The literature indicates that values and goals are reliable predictors of behaviour, so the values and goals that people hold are important factors to take into account in researching factors influencing human responses to ecological crisis.
From a psychological perspective, values are the psychological representations of what we consider to be important in life (Rokeach 1973 cited in Crompton 2010). As guiding principles in life, they are the basis for our attitudes. When activated, values become “infused with feeling” (Schwartz 2010 p2) and play a crucial role in motivating behaviour (Schwartz 2010; 2012b). Goals and aspirations are related to yet distinct from values, reflecting aspects of life deemed worthy of striving for (Grouzet et al 2005). The strength and salience of values in individuals is influenced by the relative strength of these values in wider society (Kasser et al 2004), as Uzzell & Räthzel (2009 p341) state, “values and attitudes are not formed in a social and cultural vacuum”. Values that are salient are those that have priority in the mind.
There is a considerable body of knowledge in social psychology on correlations between values and other attitudinal factors such as life goals, concerns and beliefs, and between these variables and pro-environmental behaviour (e.g. Schultz et al 2005; Bardi & Schwartz
2003; Brown & Kasser 2005; Sheldon & Kasser 2011). Studies show that the more strongly individuals subscribe to values beyond their own immediate self-interests (i.e. self-
transcendence, prosocial, altruistic or biospheric values) the more likely they are to engage in pro-environmental behaviour (Steg & Vlek 2009; de Groot & Steg 2010).
I have drawn on the seminal work by Schwartz (1992; 2012) and Grouzet et al (2005) on the content of values and goals, which shows how different values and goals are organised in the mind, as illustrated in Figures 2.4 and 2.5 below, because of the implications of values and goals for motivating pro-environmental behaviour. It seems that some value types and goals are experienced as compatible and some as oppositional. The key oppositional conflicts are between self-transcendence and self-enhancement values, and between intrinsic and extrinsic goals. The oppositional structure implies that when one set of values is activated in the mind the other set is suppressed, making it difficult for people to think about both sets of values at the same time, and to simultaneously pursue behaviours congruent with both these values. With compatible values, activating one set is likely to also activate the adjacent compatible set. Activation refers to the process of eliciting or ‘switching on’ values in the mind. The more a value is activated, the stronger it becomes and the easier to subsequently activate. In the diagrams below, the values and goals that are compatible are adjacent and those in opposition are on opposite sides of the circumplex.
Fig 2.4 Theoretical model of relations among 10 motivational types of values (Schwartz & Boehnke 2004)
Fig 2.5 Circular representation of goals (Grouzet et al 2005)
Figure 2.6 shows how Grouzet et al (2005) structure of goals maps onto Schwartz (1992) and Schwartz et al (2012) revised structure of values, to demonstrate the compatibility of these theories.
Fig 2.6 Mapping of values onto goals Schwartz value
domains Schwartz value types Grouzet et al goal type Grouzet et al goal domains Openness to
change Stimulation Self-Direction Self-Acceptance Intrinsic
Hedonism Hedonism
Self-
Transcendence Universalism Community Feeling Spirituality
Benevolence Affiliation
Conservation Security Safety
Physical health
Tradition Spirituality
Conformity Conformity
Humility Self-
Enhancement Power Achievement Financial success Extrinsic
Face (2012
revised) Image
Popularity
In the Schwartz model, the value domain associated with pro-environmental behaviour is labelled Self-Transcendence, made up of value types universalism and benevolence.
Benevolence is concern with caring for in-group members. Universalism extends beyond this and is associated with understanding, appreciation, tolerance and protection for the welfare of allpeople and for nature. They are called self-transcendence values because they are concerned with more than just individual self-interest. In the Grouzet et al model, the goal domain that is associated with pro-environmental behaviour is labelled Intrinsic. Intrinsic goals are called this because they are understood to be inherently satisfying to pursue. This is because achieving intrinsic goals of community feeling (making the world a better place, with associated sense of agency), affiliation (close personal relationships) and self-
acceptance (knowing and liking oneself, personal growth, feeling competent and
autonomous) satisfies basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness (Grouzet et al 2005). I discuss needs further in the next subsection (see 2.3.3).
Self-enhancement values and extrinsic goals are associated with less concern for the wellbeing of other people and the natural world (Kasser et al 2004; Schultz et al 2005), and with higher materialism (Kasser et al 2004). These values and goals are to do with power over others, achieving external rewards such as financial success, and praise and positive evaluation by others. Rather than satisfying basic psychological needs directly, extrinsic goals are pursued as a means to some other end or to compensate for a deficiency in capacity to satisfy basic needs. Self-enhancement values are anxiety based: they are self-protective values pursued to cope with anxiety in situations of uncertainty, whereas self-transcendence values are anxiety free (Schwartz 2012). Anxiety has been shown to reduce empathy because it is linked to egocentrism (Todd et al 2015). I explain egocentrism in the section on identity and the self (see 2.4.3).
Environmental campaigns that appeal to social status or offer financial rewards may well be effective in promoting particular behaviours in the short term, but the individual is likely to experience reduced motivation to act in other pro-environmental ways (Kasser & Crompton 2011), and it could result in a rebound effect. The phenomenon of rebound occurs when some of the environmental benefits from a behaviour change such as energy efficiency are cancelled out by changes in behaviour in other areas, so for example money saved on energy bills is used on flights abroad or using the car more. There is evidence that people who perceive themselves as leading green lifestyles are often in reality the most-carbon intensive, rewarding themselves for their good behaviour with skiing holidays abroad for example (Adam 2008). Mazar & Zhong (2010) find similar contradictory behaviour. This rebound effect has serious implications for climate change mitigation (Jenkins et al 2011).
It is thought that we all have the full range of these values available to us but people may have dispositional tendencies to prioritise some values above others and these ones are
more salient in the mind. Dispositional commitment to a value or goal is gained through accumulated experience, and can change over time: values are not character types (Darnton & Kirk 2011; Holmes et al 2011). People seem to make trade-offs between values within an integrated system of values, so a particular behaviour may be in line with one value but because it is in conflict with others it is not enacted (Crompton 2010).
Values are not the sole determinants of environmental behaviour (Whitmarsh & O’Neill 2010) and pro-environmental values are not consistently enacted all of the time or across all areas of our lives (e.g. Maio 2011; Maio et al 2001; see also Jenkins et al 2011). I have chosen to focus my research on people oriented to pro-environmental values and goals because I am interested in developing understanding of factors affecting enactment of these values and goals through behaviour - through adaptive responses to ecological crisis.
Priming of values through social priming
People are not rigidly fixed in their value and goal orientation, and can be influenced, or primed, into activating certain values, without them even being consciously aware of how they have been manipulated (e.g. Maio et al 2001; Chilton et al 2012). Priming in psychology refers to influencing responses in people by exposing them to a particular stimulus, which then activates particular associations in memory. Experimental studies show that people can be primed to engage or switch on certain values in the mind by being asked to think about these values and their importance, and this activation appears to subsequently influence their judgements, concerns and behaviour over the short term (Chilton et al 2012; Maio et al 2009; Maio et al 2001). Repeated activation of values serves to strengthen them relative to other values, and this makes them easier to activate.
Outside the psychology lab in everyday life, strengthening of values can occur through exposure to and internalisation of cultural messages. The work of Kasser and others suggests that the relative strength of particular values in society as expressed through mainstream media and advertising influences the strength and salience of values in individuals (e.g. Kasser et al 2004; Flouri 1999; Alexander & Crompton 2011). This highlights the important role that language (both words and images) has in influencing cognition and behaviour. As the linguist Paul Chilton observed, language is a constant form of priming (Chilton 2012), and studies such as those by Thibodeau & Boroditsky (2011) show how people can be unwittingly primed to think and respond in particular ways through exposure to certain kinds of
language and metaphors. With recurrent exposure to particular language used to talk about something, such as the natural world, through for example mainstream media, those words and concepts are stored in memory as a packet of knowledge together with a set of emotion and value associations forming a cognitive frame. This frame can later be activated in the mind by use of those words, and the more the frame is activated the stronger the neural network becomes and the easier it is activated. I return to discuss cognitive frames in more depth in section 2.6, but for now I merely wish to highlight this insight about the association between values, emotions, knowledge and language in the mind.