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