Individual actions to create change: An unspoken truth
Do the little things really matter? How individual actions lead to tipping points that create systemic change.
The word ‘sustainable’ is a big word, much bigger than people think. And for a ‘sustainable’ model to be successful, it must be approached from many perspectives.
So today we’re writing about one vital aspect that includes you and the little things you do every day, and putting forward our line of argument on a narrative that is fiercely controversial amongst activists.
That being, achieving a ‘sustainable’ world is not a choice between individual actions and systemic change - because both are inextricably linked.
And although individual actions are not a substitute for institutional or cultural changes, they can be a catalyst or trigger for it, and hence are an integral and necessary component to achieve a much more sustainable world.
It is a matter of fact that new institutions, laws, or regulations in the sustainability space have come about because of individual actions accumulated over time, such as votes, movements and consumer boycotts.
So, yes, individual actions, or changes in behaviour (in this context of sustainability), are necessary for larger-scale changes. There is no collective impact without individual action.
It starts with me, the hero in this story
When a person sees themselves as someone who acts for the betterment of society they create a ‘sustainability driven identity’, an identity that is persistent and can impact behaviour over long periods of time. These are changes that leave an imprint, and influence our personality and our environment (and of course, the people around us..)
Self-perception theories suggest that when people engage in behaviours, the action itself starts to shape their perception of themselves.
This means that an initiative that targets a behaviour, such as shifting diet or using a reusable water bottle, can start to create an identity that makes people more likely to engage in similar behaviours in the future. In addition, it can create something called behavioural momentum, where one behaviour leads to other, often more complex behavioural shifts.
The gap between our values and our actions
Great so let’s just tell everyone the facts in order to create this behavioural momentum, right? Oh dear…not so fast.
As self-perceived sustainability heroes, we just can’t help ourselves and keep falling into the trap - we continuously make the mistake of broadly assuming that motivating other people with knowledge and insights, will lead them to take an action or make a choice that is more ‘sustainable’ (and hence become a sustainability hero like me too).
Take for example changing to a plant-based diet, its an obvious move based on how much carbon you save when substituting oat milk for cow milk, right? Well, unfortunately folks it’s not as easy as that, because the effectiveness of just ‘information’ alone to change behaviour is debatable (and based on our experience, it doesn’t cut the milk).
Different people will respond and interpret the same information in various ways, and sometimes it is interpreted in an opposite way to what is expected. This is because people's values are not fixed and very often contradictory, and are always negotiated in a social setting. You know, that feeling you get in a social setting when you do a fake smile and nod of agreement, when in your mind you’re like “yeah I know, I know, but probably or definitely not doing this…”
The hard truth for the sustainability know-alls is, despite the unrelenting desire to wax the facts, cognitive factors such as education and information have a much lesser effect on people’s choices to take an action than we tend to think. Even in situations where a person learns the information and genuinely feels like they really do give a damn (they maybe even shed a tear when they found it out), when faced with the next opportunity to take a different action based on that knowledge, yeah nah, they skipped it.
This phenomenon is coined as the ‘Value-Action Gap’ in social psychology, and can be defined as:
“..the observed disparity between people's reported concerns about key environmental, social, economic or ethical concerns and the lifestyle or purchasing decisions that they make in practice.” Sustainable Development Commission
But, hang on though, a lot of people have in fact changed to plant-based milk. So if they didn’t do it because they found out it reduces their personal carbon footprint (which is awesome by the way), why then are they all doing it?
Social diffusion: 🐵 monkey see , monkey do🐒
Luckily, research has showed us that individual actions have a really important ripple effect. Your actions have the power to affect the behaviours of everyone in your immediate vicinity. So the small actions you take, even on the low-down, are likely multiplying without you even realising it.
This is because humans copy the behaviours of other humans around them through a process called diffusion.
Essentially, it is a process of social change in which elements of culture spread from one society or social group to another. It is a process where a social phenomena spreads in groups in a virus-like manner, starting off within more intimate social relations like friends and family, to then spread to wider social networks such as schools or workplaces.
Things that spread through social diffusion include ideas, values, concepts, knowledge, practices, behaviours, materials, and symbols.
..when you’re designing for social change, you want to design your project in a way that hooks into the deeply social nature of our being to imitate others. It means that instead of putting all your efforts into approaches to influence people such as pushing facts, using fear-based messages, or trying to pass more legislation, you can allocate some energy to simply showing people by example what you want them to do.
Katie Patrick, How To Save The World, p 296, 2019
Therefore, don't underestimate the power of your individual actions. You have a great effect on everyone around you with your actions, and this effect can multiply even without you noticing it, so every action you take has the potential to create an effect bigger than the act itself. And when people close to you are adopting these changes they will also find it is easier than they first thought. If they can do it, why can't I?
Compounding small-scale actions to create social ‘tipping points’
In sociology, a tipping point is a point in time when a group of - or many group members - rapidly and dramatically changes its behaviour by widely adopting a previously rare practice.
The term 'Tipping Point' was widely popularised in terms of application to daily life in Malcolm Gladwell's bestselling book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.
"The Law of the Few" is, as Gladwell states:
"The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts." Economists call this the "80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the 'work' will be done by 20 percent of the participants".
Malcolm Gladwell , The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, p 19
Similar to the process of social diffusion, all new technologies, products, ideas or behaviours spread through communities in a process called the Technology Adoption Life-cycle.
It describes the process from where the first movers or ‘innovators’ get early adopters to take up a new behaviour, e.g. eating plant-based food, to the point where this practice becomes mainstream or the norm of the majority of the population.
Research conducted by scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute found that when just 10 percent of innovators and early adopters of the population hold an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of people who will simply change their beliefs.
This is a point of adoption also referred to as crossing the chasm.
As soon as the innovators cross the adoption line, and the early adopters are captured, the movement will grow as it breaks into the third segment, the early majority. After the early majority see a number of people doing it, they will probably jump on board as well. By the time the majority has jumped on board, fifty percent of the population will be on board. It is at this point that the fourth group, the late majority, realises that they have fallen behind, and have suddenly become the minority - Doh!
Eventually, as the amount of individual actions by the innovators and early adopters of sustainability increases, we will reach a ‘social tipping point’ where the dominant behaviours switch and reinforce the best rather than the worst in human nature, as more and more people adopt the behaviours that more closely align with how much they care about the future of our planet.
These are individual actions where everyone matters, where collaborating and looking after each other and the living world is not just cool but simply normal.
Where the hero in the story is no longer just ‘me’ but ‘we’.
Thanks for reading!
This was part of a series of foundational articles where we share the reasoning and design approach for the Pozzle Planet game-app. Make sure to read our other articles and hit subscribe to automatically receive the next pieces in this pozzle (pun intended) coming out soon!