Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Can psychology help manipulate people into accepting climate alarmism, and adjusting their personal lifestyles? According to The Conversation, the answer might be yes – but people have to believe and trust the information they are given.
The Paris agreement on climate change calls for a global responsibility to cooperate. As we are often reminded, we urgently and drastically need to limit our use of one shared resource – fossil fuels – and its effect on another – the climate. But how realistic is this goal, both for national leaders and for us? Well, psychology may hold some answers.
Psychologists and economists have long explored the conflict between short-term individual and long-term collective interests when dealing with shared resources. Think of the commons dilemma: the scenario in which a field for grazing cattle works well when everyone cooperates by sticking to one cow each, but which leads to the so-called “tragedy of the commons” if more selfish drives take over.
It is useful to think about overuse of fossil fuels and its effect on the climate as a similar dilemma. If we were to think of this from a purely economic perspective, we would likely act selfishly. But psychological research should make us more optimistic about cooperation.
We don’t identify and act just as individuals but as members of social groups. We may belong to a family, a community, a nation and the planet, and behave in ways that benefit the group rather than the individual. A shared group identity (such as identifying yourself as a member of your nation or the local school community) can increase cooperation, especially if we believe that group shares our values about the environment. If you strongly identify with your community you don’t need an incentive to cooperate.
But at what level should this shared identity be emphasised? Emphasising national identity can prevent cooperation between nations, by increasing competition between them. However, this can be used to an advantage, since nations care about their reputation. So perhaps they could compete to be better than others at meeting climate change goals?
… Big decisions could be facilitated by many of the psychological processes we have described, that focus on global identity, long-term gain rather than short-term loss, intergroup competition and reputation, rewards, shared norms, providing sufficient and clear information, and instilling trust and transparency.
Trust is a huge issue with the climate movement. All the wild predictions which have failed, the sometimes hysterical refusal to release raw data, the often opaque manipulation of data, the shouting down of criticism rather than engagement, the name calling, the threats – not exactly a trust building exercise.
Then of course there is the bizarre refusal on the part of most greens, to embrace options which might actually reduce CO2, such as nuclear power – which in my opinion raises legitimate concerns, that greens care less about CO2, than they care about their political objectives.
There is also the question of whether increased cooperation is actually a good idea. Cooperation might sound warm and fuzzy, but cooperation can be the opposite of freedom. The more people feel compelled to cooperate, to act in a certain way, the less freedom they have to make their own decisions. It doesn’t matter whether that “cooperation” is enforced by fear of consequences, or through more subtle manipulations, such as messages which promote shame, guilt, and peer pressure – either way, people subject to this kind of manipulation lose some of their freedom. Extreme cooperation is sometimes necessary, when society is imperilled by a threat of military invasion, or other imminent disaster; But history is full of stories of societies whose liberty was overturned, when cooperation went too far, when the people traded freedom for unity.
As the famous author Terry Pratchett once wrote, “Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.”.