When Guilt Works Better Than Pride To Get People To Go Green, Nicole Sintov PhD Ep50

How to Save the World | The Psychology & Science of Environmental Behavior

This month's guest expert on the How to Save the World podcast is Nicole Sintov, Associate Professor of Behavior, Decision-Making, and Sustainability from Ohio State University.

We'll be interviewing Nicole on her published research paper, "Guilt consistently motivates pro-environmental outcomes while pride depends on context."

The gist of this research shows that telling people they are performing worse than most others on environmental and climate action, stimulates people to do better.

We'll dig into the question, "Should we be showering people with compliments and positive feedback about their good efforts, or are we better just telling people when they are doing a bad job?"

Not that we need to ONLY make people feel guilty, but negative feedback gets a bad wrap and tends to be avoided, but there’s definitely a strong role for it - and it needs to be a tool in the toolbox of change.

Nicole's research paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494422000214
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-sintov-b3b4a01a3/

* * *

How to Save the World is a podcast about the psychology of what gets people to do eco-behaviors and take climate action: Environmental engineer, designer, and author, Katie Patrick, hunts down the latest behavioral science literature from top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to unearth the evidence-based teachings you can use to rapidly get more people to adopt your environmental campaign, program, or product. Sign up for Katie's free behavior and gamification design course at http://katiepatrick.com

Join my Gamify the Planet masterclass training in climate action design for $25/month http://katiepatrick.com/gamifytheplanet

Get a copy of the book, How to Save the World on Amazon https://amzn.to/2Z4jivL

This podcast is supported by our friends at Earth Hacks who run environmental hackathons, Conservation X Labs who promote community-driven open tech development for conservation, and Climate Designers - a network of designers who use their creative skills for climate action.

Follow on

Twitter @katiepatrick

Instagram @katiepatrickhello

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-patrick/