Presented at the July 12, 2010 symposium, Defying Conventional Wisdom: Bringing Our Communities Together for Energy and Climate Action"

There is a fast-growing interest in this notion of the “behavioral wedge,” the estimated  123 million metric tons of carbon or 20% of household emissions that we could keep from emitting into the atmosphere with simple changes in human behavior that cost little or nothing, and take little or no time.  There is a fast-growing cadre of psychologists working on strategies, tactics and tools. One of the most popular on the speaking circuit is Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Cialdini has honed a body of work with the notion of conformity bias, and as an advisor to O-Power, he has persuaded many people of the importance of telling individual energy consumers how their use compares to that of their peers.  He notes how much the details of the message matter.  For example, if a hotel tells its guests that people like them often reuse their towels to save energy, that behavior increases.  If the guests are told that people like them in this hotel often reuse their towels, the behavior increases some more.  And if the message is targeted to each room - telling the current guest in Room 409 how many of the previous guests in that room have reused their towels (or engaged in any other energy saving behavior) the reuse goes up even more.

↓Cialdini gave a widely-forwarded interview to Grist Magazine, entitled “It doesn’t matter what people think - just what they do.”  No matter what results he is achieving, this worries me.   Certainly, behavior change is the goal.  But if we don’t also pay attention to attitudes and values, we are missing a giant opportunity - namely the opportunity to enlist the public as allies, not just as objects of our behavioral campaigns.  If we don’t do that, sooner or later, we are destined to keep intervening and intervening and intervening, raising the risk that the fastest growing green jobs will not be home energy efficiency technicians or solar installers in our low income communities, but behavioral psychologists and program managers.  

My doctoral research, and our work at Sustainable Hudson Valley, has revolved around a search for higher leverage -- a phase shift of sorts:  from social engineering to social movement.   While making good use of the tools developed by NYSERDA, the utilities, and many other allies, is there a way to position our work so that the public is not just the customers, but part of the sales force?  Most mainstream energy outreach campaigns are based on the reality that "ordinary" people are not early adopters or leaders, so this will not be a majority stance. But if we are going to change patterns of energy use significantly, we need people-power on our side.  Does anyone here remember Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point? He explored behavioral changes that have blazed through cultures - and a quirky mixture of changes, from the fad of Hush Puppy shoes to safer sex to avoid disease transmission.  And these changes moved in a consistent way, through social networks.... with a consistent set of transmission nodes, in the form of people he called connectors, mavens, and salespeople.  The connectors bring people together to discover new options and relationships; the mavens bring knowledge and help overcome barriers; and the salespeople say, OK, it’s time to go for it.  Yes, humans are change-avoidant - except when we’re not!  

The American Psychological Association has 54 separate divisions - 54 areas of professional practice from family systems to child development to mass communications. All of them have something to do with human behavior.  Where are there insights about social change?  How might we make use of social networks so that healthy behavior changes are accelerated and the people of the community are allies?  I have three  favored sources,  the psychologies of social conformity and dissent, peak performance, and social movement participation.

The psychology of social conformity and dissent, first, provides a strong basis for the approach that NYSERDA has taken as a state agency concerned with reaching a broad spectrum of ordinary people. Going against the grain can be scary - but more for some than for others.  So we need to work with people who are early adopters - not just of energy efficiency behaviors, but who are comfortable with change.  With leadership by people who open up a safe space for divergent views and behaviors,  tolerance and pluralism can become norms in their own right.  And on the way down that path, we can help people consider lifestyle change in groups, not as isolated individuals.

Community-based social marketing is a framework for helping populations adopt behavior changes over time.  Think water-saving campaigns with stickers on the public faucets, and bubbly college students knocking on your door explaining how to avoid wasting water with your lawn sprinkler.   It helps create new norms through commitments, reminders, behavioral models, and other techniques whose effectiveness is well known.    

The psychology of peak performance tells us that humans can do amazing things.  The moon launch and the mobilization for World War II are such popular metaphors for the kind of campaign we need to deal with climate change, because those societal accomplishments show not only the capacity of individuals, but the capacity of social organization.  There is a “zone” of peak performance, for a human being, that comes when we set stretch goals just a little bit out of reach, and create support systems & training processes to build capability. In peak performance psychology - whether we are working with athletes or performing artists or corporate executives - a key to motivation is meaning.  People stretch for goals that matter to them.  

The psychology of social movement participation tells us that the processes of change that have moved through American history, whether for civil rights or environmental care  - do not happen by accident or magic, but follow a social logic.  They happen as people, usually in groups, begin to see that their well-being and self-respect are tied to something larger. In the language of developmental psychology, people “hatch out” from a lived reality of “me first” into “we together.”   They reframe their identity and self-interest as part of something larger.  A study of 100 effective social change leaders who were in it for the long haul - Common Fire: Lives of Commitment in a Complex World - identified a set of experiences that had brought people together with a commitment to change their world. Connection... compassion... confession.....  difficult, consuming, rewarding experiences.  

There is also a sociology of social movement participation, and one key feature is the small group as a mediating structure between the overall movement and the individual.  Think of congregations in the black church in the civil rights movement.  Small groups that are well led bring people together to make new sense of the situation and their options for action.  

There is a common feature among these pathways of change.  They all tend to engage people through interpersonal experience, not relying only on mass communications.  Going back to Gladwell and the diffusion of innovations, in social movements, the connectors seem to be the key figures.

Suppose we in the Hudson Valley were to come together around a vision of breaking our energy addition and showing our  creative chops -  and a goal with a little “stretch” quality, like cutting our carbon footprint 10%?   What if we took to heart that success would most likely come with participation, and what if we set the goal of involving 10% of our people in leadership for this vision?  Suppose we worked with the psychologies I’ve discussed?    What would our campaign look like?  

It would be social and face to face, yet scalable.

It would challenge and support.

It would be memorable and distinctive, with a human-faced, beautiful logo and a regularly replenished wellspring of inspiring stories to tell.

It would use the tested methods of community-based social marketing, like commitment, support, overcoming barriers, modeling, etc.

It would have a specific goal, and flexible means.  

Out of these principles has come SHV’s Ten Percent Challenge campaign.