Meeting Environmental Challenges - The role of human identity

An examination of particular aspects of human identity and how they are associated with environmental problems, before identifying strategies to mitigate the extent to which these aspects are encouraged in our culture, and how alternative aspects of our nature could be promoted and celebrated.

• “Identity influences how people respond to the broader social world and how they choose to live their lives”
• “Values… are the aspects of people’s identities that reflect what they deem to be desirable, important, and worthy of striving for in their lives”
• Values are “higher order cognitions that influence the more specific attitudes individuals hold with regard to the people, objects and ideas they encounter in the world”
• Values are also “higher order motivations that organise the more specific goals and low-level behaviours that constitute many aspects of people’s day-to-day lives”
• Example - if someone places weight on security values, they are likely to be more supportive of government policy that ensures low crime rates, and they are more likely to hold the handrail when descending steps
• Social identity - the groups to which a person feels they belong
• “When people ask the question “Who am I?” they typically answer by including their membership of particular groups based on gender, race, nationality, profession, religion or political leanings, as well as their membership of smaller groups such as being fans of certain football teams or types of music”
• Recognition of in-group members leads to feelings of belonging, but also creates an out-group
• “An extensive body of social psychological research on social identity demonstrates that after having classified others as belonging either to the in-group or to the out-group, people typically treat members of these groups in ways that enhance the standing of their in-group relative to the out-group (Hewstone et al., 2002; Whitley & Kite, 2006).”
• “human identity is formed in important part through interactions with one’s society and culture. Thus, part of the reason that individuals take on identities that are environmentally problematic is that such identities are supported, and sometimes even encouraged, by the broader social context which, in turn, is importantly shaped by public policies.”
• “Government policies send important signals to consumers about institutional goals and national priorities. They indicate in sometimes subtle but very powerful ways the kinds of behaviours that are rewarded in society, the kinds of attitudes that are valued, the goals and aspirations that are regarded as appropriate, what success means and the worldview under which consumers are expected to act. Policy signals have a major influence on social norms, ethical codes and cultural expectations. (Jackson, 2004: 117)”
• Campaigners should address and disable features of society which promote environmentally problematic aspects of identity
• “Kasser and colleagues (2004) specified two main causes of the relatively strong adoption of materialistic, self-interested values. One is social modelling. Research shows that exposing people to messages promoting materialistic values tends to lead them to adopt such values themselves. For instance, studies have found that people express materialistic values more strongly when their peers or parents express these values, when they watch more television or are exposed to other forms of media, and when they live in a more economically competitive social and political context.”
• “Psychological insecurity is the second factor known to cause an orientation towards materialistic values. As we saw in Section 3.4, reminders of death increase people’s orientation towards such values. Other forms of psychological insecurity that have been empirically associated with the adoption of such values include having emotionally cold, controlling parents, experiencing divorce as a child, feeling economically deprived, and even experiencing temporary hunger”.
• “environmental organisations consider the best ways to reduce the detrimental environmental effects of self-enhancing, materialistic values, they can work to: (i) decrease the extent to which such values are modelled socially; (ii) help people cope with feelings of insecurity in more adaptive ways; and (iii) develop programmes and policies that promote intrinsic, self-transcendent values for personal growth, close relationships and helping the broader world.”
• “As Tim Jackson (2009) writes: [P]olicy shapes and co-creates the social world. So the idea that it is not only legitimate but possible for the state to intervene in changing the social logic of consumerism is far less problematic than is often portrayed. A critical task is to identify (and correct) those aspects of this complex social structure which provide perverse incentives in favour of a materialistic individualism. (p. 95).”
• Advertising and marketing as prominent means of encouraging materialistic values - government policy is often in favour of extending its reach
• Campaign for the development and implementation of new measures of national progress
• Discrimination and prejudice against out-groups decline when egalitarian values and empathy are activated in people’s minds
• In some conditions, contact between groups can reduce anxiety and create empathy
• Processes of handling negative feelings of fear or discomfort are promoted by families and societies - “broader social structures and social models render some means of emotional management acceptable and others unacceptable; for example, cultures vary in the extent to which they encourage public demonstration of grief following bereavement.” - Hochschild (1979)
• Mindfulness has an association with less materialistic values and a greater association with intrinsic values
• “The direct additive impact of large numbers of individuals changing their behaviour in ways that lead to small reductions in their personal environmental impacts will be a small reduction in overall environmental impact (McKay, 2008). However, it also seems likely that communications which exaggerate the environmental impact of simple and painless steps might actually serve to encourage individuals to deploy such strategies for diversion (see Section 3.1), thereby leaving them less inclined to adopt other, more difficult and perhaps environmentally significant, behavioural changes (see also WWF, 2009).”
• Campaigns which aim to name and shame (e.g. make driving an SUV socially unacceptable) are likely to make those targeted deploy copying mechanisms (denial of guilt, projection, self-esteem enhancing behaviour), but also may make the non-targeted less likely to engage as they are being encouraged to project their guilt.
• “Arguments that humans are in some way evolutionarily predisposed to be materialistic, to denigrate nature, or to respond to fear in destructive ways are sometimes used to suggest that the best strategies that environmental organisations can deploy are to attempt to exploit those areas of convergence between short-term self-interest and environmental imperative.” - cultural influences play a particularly formative role in shaping our values
• How people cope with threat is largely shaped by messages received by their culture
• “According to the cognitive scientist George Lakoff, messages can be characterised by both surface framing and deep framing. Surface framing refers to catchy slogans and clever spin. Deep framing refers to forging the connections between a debate or public policy and a set of deeper values or principles. Surface framing (crafting particular messages focusing on particular issues) cannot work unless these messages resonate with a set of long-term deep frames.”
• “Material policy consists of the nuts and bolts, what is done in the world to fulfil policy goals. Cognitive policy is about the values and ideas that both motivate the policy goals and that have to be uppermost in the minds of the public and the media in order for the policy to seem so much a matter of common sense that it will be readily accepted (Brewer and Lakoff, 2008a: 1).”
• “Concentrating on material criteria alone can be counterproductive if a policy is either unpopular, or if it instils in the public’s mind long-term values that contradict the aims of the policy (Brewer and Lakoff, 2008b: 3).”
• Policies or regulations have cognitive implications - they are likely to either support or undermine change in the longer term
• If campaigns are unsuccessful, they will still have cognitive implications
• The experience of policy also needs to reinforce the deep frames necessary for systemic change
• “Such an approach will require changes in current monitoring and evaluation processes. So long as the success of environmental campaigns is defined solely in terms of short-term material policy outcomes, it may be difficult to encourage cognitive policy goals to be built into them.”
• Marjorie Spiegel (1996) writes: “Any oppression helps to support other forms of domination. That is why it is vital to link oppressions in our minds, to look for the common, shared aspects, and work against them as one” (p.30).
• Working in common cause
  • to campaign for material policy changes which have cognitive implications
    • agree a set of deep frames to promote and then use their different policy campaigns as vehicles to convey them [“According to some political scientists, this is the approach that the American political Right took with great success from the Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush administrations: Conservative think tanks, over the past three decades, have been extremely successful in pure cognitive policy, that is, in shaping public discourse to lead the public to accept basic conservative values and principles. That long-term investment has paid off in making material conservative policies seem natural (Brewer and Lakoff 2008b: 1).]