important. They are more likely to see themselves as a pro environmental person and that may motivates them to act accordingly cause we are motivated to be or to look consistent the other way around as well. Of course, if you realize you don't act financially or environmental self-identity we call it is weakened. And that might reduce your motivation to act accordingly again. So it is important to emphasize the many things that people already do. 

(07:11): 

And then, so if someone is not feeling, especially environmental, if they're seeing a message about climate change and maybe they're reacting negatively, maybe it's about renewable energy or public transportation or something, and maybe they have more egotistic values or hedonic values, what sort of messaging would be effective to reach them? 

(07:30): 

You can also, of course emphasize the other benefits that pro environmental actions have. Many energy saving behaviors you could do at home would save you money as well. Quite some pro-evironmental actions can be pleasurable as well. So then you can emphasize the co-benefits of these actions to trigger the motivation of these people. Other ways to motivate less motivated people is to see whether they're connected part of groups who are more Pro-environmental. Because what we find in our research is that when people are part of a group that finds it important to protect the environment, they're likely to internalize to adopt the goals of that group. And that means that they also find it important to, which may motivate them to do so in other occasions as well. And different groups might be relevant in respect. We have seen this in, in organizations. They might motivate their employees to act pro environmentally when an organization ha adopts pro environmental goals, it can also be bottom up initiative. So a local initiative in your neighborhoods trying to reduce environmental problems. But I would assume that it could also be a sports clubs or any other activity par club that you're part of. 

(08:49): 

Yeah, I know that role of groups is so important because we're such social creatures and yeah, I think that idea of even your workplace being pro environmental, cuz not everyone necessarily loves going to the mountains or going hiking or skiing or snowshoeing, but yeah, how do you reach them and how do you change their, even their emotional reaction to these messages? Right? So I think, yeah, that group message is so important. So if I strongly identify with a group, I assume that I'll probably take on those values more strongly, right? 

(09:18): 

Yeah, yeah. True. Yeah. And the other thing is it, it, it matters how you communicate it. So in some countries the at least a climate change is very much polarized. It's linked to political ideology. So people start being against doing something to help reduce climate change. Cause the, the words is eliciting negative emotions because it's associated with a certain political ideology. But if you then approach them from a different angles, link it to values that are important to them, it might already matter. So greenhouse gases is already sounding differently than climate. 

(09:56): 

Sure, yeah. I think that wording is so important. Even I think of like stewardship, that's a very kind of, I feel like a less politically charged word, right? And that might elicit positive emotions with someone who doesn't necessarily associate as an environmentalist. One thing I'm curious about, you kind of touched on it earlier, but with the hopelessness or despair, possibly even just feeling numbness, when you hear a message again and again that's climate change is bad and there's floods and heat waves and things. How do we keep that message fresh? Because I assume over time we're just going to tune it out, right? We're not gonna have that emotional reaction to that message. So how do we keep that emotion in the message? 

(10:34): 

Yeah, I think there's different answers to this what is what it is also already indicating and demonstrating what is happening. So we often emphasize climate change is still happening and very serious. It is serious. But we already implemented quite some policies and changes because if we wouldn't have taken these actions, climate change would've been more dramatic already. So it's also good to emphasize the things that are already being done and the many actors that are taking action so that people also get a, a sense of hope. Like, okay, it's not going fast enough far from, but many things are happening. And mostly social change is starting slowly and then it can increase and increase and reach a tipping point and it can become common practice, right? And you see many of these changes happening in the IPCC report. There's already examples. For example, the uptake of solar PV on roofs at private homes or batteries. Electric vehicles have gone much faster than many experts anticipated years ago. So that really demonstrate that chains can happen fast. And I think it's good to emphasize these examples as well and to understand why the uptake was so much faster than we anticipated so we can learn what the implications are for other things that we also wanna spread faster.  

(12:05): 

Yeah, it sounds like you're combining different emotions, right? So there's, yes, there's still a problem. Maybe it's a little bit fearful, but then maybe there's a bit of a hope message too, right? 

(12:13): 

Yeah, I, yeah, that's, that's very good because that's a very good suggestion that you're giving because people talk a lot lot about climate anxiety nowadays, right? Which is a major issue. And if people get very anxious and their wellbeing is harm, that's not a good thing. But no, climate anxiety would also not be a good thing because then probably people won't need to see any need to change their behavior to take action. 

(12:36): 

I think both of those are interesting for the person who doesn't care, how do we get them to care? How do we get them to feel those emotions appropriately? 

(12:45): 

Yeah. Well the, the question is better should to start with creating our, our listing the emotions in them or that you find other ways to make them change or to motivate them to change. Cause there's other ways as well, right? We, like we discussed earlier, people are social elements, they're also influenced by their social environment. So it might be that these people take up some action because they see others approve of it or disapprove of not doing it or because other people do it as well. 

(13:14): 

Yeah. And on the other side of things, if people are feeling maybe overly emotional and possibly anxious, what can they do to correct them? 

(13:22): 

I think in those cases it's particularly important to get people to think about what they can do and inform them of what they can do and to what extent this is helpful. And also inform them on the many things that other people do and that others do care. Because we find in our research that people generally underestimate the amount of care for the environment among other people. So they think they are more concerned about environmental problems and they're more aiming to reduce their environmental impact than other people. So correcting that misperception might also give them a sense of hope. Like, okay, I am not alone. Other people are also doing things. 

(14:03): 

Yeah. I found that super interesting. It was referenced in one of your papers that better-than-average effect, that yeah, people assume that I'm doing things more than others and they're clearly not pulling their weight. But that's a good point that if that's not the case, then people need to realize that cuz Yeah, it's, that's why I feel in over my head that's the title of the show is Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm doing all this alone, but clearly I'm not, so telling those stories would also probably elicit positive feelings, right, because you feel like you're not alone. 

(14:30): 

Yeah, exactly. And I think one of the reasons that people underestimate the level of care and actions among other people is because the negative is often emphasized in the media. So people are showcased that don't care or the climate skeptics are always permanently hurt in the media. While the amount of people that deny climate change is just such a small minority, it's, if you look around you it's, it looks much higher because yeah, they, they get a lot of attention. 

(15:01): 

Yeah. So I guess if you're trying to reach kind of a broad audience, are there more effective emotions to elicit? Cuz you don't know if they feel fearful or hopeful or guilty? 

(15:12): 

I think more generally people differ. So having a message that appeals to everyone is quite unlikely because it'll not appeal to everyone or it'll be so blurred that it is not that effective. So more generally tailoring messages to your audience is also important because then you can target the information to the issues that are important to people and then it's more likely to motivate them. 

(15:39): 

Yeah, I think of even targeting someone who maybe their values are in making money or it's more economical, right? Maybe possibly targeting the financial benefits of investing in renewable energy for example, right? 

(15:53): 

Yeah, indeed. But then you should be careful. I, I would always also link it to environmental benefits as much as possible. It's very unlikely that someone doesn't care about the environment at all, but someone might prioritize money. But if you only focus on money, then it's likely that people engage in the behavior as long as there are financial benefits. But when these are removed, why should you do it again? Right? Because there's no longer financial benefits. So then you just leave it, then you do exactly what you did before. And that's actually what we found in the study where people in this case got a free public transport card. They used it when they could travel for free but as soon as they had to pay for it again, they didn't use public transport anymore. And they also indicated yeah there's no financial benefit in doing so. 

(16:43): 

So only emphasizing the financial benefits is tricky in the Netherlands now we have the energy prices and people are to save energy at home. So there's a campaign emphasizing the financial benefits is can be effective now because people are motivated to save money. Many people can't even afford to pay their energy bill anymore, but happens when the energy prices drop again, then these people might think, well, okay now, now I can again eat my house very high temperatures or take longer showers because it's no longer expensive. So linking it to the environmental goal would imply that people not only do it for money but also for the environment and the environmental motive is still in place even if the prices would drop again. 

(17:32): 

Well that's really interesting. Yeah, I wouldn't have thought of that cause it seems like financial incentives are quite common and quite popular when you're looking at various forms of renewable energy and such. So that makes sense. Tapping into more of that altruistic value would be more long term. Oh, I like that. 

(17:46): 

Yeah. And you are right is oftentimes financial incentives are being used generally. We also think money is the main driver of actions. If we ask people themselves, they also mostly indicate yes, money is the most motivating for me. But if you look at the evidence and especially when the financial benefits are not that high, which is often the case in many things we do in our daily life, when financial incentives are rather small, it is mostly more effective to emphasize the environmental benefits because then people think it's not worth the effort. If I only save a few dollars, why should I do it? While they do think it's worth the effort when there's an environmental benefit in fault because it makes them feel good. 

(18:32): 

Yeah. And so it seems like values are kind of tied in with emotions as well, right? So what is the role of values when it comes to taking action? 

(18:40): 

Yeah, values are an important driver of actions. These are general goals that we strive for in our lives. So what we generally find important and for sustainable actions, four types of values are most relevant. And two of them make us focus on our own interest. And we tap on this already, it's hedonic values. We want to have a pleasurable life. We want to reduce effort and inconvenience. And IIC values means that we want to save money or enhance our resources can also be that we wanna enhance our status. And what we generally find is that people with relatively strong hedonic and egoistic values are less likely to act on climate change because in many cases this is somewhat less convenient, not that or somewhat more costly. There's also two types of values that make people focused on their collective interests. So the more common interests and it's altruistic values, we want other people to have a good life as well. 

(19:41): 

And it can be your close family but it can also be distant others like people in the developing world or future generations. And biospheric values means that people also care about nature and the environment as such. And in many cases, obviously doing something good for the environment, acting on climate changes would benefit other people and would benefit nature and the environment. So people with strong altruistic and biospheric values are more likely to act environmentally. These are also likely to affect which type of emotions are elicited. Positive emotions are more strongly and are elicit more likely when you encounter something that would support your values. So you feel positive if you have strong biospheric values and you'll see that a certain choice has pro and financial benefits from negative emotions are mostly elicited when something that you fail would be threatened. So the the type of emotions and the strength of emotions that are elicited also depend on the values that we have. 

(20:44): 

Yeah, I guess that goes back to the appropriate messaging. I guess. Guess that's kind of a tricky thing cuz maybe you don't know what sort of values people might hold, right? 

(20:51): 

Yeah. But you can measure it. You can ask them. That's indeed what we find in research. So let me give you a specific example of the study that we run. Half of the sample saw a documentary on a negative impact of bottle water. Bottle water is not only bad for the environment because of the plastics, but also because water is transported to your home and to the shop that is a lot of energy involved in producing and transporting it. So half of the people were informed about these negative impacts and the other half are totally unrelated movie. And we found across the board that this information did not change people's intention to reuse bottle water or the use of bottle. And it did also not change the acceptability of policies to limit the use of bottle. But then we looked into the role of values and we found that people with relatively strong biospheric values, they were more strongly motivated to use tap water instead of bottled water. And they found it also more acceptable that policies would be implemented to reduce this the selling of bottled water. While people with relatively weak biospheric values, they knew better about the negative impacts. So they understood the movie, they processed the information, but they didn't change their intentions. So it seems that this type of information is particularly motivating for people who endorse values that are targeted by the information. 

(22:23): 

No, that makes sense. Yeah, it's really interesting. Generally, do most people hold those biospheric values? Cuz I'm assuming that maybe those super egotistical hedonic people, there's probably not that many of them, right? 

(22:34): 

Yeah, good question. So what we generally find in our research also in representative samples that many people quite strongly endorse these biospheric and the altruistic values. So many people do care about the environment and particularly less strongly endorse egoistic values. Hedonic values are also relatively important to people. That implies indeed that there is a strong failure basis for pro action. And like I said before, it's not only that I often get a question like yeah, but people tell you that they care about the environment, but they do so give you a good impression of them. But it's not only cheap talk because the more people indicate they care about the environment, the more likely they are to act accordingly. 

(23:18): 

Ok. It's not just that you're trying to look good, you're actually genuinely believing in that. 

(23:22): 

Yeah, because you act on it. But still we face all kinds of environmental problems, right? And that is why many people think people don't care about the environment, but it is mostly that people don't always act upon their biospheric failures or their altruistic failures because sometimes it is really inconvenient or even not feasible or very costly to do do so. So its not that people don't care, but it's very difficult or unattractive for them to act on their values. This is because everyone endorses all these values to some extent they prioritize them differently, but people with strong biospheric values also care about ionic values. They also endorse istic values. And when acting to protect the environment, acting on climate change is really uncomfortable, too costly. Even those with very strong biospheric values are not likely to do it. It also implies that you can't hold people responsible for behavior change only because the choices that we make and how the attractiveness of the choices we face or depends on the context in which we make these decisions. 

(24:33): 

So, but policies implemented the infrastructure that is available, the type of products offered the quality and the price of product offered. So it means that if you want to promote behavior change, you should not only look at the consumer but also look at other actors that decides which choices we have and how attractive these choices are. So industry can develop other products, supermarkets can sell other products or advertise different products. The government can implement policies that make certain actions more attractive and others less attractive or feasible. So these actors also need to do things to enable consumers to act on the values that they find important. 

(25:18): 

Yeah, and I guess that ties into the larger picture, right? I think of, okay, let's say the government wants to implement a carbon tax for instance, and that's gonna elicit certain emotions for certain people. How do they do that in the most productive way without triggering those negative emotions for certain groups? 

(25:37): 

Yeah, that's a very good question. And it's also very good to look at acceptability of changes and policies because these are important. These policies if implemented, they could change the behavior of many people at once and people can really act quite emotionally to some proposals. And this is not only because they think it will harm them personally and have few benefits for them. Only oftentimes opposition is also race because people are concerned about the distribution of cost and benefits. So they have the feeling that some groups are disproportionately affected and they don't like it. So the distributed fairness we call it. So how cost benefits are distributed matters a lot. That's a, a lot of protest movements like the Yellow Vest movement that was against increase of, of fuel prices was mostly because people were concerned that poor people wouldn't be able to drive anymore. What also matters is how decisions are being made and whether people have the feeling that a decision procedure was transparent, whether their concerns have been considered. And it doesn't mean that people want no policy that would have any negative impacts, but they want to have the feeling that their concerns have been considered and addressed when possible. So we call that procedural fairness. So whether fair transparent procedures have been followed is important as well. And one way to do this is to organize public participation to invite people to think along about the changes being made. 

(27:14): 

Linda, was there anything else you wanted to cover around emotions or values that I haven't thought to touch on that would be applicable? 

(27:20): 

Well, maybe or misperceptions that people have that we not only underestimate people's biospheric failure, but we also overestimate the number of climate deniers. And we recently looked into the literature whether what is often discussed by people don't act is that the, the the consequences are only fiscal in the future. So people discount future consequences, distance consequences are not as influential as things that we experience just here. And now, one of our post-docs just looked into the literature and she found that there's hardly any evidence for this psychological distancing and we call it so that people don't act because they think the consequences of climate change are not feasible yet, are only affecting other people. If you look at the leadership, majority of people think climate change is happening and they'll have consequences for them personally. It's also not that people who think the consequences are more distant from them are less likely to act as no relationship between the likelihood that people think far away. 

(28:28): 

It's happened far away to other people is affecting their choices and also importantly convincing people that the consequences are already feasible here and now has no impact on actions. So this is a common idea, common assumption that you often hear repeated over. And again also in the academic literature by the way, while there's hardly any evidence, and I think it's important to identify these things because it means that we invest time and resources in strategies that are not effective and we should now really come up with evidence-based policies because time is short and we should really find the solutions, the interventions that help people to act on the, the beliefs they have and the concerns they have. 

(29:14): 

No, yeah, that's super important cuz I, in talking with other guests and just the general reading I've been doing, yeah, temporal distancing, physical distancing comes up that, that and that you go, okay, that makes sense, but that's interesting that that wasn't the case. 

(29:26): 

Yeah. And the, the idea is I think was mostly adopted from the financial domain and there is true, right? Because a dollar now is more than a dollar in 10 years just because of inflation. And then intuitively you indeed think oh yeah, the same happens with the environmental but there's hardly any evidence. And a colleague from Norway, looked into this a little bit more and her reasoning is this is because climate change and environmental issues are moral issues and then it doesn't matter if a consequences feasible now or in 10 years. 

(29:59): 

Oh wow, that's really interesting. I'm so glad that you shared that with me. I feel better now. Good.  

(30:04): 

. 

(30:05): 

Yeah. So I think that kind of ties into my last question. So this show is about empowering citizens to take action on the climate crisis when it comes to emotions and values. What can people do individually to have an impact? 

(30:19): 

Yeah, great question. We can do a lot, much more than many people think. We can communicate with others about your failures so that others will also become aware like, oh, I'm not the only one who cares, others care as well. The failures are more general goals that you strive for in life and people act upon these failures in many different situation. So if you know that other people care as well are likely to act pro-environmentally in many occasions as well, it might empower you to do something individually because you think you know that you're not li likely not the only one. So this matters. And the other thing that you can do also, not only act from your role as a consumer, but also in other capacities that you have, you might be an employer and help make your organization greener or be part of spark Clubs convincing others to do the same. So I think it's also important to share and to discuss these issues with others because that might empower people all over. 

(31:23): 

I think that's some great advice. So this has been a very interesting conversation. Linda, thanks so much for coming on the show. 

(31:29): 

Thank you for inviting me. 

(31:33): 

Well, that was my chat with Linda. Although we covered emotions and values, really the thing that actually stood out for me was that temporal distancing and physical distancing and how we actually don't discount the future as much when it comes to the environment as compared to the financial world. And I think that's so important cuz we need to question those assumptions and not always just assume that this is the case. Well, that's all for me. I'm Michael Bartz. Here's the feeling a little less in over our heads when it comes to saving the planet. We'll see you again soon. In Over My Head was produced and hosted by Michael Bartz original theme song by Gabriel Thaine If you would like to get in touch with us, email info@inovermyheadpodcast.com. Special thanks to Telus STORYHIVE for making this show possible. 

(32:18): 

I'm trying to save the planet oh will someone please save me?