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