January 2, 2024 • 37 mins
Humans are great at reacting to mortal danger... but only sometimes. Unfortunately, some risks to our safety and wellbeing don't set off alarm bells in our brains. Climate change falls into that category. Why is that?
Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert explains how some dangers trigger us, and some don't. In discussion with Dr Laurie Santos, he also outlines ways in which we can be made to care more about threats to the planet and maybe react to them in more positive, happiness-inducing ways.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, he's giving us the thumbsut. Okay, So, as usual,
we just have you start by introducing yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hi, I'm Dan Gilbert.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
For the opening of.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
This new season, I'm really rolling out the big guns.
Dan Gilbert is a huge figure in happiness science. He's
one of the field's most respected psychologists and an absolute
whiz at explaining some of the most puzzling aspects of
human nature. And that is going to be a big
help today because the question I have for him is
as confounding as it is serious. This episode is all
(00:51):
about the puzzle of why we're not doing more for
things that are really hurting us potentially badly.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
That sounds great.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Every January, the Happiness Lab puts out a New Year,
New You type season. We explore the personal challenges that
so many of us face and the ways we can
understand them better to make a fresh start.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
The year ahead.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
But this year we're doing something slightly different. This season
is going to focus on a topic that makes a
lot of us feel scared, angry, and vulnerable. That topic
is climate change. The federal government says this fire season
is unpressed serious.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Fire seasons in the past, but this one just makes
seeds our a sort of experience.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Twenty twenty three at shattered records.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Dangerous fast moving towards are leaving some eight million people
in the region under flood.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
A looks in the Midwest is abnormally dry, so.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Your prayer and hope for the best.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
The future could be even bleaker.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Is a point relieve off the charts.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Twenty twenty three was pretty much the hottest year in
recorded history, but it wasn't just heat waves. Over the
last twelve months, we saw a host of disasters related
to global heating, raging forest fires, devastating floods, and retreated ice.
These depressing facts usually make us feel pretty terrible. We
feel anxious for our futures and for those of our children.
(02:10):
We get angry with ourselves and others for letting things
get this bad, and we feel overwhelmed and pretty helpless
in the face of such a big challenge. And these
negative emotions compel many of us to turn away from
the problem. We spend most of our days acting like
the whole global heating thing just a isn't happening. We
go into denial mode and try to just carry on
(02:30):
with our lives. But the science shows that negative emotions
often hurt us more when we try to pretend that
they're not there. And all this collective avoidance isn't that
great for the climate crisis either. So over the next
few shows, we're going to look at ways we can
confront the climate challenge more calmly and confidently. We'll see
that dealing with the crisis head on and doing our
(02:50):
bit to help can make us feel happier than we expect.
We'll also learn ways to navigate our negative emotions and
to experience a bit of optimism even in the face
of such a scary situation. But in this first episode,
I wanted Dan to help me answer a vexing psychological question.
We've been talking about the catastrophic dangers of global warming
(03:11):
for several decades, but people are still debating whether it's
a real crisis and how urgently we need to act
to fix it, Which is kind of weird because it
seems like humans should be pretty good at dealing with
life threatening situations. I mean, we've had millions of years
of evolution. Our brains should be amazing threat detectors. They
should be really good at noting when we're in danger
(03:33):
and taking action. Why then, do so many of us
seem to be ignoring a threat big enough to wipe
out our entire planet. The answer comes from the fact
that our brains are built to deal with only certain
kinds of threats. If a saber tooth tiger jumps out
at you from the bush, you'll address that threat as
best you can right away. But if your doctor tells
(03:53):
you that you better change your diet or flash your
teeth to reduce the risk of health problems developing decades
from now, you might dither. It's why we're bad at
putting money into our four oh one ks, and why
we sometimes don't put in the work to make happiness
practices a part of our daily lives. We're great at
addressing the urgent problems, but we're not so hot when
it comes to tackling other important ones. And when those
(04:16):
important things do become urgent and messy, we wind up
kicking ourselves for not acting sooner. Harvard professor Dan Gilbert
has been thinking deeply about this mind bias for decades.
He wondered why governments seemed to be so bad at
coordinating a response to climate change, even though they're really
good at urgent action. Following events like terrorist attacks.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
You know, everybody in America had a reaction to nine
to eleven, and all of us had the reaction this
is terrible, and thousands of people have died. But because
I'm a psychologist, I also had another reaction, which is,
why are we not equally concerned about all things that
have killed even more people in our country? Ranging from
(05:01):
climate change to the flu. Many more people have died,
So why are we so concerned about one thing and
will to sacrifice everything from resources to personal liberty to
fight it, But these other threats that are even greater
in magnitude, arguably we're willing to do nothing about. That
seemed to me a curious question that was ripe for
(05:24):
a psychological answer.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
And you really applied that question directly to climate change too.
You'd think that if we knew the real threat, which
a lot of people say that they do, we'd be
freaked out and we'd be acting. But we're kind of not.
And so talk to me a little bit why evolutionarily
this might be the case.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Well, you know, several hundred years ago, two very smart
guys named Pascal and Vermont told us how we ought
to think about threats. We ought to think about their likelihood,
and we ought to think about their magnitude. And those
two things tell us whether a threat really warrants our attention,
if it's really likely to happen and it's going to
be a very very bad outcome if it does take action.
(06:02):
If not, then don't. That's all logical, but it's not
very psychological because human beings were not evolved to compute
expected utility, if you will. Rather were evolved to respond
to a small set of threats that were really big
problems for our ancestors living in the African savannah. And unfortunately,
climate change has none of the features that trigger this
(06:26):
threat response system in the human brain.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
And so let's talk about some of those four features.
The first one that you've talked about is that threats
have to be kind of agentive, they have to involve individuals.
Why do we really care about threats that come from people?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Well, we care about everything that comes from people, and
for good reason. People are the most significant source of
rewards and punishments for an animal like us. We're the
most social animal on the planet Earth. So it's no
wonder and it's for good reason that we care a
lot about what other people do, what other people think
and what other people say. With that said, climate change
(07:03):
is not an attack by a mean group of people
who are running at us with sticks, and that's what
we're evolved to respond to. I mean, look what happened
when the twin Towers came down and we went and
invaded a country because they had murdered three thousand people.
If those three thousand people had died from the flu,
and by the way, it's ten times that who die
(07:23):
from the flu every year, we just kind of hum
along and don't worry too much about it. So that's
the tragedy of climate change is that it doesn't have
a face. It seems like a non agentic threat.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
It also seems to not have an intent.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
You made this quip in one of your articles that
if climate change was trying to kill us, then we'd
take it very seriously. You know, talk about the power
of intent and why that matters for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Well, we all know that if somebody pushes you in
the street and goes, oh, excuse me, I tripped, you're
not alarmed at all. But if they say, hey take that,
suddenly you rise up with full force, you call the police,
you hit them back you start yelling. So whether people
intend to harm us or not is almost more important
than the harm they inflict. We'll forgive almost anything that's
(08:06):
an accident, and we will prosecute almost anything that isn't.
Climate change isn't. Nobody's actually trying to make the climate warmer,
nobody's trying to melt the polarized caps. People are doing
it as a result of their activity, but it's pretty
incidental to the activities that they're performing, you know, in
a way. That's too bad. We can't get too excited
(08:26):
about it because there's nobody who's meaning ill behind it.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
And I love when our psychology gets really tripped up
by this. I remember one study where you had neuroscientists
putting people in a scanner and these people were getting
the subjects were getting shocked, and the shocks varied whether
they were just kind of random accidental shocks that were happening,
or there was somebody sitting behind the thing who intended
to shock you. And if you look at pain regions
in the rain, we actually feel more pain when we're
(08:51):
getting shocks that are intended when somebody's trying to give
them to us. And I think that's so powerful when
we think about climate change, because the fact that nobody's
trying to do it makes it just kind of like
water off a duct's back when we think about it psychologically.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, it's a little less shocking, isn't.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
It Exactly The next kind of thing you've talked about
the fact that our brains tend to respond a lot
to threats that are immoral. And this one's kind of
interesting because you know, in some ways you could think that,
you know, the destruction of a planet is actually causing harm,
but moral harms tend to work a little bit differently.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Talk a little bit about how moral harms work.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You know, this is very intertwined with the first thing
we talked about with intentionality and agents, because moral harms
are harms from agents, but they are by moral harms.
I guess I'm talking about things that are more like
insults than injuries. And we are evolved to care a
lot about insults because insults to our honor, insults to
(09:44):
our face are in some sense reducing our or threats
to reduce our place in a social hierarchy, and so
we're very, very concerned with our reputations. What would people
think of us. You know, I could probably steal your
pencil or you know, bump into your car and you
wouldn't get too upset about it. But if I called
(10:05):
your mother a dirty name, you would rise up viciously
attack me. Why there's really no harm done, is there?
Well the answer is yes, it's a moral harm. It
violates your sense of what's fair and just and right.
So we respond to moral harms with great power. And
climate change isn't a moral harm, is it. I mean,
it's going to ruin our air, in our water, and
(10:25):
it's going to make the world hot. But it's not
insulting us, it's not attacking our religion.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
I mean, but it's incredible right that we're not getting
freaked out about burning so much coal, but we are
getting freaked out about, say, burning a single flag. When
somebody does that, now all of a sudden, our moral
emotions are kind of going going nut.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
So, yeah, they are. And it's easy to understand why
we care so much about these things. And the question
is whether we can subjugate this natural response. And you know,
get on board with those two French guys, Pascal and Vermont,
and say, you know what flag burning it isn't very nice.
We don't much like it, but maybe we could worry
about that tomorrow after we've saved the planet.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Your moral point is really important because it suggests that
climate change can make us scared, but it doesn't make
us out raged. And it seems like outrage is a
sort of special kind of emotion when it comes to
causing us to take action.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
It really is, isn't it. I mean, you don't have
to spend too much time online to realize that it
is the fundamental driver of most people's online behavior on
platforms like x formerly known as Twitter and others. It's
about moral outrage. Now, we occasionally feel moral outrage about
environmental disasters. If Exon, you know, runs their tanker into
(11:39):
an heisberg and you know, thousands of gallons spill and
penguins are dying, we all rise up and say, how
can you do this? You have to clean it up, right.
It's not like the domain of the environment is completely
insulated from the moral domain. It's just that when we
hear there are glaciers melting and the seas are rising
(11:59):
and it's just getting warmer, we can't point to any
particular agent who is doing this in order to harm
us or insult us, and so just get our blood
pressure up in the same way that calling your mother
a bad name does.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
And your Englon example is great because I think it
gets to the third feature that I think that gets
our minds going, which is things that happen instantaneously. You know,
the eggs on disaster you described is oil pouring out
right now. It's happening immediately. And these immediate threats seem
to be ones that also really kind of get us going.
You've described the mind as a sort of get out
of the wave machine. Like talk a little bit about
(12:35):
what you mean by that.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
We're very good getting out of the way, aren't we.
If I throw something at you, you will duck before
you even know it's coming. Your brain responds so quickly
to threats that appear immediately and instantly in your environment.
Most environmental threats are not like that. I mean, occasionally
they are. There's an oil spill one day, the water
was cleaned. The next day it's dirty. But by and large,
(12:59):
the temperature on Earth is not going to increase by
twenty degrees tomorrow. It's going to increase by point oh
oh one. And then the same amount the next day.
We're all familiar with the frog that never jumps out
of the water because the water is being heated from
room temperature to boiling very slowly. That's not a bad
parable for the place we are right now with regard
(13:22):
to the environment. These changes are going to be devastating,
but not tomorrow, and not instantly. Things will change at
the speed at which we can adapt to them. And
we are remarkable adapters.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
And so these instant changes are ones that we notice quickly.
But it is the case that we have minds that
can pay a little bit of attention to the future.
But a lot of your work has shown how bad
we are at doing that. Like it's this kind of
cool thing that our species can do, but it's still
a capacity that's a little bit in beta version.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
This is a remarkably evolutionarily speaking, it's a remarkably new capacity.
We shouldn't be surprised that its reach is limited. I mean,
we really should be surprised that we have it at all,
because as far as we know, no other animal does
at least nothing like power ability to look into the
far future and reason about it. But with that said,
(14:15):
every day we see people failing to use this capacity,
at least as logic would have us. People don't save
enough for retirement. People don't floss when they know that
little act would save them a lot of dental pain
down the road. People eat badly and say I'll die
it tomorrow. Why. Well, because it's kind of hard to
(14:37):
take actions that are difficult today in the service of
someone you're going to be in the far future. Climate change,
you know, I could have just been describing it. So
I should go spend a lot of money changing all
my light bulbs because maybe someday that will help someone
who isn't me. That's pretty hard for most people to do.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Another thing that's hard for people to do is to
deal with these threats when they're not instantaneous, when they're
not happening really quickly, as you mentioned, and this seems
to be kind of related to a different happiness bias.
We've talked a lot of this podcasts, right that we
kind of get used to stuff over time because these
changes are happening so slowly. It's not the kind of
thing where the temperature changes so quickly and I tend
to notice it. It tends to kind of go under
(15:21):
the radar and this is part and parcel of a
bigger kind of problem for our happiness. Right, this idea
of adaptation. Tell me what adaptation is and why it's
so problematic.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Well, people do get used to things, of course, but
they get used to them much better than they themselves predict.
We are world champion habituators and adapters, and that's usually
really good. That means when bad things happen in our lives,
you know, we lose the use of a limb, or
relationship status changes from married to divorce, or any of
(15:52):
the normal slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that befall people.
Every day, we get on board with the new program
and we basically do just fine. But this remarkable ability
to adapt can also be our enemy, because it makes
us not react to bad things that happen slowly enough
(16:13):
for us to get used to them. My grandchildren don't
think there's anything odd about a river or a stream
that has a sign that says don't swim. When I
was a kid, that would have been a science fiction story.
A stream or a river in which you can't swim.
What happened to the water, Well, what happened to the
water in America has it got more polluted a little
(16:34):
bit every day. I got used to it. Whole generations
are now being born who've never seen anything else. If
tomorrow we were all told we could never go outside
our homes again, what would we do? I mean, we
would riot, we would elect a new government, we would
protest in every possible way. But I assure you that
(16:54):
if the number of days you have to stay indoors
increases from zero to one next year, to two the
following year, in three hundred and sixty five years, people
will not think it strange that nobody else can go outdoors.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
I think we even show this adaptation for things that
happen even a little bit more quickly. I remember this
year was the first year that I started noticing, you know,
the skies were looking hazy, because then the East Coast
where I lived, there's so many fires happening in Canada.
I think the first day was really hazy, you know.
I remember my husband and I going outside and be like, wow,
it's so hazy. But day three, day four, all of
(17:30):
a sudden, I'm like, yeah, it's just hazy again. I've
sort of stopped remarking about it. So even some of
these changes that feel like they're happening a little bit faster.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Ones that we don't seem to notice that much.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
We don't seem to notice, and we more importantly, we
don't object. And one reason we don't object, of course,
is because it's not just us. If you were the
only person who couldn't go outside, you'd be forming an
action group, you'd be writing to your senators. But it's
everybody else too, and none of them are going out.
And you know, what we think is normal is what
(18:01):
everybody is doing. That's the definition of normal for most people.
So as long as most people can't drink the water,
can't easily breathe the air, as long as most people
can't live south of Missouri anymore. The other problem, of course,
is even if people thought, darn, this is really bad,
I need to do something, most people don't know what
(18:23):
they could do. They understand that climate change is far
too big a threat for anything they do today. To
make a bit of difference, it requires mass action.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
There's also lots of evidence that our actions, even though
we often think of them as happening in isolation, they don't,
you know. So if I put solar panels up, that
has an interesting effect on your psychology if you live
next door to me. So talk about how that effect
might actually allow for collective action out of individual action.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Well, you're making a great point, which is that your
action has direct effects on problems. So you put solar
panels on your house, and you have actually reduced the
electrical usage in your city by an extremely small amount.
But you've also created an example. As we mentioned earlier,
human beings define normal by what they see done around them,
(19:12):
and once solar panels are going up in the neighborhood,
it suddenly seems like a thing a reasonable person could do.
So there are these cascading effects. There are indirect effects
of doing the right thing.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
One of the things I love about human psychology is
just how complicated it is. We have so many stubborn
biases that prevent us from doing stuff that will directly
benefit us and our planet. But there are also other
biases that we can harness for good, like Dan's example
of us wanting to emulate the environmental habits of our neighbors.
So what other psychological hacks might help us deal more
(19:47):
effectively with climate change?
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Dan will tell us more after the break.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Tragically, climate change isn't the kind of threat humans are
good at dealing with. We swing into action if we're
put in danger by something sudden or by some cruel
person out to harm us, and Harvard's psychologist Dan Gilbert
says we're also more likely to take action if we
think our individual behaviors.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Will have a real effect on the problem.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Unfortunately, we don't always feel like that's the case with
an issue as huge as global heating.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Do I pay for offsetting the carbon on my next
airplane ride? Okay, I guess that would be good. But
surely if I do that or don't, I can't imagine
that the world will feel the effects of my tiny
little action.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
But don't despair, because our mind's biases can be harnessed
to help solve environmental problems in the blink of an eye,
provided those problems are framed in the right way.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
There is a wonderful study by Bob Chaldeeni and his group.
They just tried to find out if they could put
signs in hotel rooms that would make the person who
checked into that room a little more likely to reuse
their beth towels, Evidently, having somebody wash your towel every
day just because they will, and it's free. Is pretty
(21:11):
bad for the environment. So you can get hotel guests
to use their towels for a couple of days, as
they probably do at home. It's a great thing for
the environment. Well, Charldony and his team tried a number
of things. You can threaten people, you can cajole people,
you can reward people. But the single most effective sign
that they put in the room was the one that
simply said, most of the guests who stay in this
(21:33):
room reuse their towels. Human beings want to be like
most people. If everyone's doing it, it's probably the right thing,
so I should do it too. And they played on
this little piece of psychology to great effect. You see
the same thing most of us now when we get
an electric bill, it includes some little graph that shows
(21:54):
us how much electricity we're using compared to our neighbors.
Nobody did this fifteen years ago, but the Sacramento Municipal
Utility District, I believe, was the first to try this,
and suddenly people were embarrassed, I'm using too much electricity?
Why because look how little other people are using. I
want to be like them. So this is a lever
(22:16):
we can push for the good of the world, but
whether it comes to climate change or anything else. When
I lived in Texas in the nineteen eighties, there was
a massive litter problem, and studies showed that a lot
of highway litter was being thrown out of the windows
of pickup trucks by men between the ages of eighteen
(22:36):
and thirty two. And somebody somewhere deep in the bowels
of government, somebody who deserves a Nobel prize, in my opinion,
had the idea of coming up with a slogan that
would appeal to this particular demographic, and it was now
the now famous don't mess with Texas seventy two percent
(22:59):
reduction in litter due to four really well placed words. Now,
in some sense, a person who came up with those
four words was appealing to a bias. They were appealing
to the fact that the litterers were young men with
great pride in their state who didn't want to be
(23:21):
messed with in any way. There was kind of a
macho element, and this message was crafted so that it
appealed to these people. I just think it's a masterful
example of how you can do very very small things
to make a very big.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Difference, and those small things were powerful in part because
they played on this idea of our moral violations. They
caused people to see litter as outrageous rather than just
kind of annoying or dirty, and kind of played into
our moral emotions.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
They did. Indeed, so throwing something out the window of
a pickup truck is not only a moral violation, but
it's a moral violation by somebody. Somebody, somebody is messing
with taxes. Well, we can't let that happen, gan we
And this seems.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
To be a strategy that climate change activists are using
a little bit more often. I'm not sure what's happening
at Harvard, but a lot of our climate activists on
campus are calling out the president and saying, because Yale
is investing in fossil fuels, you know, President Peter Salave
are causing this problem, and so talk about how this
is activating our psychology in a way that might get
(24:25):
people to sort of respond more than the normal techniques.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Well, I do think that if you can find a
face for the problem, you have some chance of getting
people more riled up about it. But I'm not sure
it's worked so far. I'm not sure naming the CEO
of Exxon makes people any more angry at Exon than
it just being a company they feel angry about. I
(24:49):
understand the psychology behind the attempt. Let's blame somebody, and
we can get everybody upset at this particular guy, then
they'll take action. Maybe there are data out there showing
they have, but it sure doesn't look like it to me.
It just sounds like they're chanting a name and they're
holding somebody liable for the problems. My guess is most
of the public thinks this isn't the evil actor who
(25:11):
If only we could assassinate them, everything would go back
to normal.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Another lever Weekend Push is starting to recognize that climate
change is a little bit more immediate, which for better
or for worse, since you actually started talking about this,
we have started recognizing just because the problem has felt
more immediate, there's more fires, there's more terrible storms, and
so on. So you first started talking about this almost
twenty years ago. I don't know what does that make
you feel like with these we've known about these biases
(25:37):
for a while, but we haven't taken action.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Well, yeah, twenty years ago, I was telling people, you know,
one of the reasons we're not doing anything is we
don't see the effects of climate change yet. Well they're here.
They've arrived, and I do think there's been an uptick
in response to it because suddenly people are going the
reason it's too hot for me to go outside, the
reason planes can't land in Phoenix today, the reason we're
(26:03):
running out of water, the reason the hurricanes have gotten
worse is climate change. So finally the damage is arriving
and we are paying more attention. The problem is, this
was the kind of threat you needed to respond to
before it arrived. Once it has arrived, it's too late.
(26:23):
We need a much bigger response to get much less
of an outcome today than we did twenty years ago.
But it is upon us, and I think most people
see it and recognize it and now accept it. Remember
twenty years ago, we had an entire wing of in
our democracy saying there is no such thing as climate change.
It isn't getting warmer, and if it is, it's only
(26:45):
an act of God. It has nothing to do with
our use of resources. So twenty years we've been fighting
against people who didn't even want to acknowledge it was happening.
Much less asked the question about what should we do
about it? I think those people are finally in a minority.
Even in the Republican Party. Most Republicans are saying, yes,
the climate is changing, Yes, we probably should do something
(27:07):
about it. In the discussion is only about what does
something mean?
Speaker 1 (27:11):
And I think this figuring out what something means actually
it gets back to another part of your work that
I think is so relevant for the climate discussion, which
is this idea that we have these brains that can
imagine different futures. A lot of times when we imagine
the climate future, we imagine the doom and gloom version
of it, right, you know, the seas are going to rise,
and Lower Manhattan is going to be flooded, and all
these terrible things are going to happen. But talk about
(27:32):
the possibility of imagining positive futures and what that might
do to kind of help our actions on climate change.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Well, human beings respond to carrots and they respond to sticks.
And we've known for a very long time that the
response to sticks is more immediate and stronger, but it's
not very effective if people don't know what to do
to avoid getting hit with the stick. There's very old
work in social psychology by a Yale professor in fact
named IRV Janis, who showed that fear messages can be
(28:02):
effective if they're accompanied by a clear indicator of what
you do to avoid being afraid. Just tell people it's
all bad and it's getting worse, and you can't tell
them exactly what they should do to make it better,
they basically tune out. So carrots are very effective in
this regard. And we do need carrots and we have them,
(28:22):
but they're not carrots like, let's look on the bright
side of climate change. You'll be able to sail in Vermont.
Won't that be wonderful? No. No, the messages I think are
actually economic, and there are messages that are now coming
through loud and clear that we're not doing these things
necessarily to solve a problem. We're doing it because it's
going to create jobs. It's going to create a vibrant
(28:42):
new economy. Look at what we're going to be able
to do with electric cars. I think that's actually a
very effective way to get people to do the right
thing by showing them how attractive the opportunities are in
this new world we're trying to create, rather than just
scaring them about how bad it is if they don't
do it.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
When we think about the kinds of actions we need
to take to fix climate change, I think this is
another spot where our biases mess us up, because when
I try to simulate how I'll feel, you know, making
the sorts of sacrifices that might be required to kind
of fix climate I can sometimes think that those things
are going to hurt me much more than they could.
Right I simulate I don't have an EV right now,
very embarrassing, you know, from this sort of social comparison thing.
(29:23):
But when I simulate getting an EV, I'm like, oh,
that's going to be a pain to figure out where
I'm going to plug it in, or kind of mapping
out my drive so I can find a charger. But
in practice, when I actually do that, it might not
be as bad as we think. This gets back to
another bias that I know you've studied in detail, this
bias of affective forecasting. You know, explain what effective forecasting
is and why changing our behavior to be a little
(29:43):
bit more sustainable might not be as bad as we think.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Well. Affect to forecasting is just a mouthful of words
that means looking into the future, and figuring out what
will make you happy. If it'll make you happy, how
long that happiness will last. It's just a prediction about
what will be good and what will be bad for you.
And you're right that people make errors when they try
to do that kind of work. And you're imagining that
getting an EV will be very difficult at plugging and
(30:08):
it will be hard, And you're probably right about some
of those things, but you're also failing to imagine a
number of things. You're failing to imagine how good you're
going to feel every time you get in it, drive
down the street, and show all those other drivers that
you mean business when it comes to climate change, on
and on and on. You'll imagine some of the things
about this, but you'll fail to imagine others. So your
(30:29):
imagination turns out not to be a great guide as
to how good you will feel. Well? What should you
do instead? If your imagination is going to not serve
you well? Well, one easy way to find out how
you'll feel if you buy an EV is to see
how people who have already done it actually do feel.
And what you'll find is that Tesla owners are among
(30:49):
the most satisfied humans on Earth. They love their cars
and they love having bought them. Is there any reason
you don't think you would join their ranks?
Speaker 3 (30:57):
It's funny.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I just had a conversation at a dinner party yesterday
with an EV owner who is evangelical about their EV
and they're like, Oh my gosh, it's so easy and
it's so fun and it's so much faster than you think.
And it really was one of these cases of getting testimony.
That person's testimony is an owner of an EV is
so much better than my simulation is ever going to
be about what it's like.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
There's no doubt it's better in helping you make an
accurate forecast. But we also know people don't trust it
as much. People place undue stock in their own imaginations,
and they don't properly value the experiences of others because
they say, yeah, but that's Fred. I'm not Fred. Fred
is different than I am. Actually, in most ways, Fred
(31:36):
isn't different than you are. Human beings are much more
like than they expect. They have an illusion of uniqueness
that makes them think that there's no way anybody else
can tell me about my future. Yes, actually, if everybody
who's a lawyer is miserable. You're almost surely going to
be a miserable lawyer too.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
So the last thing we can do to try to
promote better climate behaviors is to recognize what helps us
get that sort of future planning going a little bit, because,
as you've mentioned, we can simulate the future, but it's
kind of hard. We can save for retirement, but it's hard.
Talk about the things that help us get our future
planning going. Now, we might be able to harness those
same kinds of things to help with climate change.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
You know. I think there are two paths that we
can take. One is the path that most psychologists like
you and me are tempted to take, which is to
think about the things we could do to get every
day people to take different actions in their everyday lives.
But the fact is that all of that is not
going to add up to a lot, and most people
(32:34):
aren't going to do it. And I think it was
Al Gore who said, if you really care about the climate,
instead of changing your light bulbs or worrying about carbon offsets,
you should vote. I mean, if you really want to
make change, you make change to the system in which
people function, rather than asking individuals to please defy their
own nature a little bit differently. Retirement savings is a
(32:57):
great example. If we were to just cajole people, convince them,
tempt them, amuse them into saving for retirement, no one
in America would be doing it right, just like they
don't floss. We wouldn't do those things. But we've managed
to institutionalize retirement savings. So now your employer says to you,
I will be withholding some of your salary. I will
(33:18):
be putting it away for you for retirement because I
know you are just too flawed to do it on
your own. And as a result, a lot of Americans
now have retirement savings. One of your colleagues, Kelly Brownell,
once told me. He said, you know, if you want
to get people to eat better, you can try a
million different things, almost none of them work. But the
best thing you can do is make sure there's a
grocery store that has produced within one mile of their home.
(33:40):
I think the same thing is true for climate change.
We have to stop saying to people it's on you
to change your light bulb. That's going to fix the problem. No,
we have to stop using fossil fuels. There are a
lot of people who are deeply economically invested in making
sure we keep using fossil fuels. You have to vote
for a government that will tell them no. Until we
(34:02):
do that, everything else is just working around the margins.
So I'm sorry to say as a psychologist that I
think there's a lot less psychology to fixing this problem
then there is just politics.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
But I think it actually comes from understanding our psychology.
There's things we can do with our own psychology that
might not require as much government intervention. Like you know,
somebody burns a flag. We don't need a politician to
tell us like, hey, get upset about that. But with
these things that don't activate our evolutionary biases, we do
need the system, and that is coming from psychology. That's
understanding our psychology to know when we need help and
(34:34):
when we don't.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Well, I like the fact that you have given us
credit for something, even if we don't deserve it. I'll
take it. You're right, it's all psychology.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
I'll take it.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
I don't want to seem like I'm saying there's no
room for changing the behavior of individuals so that they
contribute less to the problem and more to the solution.
There is I think there's a large role, maybe even
the largest role, is for government to change the behavior
of nations. But with that said, I'm all for anything
(35:08):
that gets human beings to do what is better for
the climate. And I think psychologists are there to help
you with a whole host of tricks that can get
at least some percentage of individuals to do better in
their everyday lives. I mean, here's the good news about
climate change. There aren't many people who are going, no,
I don't want to fix this problem. I really think
(35:30):
it's great. I'm so glad there are more wildfires in
California and that Arizonas won't have water to drink. Right,
we're kind of all almost all of us, at least
almost all of us, are on the same side of
this problem, and we're only talking about how do we
solve it. If you think of the most of the
problems that face us, we're arguing about whether there is
(35:51):
a problem and what the problem is. We all agree
about all of this now, and we just have to
get on board with what we're going to do to
solve it. I think that gives us at least a
good head start.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Despite what Dan says, I'm super grateful that psychologists like
him have helped me understand why I've always felt so
helpless in the face of the climate crisis. Talking to
Dan has encouraged me to up my game. I'll work
on my dumb worries about getting an EV, I'll pay
more attention to people who've adopted more greenways of living.
And oh yeah, I'm definitely going to vote. But I
(36:24):
also want to continue exploring other things psychology can teach
us about how to fight climate change more hopefully, and
so on our next episode of this special season, we'll
explore some new research showing there are ways to cut
our carbon footprints that have the unexpected benefit of making
us feel way happier.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
Oh, I'd bike to work that day because it put
me in a good mood. But of course it's also
one of the most sustainable forms of transit. That started
kind of got like the fireworks going where I started thinking,
by focusing on climate change just as the sort of
harbinger of doom and gloom, they were actually missing out
on a way of tackling it that might be more
helpful for some people.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
That's next time on the Happiness Lab with me, Doctor
Laurie Santos
Pushkin, he's giving us the thumbsut. Okay, So, as usual,
we just have you start by introducing yourself.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hi, I'm Dan Gilbert.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
For the opening of.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
This new season, I'm really rolling out the big guns.
Dan Gilbert is a huge figure in happiness science. He's
one of the field's most respected psychologists and an absolute
whiz at explaining some of the most puzzling aspects of
human nature. And that is going to be a big
help today because the question I have for him is
as confounding as it is serious. This episode is all
(00:51):
about the puzzle of why we're not doing more for
things that are really hurting us potentially badly.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
That sounds great.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Every January, the Happiness Lab puts out a New Year,
New You type season. We explore the personal challenges that
so many of us face and the ways we can
understand them better to make a fresh start.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
The year ahead.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
But this year we're doing something slightly different. This season
is going to focus on a topic that makes a
lot of us feel scared, angry, and vulnerable. That topic
is climate change. The federal government says this fire season
is unpressed serious.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Fire seasons in the past, but this one just makes
seeds our a sort of experience.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Twenty twenty three at shattered records.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Dangerous fast moving towards are leaving some eight million people
in the region under flood.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
A looks in the Midwest is abnormally dry, so.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Your prayer and hope for the best.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
The future could be even bleaker.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Is a point relieve off the charts.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Twenty twenty three was pretty much the hottest year in
recorded history, but it wasn't just heat waves. Over the
last twelve months, we saw a host of disasters related
to global heating, raging forest fires, devastating floods, and retreated ice.
These depressing facts usually make us feel pretty terrible. We
feel anxious for our futures and for those of our children.
(02:10):
We get angry with ourselves and others for letting things
get this bad, and we feel overwhelmed and pretty helpless
in the face of such a big challenge. And these
negative emotions compel many of us to turn away from
the problem. We spend most of our days acting like
the whole global heating thing just a isn't happening. We
go into denial mode and try to just carry on
(02:30):
with our lives. But the science shows that negative emotions
often hurt us more when we try to pretend that
they're not there. And all this collective avoidance isn't that
great for the climate crisis either. So over the next
few shows, we're going to look at ways we can
confront the climate challenge more calmly and confidently. We'll see
that dealing with the crisis head on and doing our
(02:50):
bit to help can make us feel happier than we expect.
We'll also learn ways to navigate our negative emotions and
to experience a bit of optimism even in the face
of such a scary situation. But in this first episode,
I wanted Dan to help me answer a vexing psychological question.
We've been talking about the catastrophic dangers of global warming
(03:11):
for several decades, but people are still debating whether it's
a real crisis and how urgently we need to act
to fix it, Which is kind of weird because it
seems like humans should be pretty good at dealing with
life threatening situations. I mean, we've had millions of years
of evolution. Our brains should be amazing threat detectors. They
should be really good at noting when we're in danger
(03:33):
and taking action. Why then, do so many of us
seem to be ignoring a threat big enough to wipe
out our entire planet. The answer comes from the fact
that our brains are built to deal with only certain
kinds of threats. If a saber tooth tiger jumps out
at you from the bush, you'll address that threat as
best you can right away. But if your doctor tells
(03:53):
you that you better change your diet or flash your
teeth to reduce the risk of health problems developing decades
from now, you might dither. It's why we're bad at
putting money into our four oh one ks, and why
we sometimes don't put in the work to make happiness
practices a part of our daily lives. We're great at
addressing the urgent problems, but we're not so hot when
it comes to tackling other important ones. And when those
(04:16):
important things do become urgent and messy, we wind up
kicking ourselves for not acting sooner. Harvard professor Dan Gilbert
has been thinking deeply about this mind bias for decades.
He wondered why governments seemed to be so bad at
coordinating a response to climate change, even though they're really
good at urgent action. Following events like terrorist attacks.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
You know, everybody in America had a reaction to nine
to eleven, and all of us had the reaction this
is terrible, and thousands of people have died. But because
I'm a psychologist, I also had another reaction, which is,
why are we not equally concerned about all things that
have killed even more people in our country? Ranging from
(05:01):
climate change to the flu. Many more people have died,
So why are we so concerned about one thing and
will to sacrifice everything from resources to personal liberty to
fight it, But these other threats that are even greater
in magnitude, arguably we're willing to do nothing about. That
seemed to me a curious question that was ripe for
(05:24):
a psychological answer.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
And you really applied that question directly to climate change too.
You'd think that if we knew the real threat, which
a lot of people say that they do, we'd be
freaked out and we'd be acting. But we're kind of not.
And so talk to me a little bit why evolutionarily
this might be the case.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Well, you know, several hundred years ago, two very smart
guys named Pascal and Vermont told us how we ought
to think about threats. We ought to think about their likelihood,
and we ought to think about their magnitude. And those
two things tell us whether a threat really warrants our attention,
if it's really likely to happen and it's going to
be a very very bad outcome if it does take action.
(06:02):
If not, then don't. That's all logical, but it's not
very psychological because human beings were not evolved to compute
expected utility, if you will. Rather were evolved to respond
to a small set of threats that were really big
problems for our ancestors living in the African savannah. And unfortunately,
climate change has none of the features that trigger this
(06:26):
threat response system in the human brain.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
And so let's talk about some of those four features.
The first one that you've talked about is that threats
have to be kind of agentive, they have to involve individuals.
Why do we really care about threats that come from people?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Well, we care about everything that comes from people, and
for good reason. People are the most significant source of
rewards and punishments for an animal like us. We're the
most social animal on the planet Earth. So it's no
wonder and it's for good reason that we care a
lot about what other people do, what other people think
and what other people say. With that said, climate change
(07:03):
is not an attack by a mean group of people
who are running at us with sticks, and that's what
we're evolved to respond to. I mean, look what happened
when the twin Towers came down and we went and
invaded a country because they had murdered three thousand people.
If those three thousand people had died from the flu,
and by the way, it's ten times that who die
(07:23):
from the flu every year, we just kind of hum
along and don't worry too much about it. So that's
the tragedy of climate change is that it doesn't have
a face. It seems like a non agentic threat.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
It also seems to not have an intent.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
You made this quip in one of your articles that
if climate change was trying to kill us, then we'd
take it very seriously. You know, talk about the power
of intent and why that matters for our psychology.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Well, we all know that if somebody pushes you in
the street and goes, oh, excuse me, I tripped, you're
not alarmed at all. But if they say, hey take that,
suddenly you rise up with full force, you call the police,
you hit them back you start yelling. So whether people
intend to harm us or not is almost more important
than the harm they inflict. We'll forgive almost anything that's
(08:06):
an accident, and we will prosecute almost anything that isn't.
Climate change isn't. Nobody's actually trying to make the climate warmer,
nobody's trying to melt the polarized caps. People are doing
it as a result of their activity, but it's pretty
incidental to the activities that they're performing, you know, in
a way. That's too bad. We can't get too excited
(08:26):
about it because there's nobody who's meaning ill behind it.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
And I love when our psychology gets really tripped up
by this. I remember one study where you had neuroscientists
putting people in a scanner and these people were getting
the subjects were getting shocked, and the shocks varied whether
they were just kind of random accidental shocks that were happening,
or there was somebody sitting behind the thing who intended
to shock you. And if you look at pain regions
in the rain, we actually feel more pain when we're
(08:51):
getting shocks that are intended when somebody's trying to give
them to us. And I think that's so powerful when
we think about climate change, because the fact that nobody's
trying to do it makes it just kind of like
water off a duct's back when we think about it psychologically.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, it's a little less shocking, isn't.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
It Exactly The next kind of thing you've talked about
the fact that our brains tend to respond a lot
to threats that are immoral. And this one's kind of
interesting because you know, in some ways you could think that,
you know, the destruction of a planet is actually causing harm,
but moral harms tend to work a little bit differently.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Talk a little bit about how moral harms work.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
You know, this is very intertwined with the first thing
we talked about with intentionality and agents, because moral harms
are harms from agents, but they are by moral harms.
I guess I'm talking about things that are more like
insults than injuries. And we are evolved to care a
lot about insults because insults to our honor, insults to
(09:44):
our face are in some sense reducing our or threats
to reduce our place in a social hierarchy, and so
we're very, very concerned with our reputations. What would people
think of us. You know, I could probably steal your
pencil or you know, bump into your car and you
wouldn't get too upset about it. But if I called
(10:05):
your mother a dirty name, you would rise up viciously
attack me. Why there's really no harm done, is there?
Well the answer is yes, it's a moral harm. It
violates your sense of what's fair and just and right.
So we respond to moral harms with great power. And
climate change isn't a moral harm, is it. I mean,
it's going to ruin our air, in our water, and
(10:25):
it's going to make the world hot. But it's not
insulting us, it's not attacking our religion.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
I mean, but it's incredible right that we're not getting
freaked out about burning so much coal, but we are
getting freaked out about, say, burning a single flag. When
somebody does that, now all of a sudden, our moral
emotions are kind of going going nut.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
So, yeah, they are. And it's easy to understand why
we care so much about these things. And the question
is whether we can subjugate this natural response. And you know,
get on board with those two French guys, Pascal and Vermont,
and say, you know what flag burning it isn't very nice.
We don't much like it, but maybe we could worry
about that tomorrow after we've saved the planet.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Your moral point is really important because it suggests that
climate change can make us scared, but it doesn't make
us out raged. And it seems like outrage is a
sort of special kind of emotion when it comes to
causing us to take action.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
It really is, isn't it. I mean, you don't have
to spend too much time online to realize that it
is the fundamental driver of most people's online behavior on
platforms like x formerly known as Twitter and others. It's
about moral outrage. Now, we occasionally feel moral outrage about
environmental disasters. If Exon, you know, runs their tanker into
(11:39):
an heisberg and you know, thousands of gallons spill and
penguins are dying, we all rise up and say, how
can you do this? You have to clean it up, right.
It's not like the domain of the environment is completely
insulated from the moral domain. It's just that when we
hear there are glaciers melting and the seas are rising
(11:59):
and it's just getting warmer, we can't point to any
particular agent who is doing this in order to harm
us or insult us, and so just get our blood
pressure up in the same way that calling your mother
a bad name does.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
And your Englon example is great because I think it
gets to the third feature that I think that gets
our minds going, which is things that happen instantaneously. You know,
the eggs on disaster you described is oil pouring out
right now. It's happening immediately. And these immediate threats seem
to be ones that also really kind of get us going.
You've described the mind as a sort of get out
of the wave machine. Like talk a little bit about
(12:35):
what you mean by that.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
We're very good getting out of the way, aren't we.
If I throw something at you, you will duck before
you even know it's coming. Your brain responds so quickly
to threats that appear immediately and instantly in your environment.
Most environmental threats are not like that. I mean, occasionally
they are. There's an oil spill one day, the water
was cleaned. The next day it's dirty. But by and large,
(12:59):
the temperature on Earth is not going to increase by
twenty degrees tomorrow. It's going to increase by point oh
oh one. And then the same amount the next day.
We're all familiar with the frog that never jumps out
of the water because the water is being heated from
room temperature to boiling very slowly. That's not a bad
parable for the place we are right now with regard
(13:22):
to the environment. These changes are going to be devastating,
but not tomorrow, and not instantly. Things will change at
the speed at which we can adapt to them. And
we are remarkable adapters.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
And so these instant changes are ones that we notice quickly.
But it is the case that we have minds that
can pay a little bit of attention to the future.
But a lot of your work has shown how bad
we are at doing that. Like it's this kind of
cool thing that our species can do, but it's still
a capacity that's a little bit in beta version.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
This is a remarkably evolutionarily speaking, it's a remarkably new capacity.
We shouldn't be surprised that its reach is limited. I mean,
we really should be surprised that we have it at all,
because as far as we know, no other animal does
at least nothing like power ability to look into the
far future and reason about it. But with that said,
(14:15):
every day we see people failing to use this capacity,
at least as logic would have us. People don't save
enough for retirement. People don't floss when they know that
little act would save them a lot of dental pain
down the road. People eat badly and say I'll die
it tomorrow. Why. Well, because it's kind of hard to
(14:37):
take actions that are difficult today in the service of
someone you're going to be in the far future. Climate change,
you know, I could have just been describing it. So
I should go spend a lot of money changing all
my light bulbs because maybe someday that will help someone
who isn't me. That's pretty hard for most people to do.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Another thing that's hard for people to do is to
deal with these threats when they're not instantaneous, when they're
not happening really quickly, as you mentioned, and this seems
to be kind of related to a different happiness bias.
We've talked a lot of this podcasts, right that we
kind of get used to stuff over time because these
changes are happening so slowly. It's not the kind of
thing where the temperature changes so quickly and I tend
to notice it. It tends to kind of go under
(15:21):
the radar and this is part and parcel of a
bigger kind of problem for our happiness. Right, this idea
of adaptation. Tell me what adaptation is and why it's
so problematic.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Well, people do get used to things, of course, but
they get used to them much better than they themselves predict.
We are world champion habituators and adapters, and that's usually
really good. That means when bad things happen in our lives,
you know, we lose the use of a limb, or
relationship status changes from married to divorce, or any of
(15:52):
the normal slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that befall people.
Every day, we get on board with the new program
and we basically do just fine. But this remarkable ability
to adapt can also be our enemy, because it makes
us not react to bad things that happen slowly enough
(16:13):
for us to get used to them. My grandchildren don't
think there's anything odd about a river or a stream
that has a sign that says don't swim. When I
was a kid, that would have been a science fiction story.
A stream or a river in which you can't swim.
What happened to the water, Well, what happened to the
water in America has it got more polluted a little
(16:34):
bit every day. I got used to it. Whole generations
are now being born who've never seen anything else. If
tomorrow we were all told we could never go outside
our homes again, what would we do? I mean, we
would riot, we would elect a new government, we would
protest in every possible way. But I assure you that
(16:54):
if the number of days you have to stay indoors
increases from zero to one next year, to two the
following year, in three hundred and sixty five years, people
will not think it strange that nobody else can go outdoors.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
I think we even show this adaptation for things that
happen even a little bit more quickly. I remember this
year was the first year that I started noticing, you know,
the skies were looking hazy, because then the East Coast
where I lived, there's so many fires happening in Canada.
I think the first day was really hazy, you know.
I remember my husband and I going outside and be like, wow,
it's so hazy. But day three, day four, all of
(17:30):
a sudden, I'm like, yeah, it's just hazy again. I've
sort of stopped remarking about it. So even some of
these changes that feel like they're happening a little bit faster.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Ones that we don't seem to notice that much.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
We don't seem to notice, and we more importantly, we
don't object. And one reason we don't object, of course,
is because it's not just us. If you were the
only person who couldn't go outside, you'd be forming an
action group, you'd be writing to your senators. But it's
everybody else too, and none of them are going out.
And you know, what we think is normal is what
(18:01):
everybody is doing. That's the definition of normal for most people.
So as long as most people can't drink the water,
can't easily breathe the air, as long as most people
can't live south of Missouri anymore. The other problem, of course,
is even if people thought, darn, this is really bad,
I need to do something, most people don't know what
(18:23):
they could do. They understand that climate change is far
too big a threat for anything they do today. To
make a bit of difference, it requires mass action.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
There's also lots of evidence that our actions, even though
we often think of them as happening in isolation, they don't,
you know. So if I put solar panels up, that
has an interesting effect on your psychology if you live
next door to me. So talk about how that effect
might actually allow for collective action out of individual action.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Well, you're making a great point, which is that your
action has direct effects on problems. So you put solar
panels on your house, and you have actually reduced the
electrical usage in your city by an extremely small amount.
But you've also created an example. As we mentioned earlier,
human beings define normal by what they see done around them,
(19:12):
and once solar panels are going up in the neighborhood,
it suddenly seems like a thing a reasonable person could do.
So there are these cascading effects. There are indirect effects
of doing the right thing.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
One of the things I love about human psychology is
just how complicated it is. We have so many stubborn
biases that prevent us from doing stuff that will directly
benefit us and our planet. But there are also other
biases that we can harness for good, like Dan's example
of us wanting to emulate the environmental habits of our neighbors.
So what other psychological hacks might help us deal more
(19:47):
effectively with climate change?
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Dan will tell us more after the break.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Tragically, climate change isn't the kind of threat humans are
good at dealing with. We swing into action if we're
put in danger by something sudden or by some cruel
person out to harm us, and Harvard's psychologist Dan Gilbert
says we're also more likely to take action if we
think our individual behaviors.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Will have a real effect on the problem.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Unfortunately, we don't always feel like that's the case with
an issue as huge as global heating.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
Do I pay for offsetting the carbon on my next
airplane ride? Okay, I guess that would be good. But
surely if I do that or don't, I can't imagine
that the world will feel the effects of my tiny
little action.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
But don't despair, because our mind's biases can be harnessed
to help solve environmental problems in the blink of an eye,
provided those problems are framed in the right way.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
There is a wonderful study by Bob Chaldeeni and his group.
They just tried to find out if they could put
signs in hotel rooms that would make the person who
checked into that room a little more likely to reuse
their beth towels, Evidently, having somebody wash your towel every
day just because they will, and it's free. Is pretty
(21:11):
bad for the environment. So you can get hotel guests
to use their towels for a couple of days, as
they probably do at home. It's a great thing for
the environment. Well, Charldony and his team tried a number
of things. You can threaten people, you can cajole people,
you can reward people. But the single most effective sign
that they put in the room was the one that
simply said, most of the guests who stay in this
(21:33):
room reuse their towels. Human beings want to be like
most people. If everyone's doing it, it's probably the right thing,
so I should do it too. And they played on
this little piece of psychology to great effect. You see
the same thing most of us now when we get
an electric bill, it includes some little graph that shows
(21:54):
us how much electricity we're using compared to our neighbors.
Nobody did this fifteen years ago, but the Sacramento Municipal
Utility District, I believe, was the first to try this,
and suddenly people were embarrassed, I'm using too much electricity?
Why because look how little other people are using. I
want to be like them. So this is a lever
(22:16):
we can push for the good of the world, but
whether it comes to climate change or anything else. When
I lived in Texas in the nineteen eighties, there was
a massive litter problem, and studies showed that a lot
of highway litter was being thrown out of the windows
of pickup trucks by men between the ages of eighteen
(22:36):
and thirty two. And somebody somewhere deep in the bowels
of government, somebody who deserves a Nobel prize, in my opinion,
had the idea of coming up with a slogan that
would appeal to this particular demographic, and it was now
the now famous don't mess with Texas seventy two percent
(22:59):
reduction in litter due to four really well placed words. Now,
in some sense, a person who came up with those
four words was appealing to a bias. They were appealing
to the fact that the litterers were young men with
great pride in their state who didn't want to be
(23:21):
messed with in any way. There was kind of a
macho element, and this message was crafted so that it
appealed to these people. I just think it's a masterful
example of how you can do very very small things
to make a very big.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Difference, and those small things were powerful in part because
they played on this idea of our moral violations. They
caused people to see litter as outrageous rather than just
kind of annoying or dirty, and kind of played into
our moral emotions.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
They did. Indeed, so throwing something out the window of
a pickup truck is not only a moral violation, but
it's a moral violation by somebody. Somebody, somebody is messing
with taxes. Well, we can't let that happen, gan we
And this seems.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
To be a strategy that climate change activists are using
a little bit more often. I'm not sure what's happening
at Harvard, but a lot of our climate activists on
campus are calling out the president and saying, because Yale
is investing in fossil fuels, you know, President Peter Salave
are causing this problem, and so talk about how this
is activating our psychology in a way that might get
(24:25):
people to sort of respond more than the normal techniques.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Well, I do think that if you can find a
face for the problem, you have some chance of getting
people more riled up about it. But I'm not sure
it's worked so far. I'm not sure naming the CEO
of Exxon makes people any more angry at Exon than
it just being a company they feel angry about. I
(24:49):
understand the psychology behind the attempt. Let's blame somebody, and
we can get everybody upset at this particular guy, then
they'll take action. Maybe there are data out there showing
they have, but it sure doesn't look like it to me.
It just sounds like they're chanting a name and they're
holding somebody liable for the problems. My guess is most
of the public thinks this isn't the evil actor who
(25:11):
If only we could assassinate them, everything would go back
to normal.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Another lever Weekend Push is starting to recognize that climate
change is a little bit more immediate, which for better
or for worse, since you actually started talking about this,
we have started recognizing just because the problem has felt
more immediate, there's more fires, there's more terrible storms, and
so on. So you first started talking about this almost
twenty years ago. I don't know what does that make
you feel like with these we've known about these biases
(25:37):
for a while, but we haven't taken action.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Well, yeah, twenty years ago, I was telling people, you know,
one of the reasons we're not doing anything is we
don't see the effects of climate change yet. Well they're here.
They've arrived, and I do think there's been an uptick
in response to it because suddenly people are going the
reason it's too hot for me to go outside, the
reason planes can't land in Phoenix today, the reason we're
(26:03):
running out of water, the reason the hurricanes have gotten
worse is climate change. So finally the damage is arriving
and we are paying more attention. The problem is, this
was the kind of threat you needed to respond to
before it arrived. Once it has arrived, it's too late.
(26:23):
We need a much bigger response to get much less
of an outcome today than we did twenty years ago.
But it is upon us, and I think most people
see it and recognize it and now accept it. Remember
twenty years ago, we had an entire wing of in
our democracy saying there is no such thing as climate change.
It isn't getting warmer, and if it is, it's only
(26:45):
an act of God. It has nothing to do with
our use of resources. So twenty years we've been fighting
against people who didn't even want to acknowledge it was happening.
Much less asked the question about what should we do
about it? I think those people are finally in a minority.
Even in the Republican Party. Most Republicans are saying, yes,
the climate is changing, Yes, we probably should do something
(27:07):
about it. In the discussion is only about what does
something mean?
Speaker 1 (27:11):
And I think this figuring out what something means actually
it gets back to another part of your work that
I think is so relevant for the climate discussion, which
is this idea that we have these brains that can
imagine different futures. A lot of times when we imagine
the climate future, we imagine the doom and gloom version
of it, right, you know, the seas are going to rise,
and Lower Manhattan is going to be flooded, and all
these terrible things are going to happen. But talk about
(27:32):
the possibility of imagining positive futures and what that might
do to kind of help our actions on climate change.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Well, human beings respond to carrots and they respond to sticks.
And we've known for a very long time that the
response to sticks is more immediate and stronger, but it's
not very effective if people don't know what to do
to avoid getting hit with the stick. There's very old
work in social psychology by a Yale professor in fact
named IRV Janis, who showed that fear messages can be
(28:02):
effective if they're accompanied by a clear indicator of what
you do to avoid being afraid. Just tell people it's
all bad and it's getting worse, and you can't tell
them exactly what they should do to make it better,
they basically tune out. So carrots are very effective in
this regard. And we do need carrots and we have them,
(28:22):
but they're not carrots like, let's look on the bright
side of climate change. You'll be able to sail in Vermont.
Won't that be wonderful? No. No, the messages I think are
actually economic, and there are messages that are now coming
through loud and clear that we're not doing these things
necessarily to solve a problem. We're doing it because it's
going to create jobs. It's going to create a vibrant
(28:42):
new economy. Look at what we're going to be able
to do with electric cars. I think that's actually a
very effective way to get people to do the right
thing by showing them how attractive the opportunities are in
this new world we're trying to create, rather than just
scaring them about how bad it is if they don't
do it.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
When we think about the kinds of actions we need
to take to fix climate change, I think this is
another spot where our biases mess us up, because when
I try to simulate how I'll feel, you know, making
the sorts of sacrifices that might be required to kind
of fix climate I can sometimes think that those things
are going to hurt me much more than they could.
Right I simulate I don't have an EV right now,
very embarrassing, you know, from this sort of social comparison thing.
(29:23):
But when I simulate getting an EV, I'm like, oh,
that's going to be a pain to figure out where
I'm going to plug it in, or kind of mapping
out my drive so I can find a charger. But
in practice, when I actually do that, it might not
be as bad as we think. This gets back to
another bias that I know you've studied in detail, this
bias of affective forecasting. You know, explain what effective forecasting
is and why changing our behavior to be a little
(29:43):
bit more sustainable might not be as bad as we think.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Well. Affect to forecasting is just a mouthful of words
that means looking into the future, and figuring out what
will make you happy. If it'll make you happy, how
long that happiness will last. It's just a prediction about
what will be good and what will be bad for you.
And you're right that people make errors when they try
to do that kind of work. And you're imagining that
getting an EV will be very difficult at plugging and
(30:08):
it will be hard, And you're probably right about some
of those things, but you're also failing to imagine a
number of things. You're failing to imagine how good you're
going to feel every time you get in it, drive
down the street, and show all those other drivers that
you mean business when it comes to climate change, on
and on and on. You'll imagine some of the things
about this, but you'll fail to imagine others. So your
(30:29):
imagination turns out not to be a great guide as
to how good you will feel. Well? What should you
do instead? If your imagination is going to not serve
you well? Well, one easy way to find out how
you'll feel if you buy an EV is to see
how people who have already done it actually do feel.
And what you'll find is that Tesla owners are among
(30:49):
the most satisfied humans on Earth. They love their cars
and they love having bought them. Is there any reason
you don't think you would join their ranks?
Speaker 3 (30:57):
It's funny.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
I just had a conversation at a dinner party yesterday
with an EV owner who is evangelical about their EV
and they're like, Oh my gosh, it's so easy and
it's so fun and it's so much faster than you think.
And it really was one of these cases of getting testimony.
That person's testimony is an owner of an EV is
so much better than my simulation is ever going to
be about what it's like.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
There's no doubt it's better in helping you make an
accurate forecast. But we also know people don't trust it
as much. People place undue stock in their own imaginations,
and they don't properly value the experiences of others because
they say, yeah, but that's Fred. I'm not Fred. Fred
is different than I am. Actually, in most ways, Fred
(31:36):
isn't different than you are. Human beings are much more
like than they expect. They have an illusion of uniqueness
that makes them think that there's no way anybody else
can tell me about my future. Yes, actually, if everybody
who's a lawyer is miserable. You're almost surely going to
be a miserable lawyer too.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
So the last thing we can do to try to
promote better climate behaviors is to recognize what helps us
get that sort of future planning going a little bit, because,
as you've mentioned, we can simulate the future, but it's
kind of hard. We can save for retirement, but it's hard.
Talk about the things that help us get our future
planning going. Now, we might be able to harness those
same kinds of things to help with climate change.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
You know. I think there are two paths that we
can take. One is the path that most psychologists like
you and me are tempted to take, which is to
think about the things we could do to get every
day people to take different actions in their everyday lives.
But the fact is that all of that is not
going to add up to a lot, and most people
(32:34):
aren't going to do it. And I think it was
Al Gore who said, if you really care about the climate,
instead of changing your light bulbs or worrying about carbon offsets,
you should vote. I mean, if you really want to
make change, you make change to the system in which
people function, rather than asking individuals to please defy their
own nature a little bit differently. Retirement savings is a
(32:57):
great example. If we were to just cajole people, convince them,
tempt them, amuse them into saving for retirement, no one
in America would be doing it right, just like they
don't floss. We wouldn't do those things. But we've managed
to institutionalize retirement savings. So now your employer says to you,
I will be withholding some of your salary. I will
(33:18):
be putting it away for you for retirement because I
know you are just too flawed to do it on
your own. And as a result, a lot of Americans
now have retirement savings. One of your colleagues, Kelly Brownell,
once told me. He said, you know, if you want
to get people to eat better, you can try a
million different things, almost none of them work. But the
best thing you can do is make sure there's a
grocery store that has produced within one mile of their home.
(33:40):
I think the same thing is true for climate change.
We have to stop saying to people it's on you
to change your light bulb. That's going to fix the problem. No,
we have to stop using fossil fuels. There are a
lot of people who are deeply economically invested in making
sure we keep using fossil fuels. You have to vote
for a government that will tell them no. Until we
(34:02):
do that, everything else is just working around the margins.
So I'm sorry to say as a psychologist that I
think there's a lot less psychology to fixing this problem
then there is just politics.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
But I think it actually comes from understanding our psychology.
There's things we can do with our own psychology that
might not require as much government intervention. Like you know,
somebody burns a flag. We don't need a politician to
tell us like, hey, get upset about that. But with
these things that don't activate our evolutionary biases, we do
need the system, and that is coming from psychology. That's
understanding our psychology to know when we need help and
(34:34):
when we don't.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Well, I like the fact that you have given us
credit for something, even if we don't deserve it. I'll
take it. You're right, it's all psychology.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
I'll take it.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
I don't want to seem like I'm saying there's no
room for changing the behavior of individuals so that they
contribute less to the problem and more to the solution.
There is I think there's a large role, maybe even
the largest role, is for government to change the behavior
of nations. But with that said, I'm all for anything
(35:08):
that gets human beings to do what is better for
the climate. And I think psychologists are there to help
you with a whole host of tricks that can get
at least some percentage of individuals to do better in
their everyday lives. I mean, here's the good news about
climate change. There aren't many people who are going, no,
I don't want to fix this problem. I really think
(35:30):
it's great. I'm so glad there are more wildfires in
California and that Arizonas won't have water to drink. Right,
we're kind of all almost all of us, at least
almost all of us, are on the same side of
this problem, and we're only talking about how do we
solve it. If you think of the most of the
problems that face us, we're arguing about whether there is
(35:51):
a problem and what the problem is. We all agree
about all of this now, and we just have to
get on board with what we're going to do to
solve it. I think that gives us at least a
good head start.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Despite what Dan says, I'm super grateful that psychologists like
him have helped me understand why I've always felt so
helpless in the face of the climate crisis. Talking to
Dan has encouraged me to up my game. I'll work
on my dumb worries about getting an EV, I'll pay
more attention to people who've adopted more greenways of living.
And oh yeah, I'm definitely going to vote. But I
(36:24):
also want to continue exploring other things psychology can teach
us about how to fight climate change more hopefully, and
so on our next episode of this special season, we'll
explore some new research showing there are ways to cut
our carbon footprints that have the unexpected benefit of making
us feel way happier.
Speaker 4 (36:41):
Oh, I'd bike to work that day because it put
me in a good mood. But of course it's also
one of the most sustainable forms of transit. That started
kind of got like the fireworks going where I started thinking,
by focusing on climate change just as the sort of
harbinger of doom and gloom, they were actually missing out
on a way of tackling it that might be more
helpful for some people.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
That's next time on the Happiness Lab with me, Doctor
Laurie Santos
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