Back from another one of my triumphant bike rides to downtown, this time to pick up pizzas at Il Fornaio, our favorite Italian. So glad I was. The three pizza boxes fit neatly into my side basket, not in the recommended horizontal position. The thought quickly brushed my mind, that maybe the toppings might slide, in protest. Oh, well, the risk was well worth taking. Off, I rushed back home. Again, sheer pleasure of being just me, with Pervenche, and the warm breeze. And plenty of times to savor the comings and goings inside my mind.
Ah ah, just I was going over the bridge, it hit me. What had gotten me on my bike was not carbon calculators, not injunctions from Green Guru, not my green conscience, not the sinister prospect of global warming. No, what had moved me to pick up Pervenche, was the memory of how fun the last ride had been, and the knowledge that it would take me about as much time to bike, as to drive. Physical satisfaction plus convenience, all at no cost. The personal benefit was obvious.
Forget the “we” campaign. What’s going to get people from ‘business as usual’, to leaving their cars in the garage, and not shopping as much, is the realization that such moves are not only good for the whole world but for them personally, also, in a very direct, immediate way. The recent gas crisis is another validation.
Hence the value of looking at personal motivators. Here is my list:
- immediate gratification
- convenience
- cost savings
- personal health
These are the big four on my list. Can you think of others?
PS – Do not transport pizza with the box on its edge in your side basket. The outcome ain’t pretty. Bare dough, with all the toppings squished against one side. We had a good laugh.
La Marguerite 
I don’t know anything about psychology, but I think the solution to your pizza problem would be to buy Calzones. 😉
Humans being very social beings (even more so than we think), a key motivator is: social respect and affirmation, “belonging”, identity, “status”, and (yes, sometimes) sex. Those are lots of words, but they all inter-relate. Call them, the satisfaction of our social selves.
This is one reason why media and group behavior, and role models, and physical example, and blogs, all matter.
The more people who bike, the more others who will bike, to a point. Thus, if you are a change-leader, then even if you know your pizza is disintegrating, smile anyway (while you bike) and show you’re having fun, as it sounds like you did.
Cheers.
The problem is that you are assuming people behave rationally. If these sustainable things gave more pleasure and fulfillment and that was all that mattered, then people would be doing them already without prompting from greenies.
That does not mean that doing these things makes people miserable. What it does mean is that other things are influencing them – culture, and infrequent small rewards.
I’ll mention something psychological, not because I think that Marguerite doesn’t know it, but because I want to explain my reasoning. People have done experiments on training animals, like getting a mouse to push a lever. Now, they decided to connect the lever-pushing with getting a pellet of food. There are four ways to do this,
Lever-push gives nothing – mouse pushes it once or twice then never touches it again. Lesson: zero benefit leads zero effort
Lever-push gives one small pellet every time – mouse pushes it when hungry and aside from that doesn’t bother. Lesson: reliable and predictable but small benefit leads to minimum effort. This is like earning a salary in a big company.
Lever-push gives a big bunch of pellets at random intervals – mouse pushes it when hungry until it gets the pile, then stops. Lesson: unreliable and infrequent but large benefits leads to a big effort for a short time, then no effort. This is like winning the lottery.
Lever-push gives one or two pellets at random intervals – mouse pushes it constantly even to exhaustion, only stopping occasionally to eat and then push again. Lesson: unreliable and infrequent small benefits at random intervals leads to constant effort and anxiety. This is like gambling, or some poor workplaces.
Now, when we look at Marguerite’s suggested lifestyle, what we find is that it most resembles the second case: reliable but small benefits, which lead to minimum effort.
And then if we look at our Western lifestyle, it most resembles the fourth case: infrequent, unreliable and small rewards at random intervals. Sometimes that burger tastes really good. Sometimes you get a good stretch of traffic where you can really zoom along at good speed. Sometimes there really is something good on tv. But these rewards are infrequent, unreliable and small. Like gambling.
In Western society, we’re all gamblers. Most of the time our lives are pretty bloody ordinary, but at infrequent, unreliable and random intervals, we get small rewards.
Now, turning our society of gamblers into a society of people going for those frequent, reliable and small rewards – that must be possible. What happens to the anxious gambling mouse when you change the setup so that he gets frequent, reliable but small rewards? Is he still anxious? Does he still keep pressing that lever madly? I don’t know. Perhaps Marguerite knows something about treating gamblers.
gambling addicts taking chances on climate change, driving cars, drinking sodas, spending away till the lever runs dry.
i see the scenario, but i am a firm believer in the power of positive reward, so my play includes the empowerment of those who see a woman on a bicycle, obviously enjoying it.
then thinking about doing something, dusting the jogging shoes, making a salad bed out of the old hot tub, whatever, it translates into a positive reaction chain.
Jeff, thanks for getting into social norm psychology. That is another point worth spending more time on, and one I am planning to write about in the near future. My post is more about intrinsic motivators, as opposed to external motivators from peers.
Nadine – greenadine – do you think the incredible positive energy I felt during that bike ride – ripples out into the universe? (not counting what takes place on this blog) I wonder.
Kyle, I will echo comment I left on your other blog, in response to post you wrote in response to my post . . . I think the gambling analogy is a good one, at least regarding pleasure motivator. My big theory is that people have forgotten, or even worse never had the chance to truly experience the rush from simple pleasures, such as biking, or gardening. I once attended a meditation retreat, when the monk asked us to taste a raisin and, taking our time to explore how it felt in our mouth, and as we slowly squeezed all the juices out. Believe me, I had never known a raisin to be so sweet. Same thing here. We need to take the time to enjoy life and nature. No longer rushing from one man made experience to the other. This is where school and early education can play such an important role.
Meryn, we like pizzas, not calzones 🙂
Of course what you suggest is better, Marguerite. My own life shows I believe that. The question is how we connect that to all the addicts out there…
I’ve not heard of a heroin addict giving it up for a walk in a park…
It may be a bit the same with our Western society. That’s why I talk about personal action – to convince those who are not addicts – and then social/government action – to force change on addicts.
http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2008/03/a-drug-treament.html
“Many drug treatment agencies, particularly in Europe, have found that once they develop a relationship with users through the needle exchange program, they are then able to help the users to move from needles and onto oral use.”
Relationships not only matter for happiness, but also for influencing change. I think a big problem is that it takes more time to foster relationships with people unlike you, and time is already a major constraint in many people’s life.
The feeling of competence is known to be a big factor.
From http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0341/is_3_56/ai_69391501
“That humans would be motivated to develop behavioral competence is not, on first glance, an impressive finding. What is fascinating, however, is that the participants report deriving personal enjoyment from such effort and that this category has generally been the most highly endorsed of all intrinsic satisfactions.”
…
“If, as White argues, competence is a fundamental motive, then it should sometimes be apparent in the content of other motives. For instance, we might ask whether it is possible to reframe the intrinsic satisfaction categories of frugality and participation as issues of competence. In fact, both do contain the notion of developing skills and abilities useful in taking care of the planet, at either the global or the local scale. Frugality involves resource competence. Being proficient at making things last is reported by the study participants as a valued skill. Participation contains the theme of being effective at making a difference in one’s community. There is satisfaction gained from being capable of bringing order to chaos.”
The search for competence certainly explains much of my behavior.
I’d say: “We can solve it, and it’s nice to solve it.”
If we can find ways to educate the opinion-makers and ‘talking heads’ in the mass media who are educating us now. That could be a step forward in terms of successfully establishing behavior changes grounded in competence and improved reality-orientation.
The family of humanity is only now starting to learn unexpectedly and painfully about certain human-induced global threats that could soon be presented to the human community by the seemingly endless growth of per human consumption and unbridled production activities increasing exponentially and overspreading the surface of Earth in our time.
Let us the consider the way many too many economists, politicians and their super-rich benefactors who primarily govern the workings of the news media, report to us that Earth can indefinitely sustain people conspicuously consuming its limited resources the way millions of fortunate people worldwide are doing; but I fear these intelligent ‘dreamers’ have lost their reality-orientation with regard to human biological limits and the limitations of the bounded physical world we inhabit. The Earth is relatively small, evidently finite and noticeably frangible; it is neither an eternal provider like a mother’s teat nor is it an endlessly overflowing cornucopia. Unlimited expansion of the global economy without regard to limits to its growth that are inevitably imposed by a finite world is an end-all strategy, I suppose.
A planet with the limitations and the make-up of Earth cannot realistically be expected to much longer maintain profligate over-consumption and adamantine hoarding of limited resources as well as seemingly endless expansion of production capabilities by millions of people, mostly in the overdeveloped world, that we see occurring as a result of actions by a tiny minority of selfish people who possess the wealth and power needed to behave in this ostentatious way.
Obscene displays of consumption by self-seeking people with great wealth could be directly undermining the biophysical integrity of Earth as well as precipitating deleterious effects upon its environs. Please consider how scarce resources are being recklessly dissipated and global ecosystems relentlessly degraded at a much faster rate than the Earth can restore its resources and ecological services for human benefit. Unintended, pernicious challenges resulting from the unrestrained increase of per capita over-consumption of Earth’s finite resources and the unbridled growth of economic globalization appear to be threatening to ravage our planetary home.
Perhaps the current scale as well the anticipated growth of per human over-consumption and the global economy could become unsustainable well before the year 2050.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
Meryn, thanks for quoting this interesting research. It made me think of recent post on
https://lamarguerite.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/smart-is-the-new-green/
My friend Colleen is a professional athlete and the two of us experiment with tactics to get kids motivated – hopefully for the long term. No preaching, no fear mongering; but the joy of being physically active and being able to bike and skateboard around without waiting for your parents to drive you somewhere. The fun of being in your own garden and throwing a big over-ripe tomato at your brother when he isn’t looking. Ownership and stewardship over some of your families’ energy affairs (like owning the CF bulbs and getting a cut on the energy savings).
Fun is a huge motivator as is being fit and healthy. Teenage girls (and probably boys) ask about her legs and hear that she gets them from bike riding. Getting a bit of control over the family energy budget is a big thing for kids too.
There are many ways to approach the challenge and this approach is fun.
She was just featured in the current Sierra Magazine – a fluffy piece that missed her programs, but publicity is good for her. At least the photo looks like her. http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200807/one_small_step.asp
This process has made me very optimistic and positive – something my formal work has not done.
Somehow I can’t quite make the transition to biking. I gave up my car over 15 years ago and now only take public transportation or walk.
But somehow the idea of biking in Boston (especially in Winter) seems like taking my life into my own hands.
I do however like the idea disproportionately even if I still haven’t done, but I do think about it a lot.
You’re not alone, mwb. I’m too cowardly to ride. But walking and public transport does it for me.
Our city doesn’t support riding, we have a few bike paths but they’re for leisure not commuting. Sometimes there are painted-in bike lanes, but one metre overlapping with the swing zone of parked cars and with only a painted line to protect you from vehicle traffic prone to drifting… Ah, I’ll walk, thanks.
My wife and I spent (mostly her) about 5 years lobbying local politicians and even finding corporate, state and federal grants to put in about 22 miles of bike paths in our town. The cost turned out to be low – about $20k per mile when everything was added.
A few people use them, but it was nothing like what we had hoped. What we really need is dropping the speed limit to 20 or 25 mph in town, but no luck with that.
Steve and Colleen, I agree with you. Kids to experience physically and with their peers, the joys of natural living, without the artificial resources of cars and industrially produced food. There is no substitute for that physical experience. The younger and more sustained he better. Keep up the good work!
From Kyle (Kiashu), entertaining video link about the pleasures of biking . . .
Marguerite,
We gave a huge amount of thought to what would motivate folks to take action on climate change while formulating the Together campaign. Making things easy tops our list. Not far behind are your other levers: cost savings and personal health.
But what can’t be forgotten is that at the end of the day, we all love simply getting on a bike and pedaling. Or walking. Or whatever it is that we derive enjoyment from.
Solving climate change – or any massive challenge – has to be presented in an engaging, dynamic, creative way. This is true no matter how serious the issue.
That’s why Together.com will always feature incentives, competitions, games and the like.
Getting someone to take action is so much easier if their imagination is ignited and they have a smile on their face.
Callum
Right on, Callum! I was mentioning your campaign to my husband. His comment, how come I have not heard about these guys? We live in the Bay Area. Any idea why your presence is not being felt here?
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