UMass Amherst, UPenn research suggests invoking moral obligation may help
University of Massachusetts Amherst
AMHERST, Mass. – One of the more complex problems facing social psychologists today is whether any intervention can move people to change their behavior about climate change and protecting the environment for the sake of future generations.
Now researchers Hanne Melgård Watkins at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Geoffrey Goodwin at the University of Pennsylvania report after their recent experiments that an intergenerational reciprocity approach ¬- asking people to reflect on sacrifices made in the past by others for their benefit today – may generate gratitude and a sense of moral obligation to people in the future.
Details of their studies exploring this are online now in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin published by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
As Watkins says, “The question is how to motivate people to care for future generations. Other researchers have shown that reciprocity can be a powerful motivator. If someone does something for my benefit, that creates a sense of obligation to reciprocate, but if I can’t reciprocate directly for some reason, I might instead try to “pay it forward.” In our experiments, we tried to take that idea and scale it up to get people to feel a moral obligation to future generations by having them reflect on what people in previous generations had done for them.”
She adds that intergenerational reciprocity research has shown that this approach can work, at least with people playing games. “If the last participant in a game paid their winnings forward, people are more likely to do the same for those coming along after them.”
Overall, Watkins and Goodwin, who conducted this study while Watkins was at UPenn, state that “our studies revealed that such reflection – on sacrifices made by past generations – predicts and causes a heightened sense of moral obligation towards future generations, mediated by gratitude. However there are also some downsides, for example, feelings of unworthiness, and perceptions of obligation do not substantially affect pro-environmental attitudes or motivations.”
Further, “while reflecting on past generations’ sacrifice can generate a sense of intergenerational obligation, it is limited in the extent to which it can increase pro-environmental concern.” Watkins adds, “Feeling is one thing, actually doing is another.”
With climate change, the researchers note that they had chosen a rather broad topic “more distant and diffuse” than some others investigated in previous studies on intergenerational reciprocity. Thus their survey asked respondents to reflect on past sacrifices made by their families or others during the fairly clear sacrifices made such as in the Great Depression, World War II, or by parents who scrimped and saved to put children through college; “big sacrifices that cannot be directly reciprocated,” Watkins notes.
For this work, she and Goodwin conducted five experimental online studies where at least 200 participants and sometimes as many as 500, were asked to write reflections on either sacrifices made by past generations or, for the control condition, to write on fashion choices made by past generations. Subjects were Americans, half male, half female and though the sample was “not representative but a fairly well varied population,” Watkins points out. At least one of the five studies was a replication of the first survey.
They found that when people had reflected on past sacrifices they were more likely to report feeling a sense of moral obligation to future generations. “We then asked whether they’d be willing to pay a higher tax or make other actual sacrifices in their daily lives to help future generations deal with climate change,” Watkins notes. “In this we found no effect,” but there was a strong correlation between a sense of moral obligation to future generations and willingness to sacrifice. “This correlation may exist without any intervention,” she adds.
Finally, Watkins reports that in a mini-meta-analysis of their five experiments, they did observe a small but significant effect on willingness to make sacrifices for the environment after reflecting on others’ past sacrifices.
“It’s nice that this might make a difference, but it’s not clear whether it’s large enough to use, to implement as an intervention,” she points out. “We feel it is valuable to have explored the question, but if you want action on climate change you might be better served by trying something else. Maybe contact your local representative.”
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This is another “They aren’t receiving our message, how can we get through to them?” essay.
The message is being received, the public isn’t buying it.
That’s another progressive constant – they think that if you disagree, you must not understand – they apparently can’t accept that you can understand them perfectly well and believe their points are completely invalid.
Close-minded narcissism.
OT but you might be interested in this, Roger Hallam co-founder of Extinction Rebellion has been accused of downplaying the Nazis genocide of 6 million Jews by arguing in an interview that the significance of the Holocaust has been overplayed.
Just another misanthropic hater, that would do well in the UK labour party.
How about if those so-called sacrifices include getting the younglings in the current generation of dysfunctional ecohippies to pick up after themselves and stop leaving trash everywhere they go?
They don’t care about the planet. They really don’t. They only care about appearing in some part of social media that says they were “THERE”, wherever “THERE” is. And did they leave a mark? Yeah, the outline of their idiocy glued to the pavement or to a fence with toxic stuff like acrylic glue, something that someone else has to clean up because they are too self-involved to do it themselves.
It never seems to occur to these people that the basic assumptions that underpin their study are incorrect and as a result they are wasting our time, their time and no doubt, taxpayers’ money.
I suggest invoking the correct moral obligation questions toward the people that need to be questioned. Start with narcissist liars like Mann. Then we don’t have to pay them through political non-science deep state politicians to come up with tripe like this.
“…asking people to reflect on sacrifices made in the past by others for their benefit today – may generate gratitude and a sense of moral obligation to people in the future.”
If they had studied the history of first time around from the 60s crowd they would have found out. Bumper stickers in the oil patch prescient about what happened when they froze. Lots of windmills became fossil posts, lots more available now. Who is going to maintain the lights? Some windmills persisted, California as I recall.
Some did put off reproduction. Some went into academia. Some went into politics. Some did all three. Wonder if descendants are genetically related? Wondering about the future who will predict about the next time? They predict everything else!
Anyone who puts off reproduction in the name of preserving the earth is doing the Gene Pool a vast favor
Toujours psychobollox.
To get people to change the way they behave is very simple: Stop lying to them, and stop being hypocritical.
Sending out people who have carbon footprints the size of a small city to yell at people about the changes they need to make, is not gonna ever get anyone to change anything, most of all not change their mind.
No one needs to believe in global warming catastrophism to become more conscious of energy usage, and to accept that taking steps to conserve energy is a good idea.
Wasting energy is a waste of money.
People can be easily persuaded to do things that save money, especially if such things are painless or nearly so, like turning off lights that are not needed, getting and using a programmable thermostat, replacing energy wasting light bulbs, etc.
But few are gonna be persuaded by in-your-face condemnations from profligate energy wasters who fly around in private jets, own gigantic yachts and multiple huge mansions, and in general live lives of massively conspicuous consumption.
Stop insulting people, and lead by example…or shut the hell up.
Stop sending out movie actors and small children to tell everyone about “the science”.
Stop exaggerating, stop making stuff up, stop calling people experts who clearly are not.
Stop telling only one side of a controversial subject.
Stop changing the meaning of words, and trying to gaslight people into accepting such obvious nonsense.
Of course, even if they stopped doing those things, they will still have the problem of having zero credibility due to having lied nonstop for years on end and making predictions that proved to be incorrect.
Squandered credibility is something no one can ever regain, least of all regained by dreaming up ever more elaborate and dire tales of imminent woe.
It is amazing to read about people, who consider themselves to be smart, debating amongst themselves which new shade of lipstick will make their pig look the most kissable!
Why do they always look like that?
“Stepford
wivesclimatologists.Assuming facts not in evidence, that believe in global warming means someone is pro environment. A recent study suggests that skeptics exhibit more pro-environmental behavior.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494418301488
Climate-“protection” has nothing in common with environment protection, in contrast.
Notice the assumption that one needs to change their behavior. The proper reduction of CO2 reduction involves nothing more than supporting the creation of a gen 4 nuclear powerplant network. The only legitimate solutions require no changes in human behavior.
Another “me too” trying to climb onto the gravy train of climate change research. But haven’t you considered how this could backfire on you Madame Watson? As many other contributors to this thread I have also been “reflecting on past generations’ sacrifice”: they have invested a lot of their work to develop the civilization we live in, with abundant energy (for most), almost trebled life expectancy (as compared to pre-1900), virtually annihilated child mortality, vastly increased production of science and art, … I indeed feel the “sense of intergenerational obligation” to maintain and build on the sacrifices of my ancestors for future generations – and keep your grubby little green hands off our sources of energy!
So warmists think reciprocity is fine unless you’re the President?
The amoral using moral arguments to try and influence the moral. Using peoples morality against them is nothing new. The left in this country have been doing that for years. They tried to scold the “moral majority” for voting for Trump. There is no wedge that is off limits. It’s “for the children” you know.
To err is human, to project error is inhuman.
I’m not convinced we have a crisis, so I’m not convinced of the necessity to change any behavior.
I’m not convinced when politicos lead the charge with failed predictions and the advocacy reps “educate” students on the hot spot that never happened. Those are just samples of the concerns that go far beyond that. I’m also greatly concerned about the shallow depth of knowledge in the general public and policy leaders on this global emergency.
More insanity. Are the authors proposing to go to China and India to educate the masses in the sacrifices made for them in the past?
Doing it in Massachussets will have zero effect on global emissions. Doing it in the whole USA will have minimal effect.
These people always implore the people whose actions can make little or no difference to do things. They never think about who has to act to really make reductions in global emissions.
Its this crazed idea that the US is the centre of the world as far as CO2 is concerned.
“… whether any intervention can move people to change their behavior about climate change …”
The unstated assumption is that a change is necessary and desirable. Yet, this individual believes she knows the answer when she is almost certainly unqualified to assess the evidence and come to an independent conclusion. She is depending on an implied authority as published in biased journals and reported in the liberal Media. Changes that she believes are necessary will almost certainly have unintended consequences, in proportion to the magnitude of the changes. Yet, she doesn’t acknowledge that there is even the potential for harm from what she advocates. She is seeing, at best, only half of the picture. The question should really be, “How can intervention move people to be less arrogant and conceited about what they think they know?”
The willingness of people of a given generation to sacrifice for future generations depends on the severity of the threat.
Those who lived through the Great Depression knew that something had to be done to end it, after millions of people who were prosperous during the 1920’s were suddenly poor and/or unemployed during the 1930’s. Those who fought in World War II were legitimately frightened of the terrible consequences if Hitler and the Nazis had been allowed to dominate Europe for decades beyond the five years (1939-1944) they already dominated Europe.
After the Communist takeover of Eastern Europe, Western democracies were keenly aware of the need to prevent the spread of communism and the threat represented by the Soviet Union, while also having to avoid the possibility of nuclear war, which could have rendered the entire planet uninhabitable. This sacrifice, which lasted from 1945 through 1989, seems to be unappreciated by many people born after 1989 who now advocate for socialism despite its terrible death toll during the 20th century, and the abject poverty of socialist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela, among other countries.
The “threat” posed by global warming or climate change is much less obvious, and much slower-acting, than the threats posed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. People are much less likely to make huge sacrifices to try to prevent the sea level from rising at 3 millimeters per year as to prevent a large hostile nation from destroying our own within a matter of hours. Most of the world continues to see record harvests of food, with fewer and fewer people starving, and some of this may be the beneficial effects of additional CO2 in the air. Also, some people living in high latitudes might appreciate a slightly milder winter and/or a slightly longer growing season.
How many people want to give up a prosperous life, some of which depends on the use of fossil fuels, in order to prevent the sea level from rising by one foot in a century? Wouldn’t it be much easier to build walls to keep the ocean out of our coastal cities, like the Dutch have been doing for centuries?
Steve Z
Those who lived through the Great Depression and other calamities of the 20th Century had no doubt that the situations were real and that they were man-made — not the predictions of why might happen based on computer models of questionable skill!
Appeals to morality don’t work when those making the appeals are immoral liars.
An oldie but a goodie from Jo Nova’s web site:
“How to convert me to your new religion of Global Warming in 14 easy steps”
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/04/how-to-convert-me-to-your-new-religion-of-global-warming-in-14-easy-steps/
Some steps:
Step 1 – Stop making predictions that don’t come true.
Step 2 – When you make a prediction, don’t just say something “might” happen.
Step 3 – Don’t live your life like you don’t believe a word you’re saying.
…
Droning on about children of the future didn’t make the cut.
Step 4 – Don’t tell me to listen to children regurgitating Steps 1-3 as they need to eat their greens and we’re done here.
So long as people have the right and ability to access the facts and actual scientific studies concerning the history of climate then their attempts to “indoctrinate” us will fail. History shows and science supports the fact that the climate is a ”nonlinear chaotic system the future states of which are impossible to predict”. If you want to try to model the climate with computers then you have to have at least some understanding of it, clearly the modelers don’t, I suggest they look to the Sun, to the Oceans, the Earth’s orbits eccentricities, in other words to the natural factors.
As we care for future generations,fools and bandits of this nature must be banished from civil society.
These self righteous sacks of wilful ignorance want to lecture others about morality?
Our progressive comrades are beyond parody.
“but there was a strong correlation between a sense of moral obligation to future generations and willingness to sacrifice for the environment”
Also a strong correlation between the strength and clarity of the argument and its empirical evidence to a willingness to sacrifice lesser goods for the greater good
and also a strong correlation between weakness of the argument & empirical evidence with a need for psychological activism to force the issue.
The need to publish and advance outweighs all consideration for self doubt or fact checking. The climate change crusades offer an unbeatable chance to advance academically without question. The crusades cater to the flag bearers but all are welcome in the march to nowhere. It pays the rent….and the heating oil bills in New England.