Naturally green: Harnessing stone age psychological biases to foster environmental behavior

Social Issues and Policy Review

Volumn 8, Issue 1, 2014, Pages 1-32

  Van Vugt, Mark ^a,b   Griskevicius, Vladas ^c   Schultz, P Wesley ^d  

^a VU UNIVERSITY AMSTERDAM   (Netherlands)

^b UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

^c UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA   (United States)

^d CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84892455168     PISSN: 17512395     EISSN: 17512409     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/sipr.12000     Document Type: Article

References (134)

1. Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179-211.
2. Asch, S. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity. Psychological Monographs, 70, 1-70.
3. Barclay, P. (2004). Trustworthiness and competitive altruism can also solve the "tragedy of the commons." Evolution and Human Behavior, 25, 209-220.
4. Bateson, M., Nettle, D., & Roberts, G. (2006). Cues of being watched enhance cooperation in a real-world setting. Biology Letters, 3, 412-414.
5. Bird, R., & Smith, E. A. (2005). Signaling theory, strategic interaction, and symbolic capital. Current Anthropology, 46, 221-248.
6. Black, S. J., Stern, P. C., & Ellworth, J. T. (1985). Personal and contextual influences on household energy adaptations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 70, 3-21.
7. Boehm, C. (2012). Moral origins. London: Basic Books.
8. Brewer, M. B., & Kramer, R. M. (1986). Choice behavior in social dilemmas: Effects of social identity, group size and decision framing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3, 543-549.
9. Brown, D. (1991). Human universals. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
10. Burnstein, E., Crandall, C., & Kitayama, S. (1994). Some neo-Darwinian decision rules for altruism: Weighing the cues for inclusive fitness as a function of the biological importance of the decision. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 773-789.
11. Buss, D. M. (2009). How can evolutionary psychology successfully explain personality and individual differences? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4, 359-366.
12. Buss, D. M., Haselton, M. G., Shackelford, T. K., Bleske, A. L., & Wakefield, J. C. (1998). Adaptations, exaptations, and spandrels. American Psychologist, 53, 533-548.
13. Chartrand, T., & Van Baaren, R. (2009). Human mimicry. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 219-274.
14. Cialdini, R. B. (2003). Crafting normative messages to protect the environment. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12, 105-109.
15. Cialdini, R. B., Reno, R. R., & Kallgren, C. A. (1990). A focus theory of normative conduct: Recycling the concept of norms to reduce littering in public places. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 1015-1026.
16. Cosmides, L. (1989). The logic of social exchange. Cognition, 31, 187-276.
17. Cuddy, A. J. C., & Doherty, K. T. (2010). OPOWER: Increasing energy efficiency through normative influence. Harvard Business School Case N9-911-16.
18. Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man. London: Appelton & Co.
19. Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
20. Deci, E., & Ryan, R. (Eds.), (2002). Handbook of self-determination research. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
21. De Cremer, D., & Van Vugt, M. (1999). Social identification effects in social dilemmas: A transformation of motives. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 871-893.
22. De Lange, M. A., Debets, L. W., Ruitenburg, K., & Holland, R. W. (2012). Making less of a mess: Scent exposure as a tool for behavioral change. Social Influence, 7, 90-97.
23. Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. London: Allen Lane.
24. Diener, E., & Suh, E. M. (2000). Culture and subjective wellbeing. Boston: MIT Press
25. Dietz, T., Ostrom, E., & Stern, P. C. (2003). The struggle to govern the commons. Science, 302, 1907-1912.
26. Ellis, B. J. (2004). Timing of pubertal maturation in girls. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 920-958.
27. Ellis, B. J., Figueredo, A. J., Brumbach, B., & Schlomer, G. L. (2009). Fundamental dimensions of environmental risk: The impact of harsh versus unpredictable environments on the evolution and development of life history strategies. Human Nature, 20, 204-268.
28. Fehr, E., & Gaechter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 415, 137-140.
29. Fiske, S. (2004). Social beings: Core motives in social psychology. New York: Wiley and Sons.
30. Frank, R. (1985). Choosing the right pond: Human behaviour and the quest for status. New York: Oxford University Press.
31. Gaertner, S. L., Dovidio, J. F., Anastasio, P. L., Bachman, B. A., Rust, M. C. (1993). The common ingroup model: Recategorization and the reduction of intergroup bias. European Review of Social Psychology, 4, 1-26.
32. Gardner, G., & Stern, P. C. (2002). Environmental problems and human behavior. London: Pearson.
33. Gifford, R. (2011). The dragons of inaction: Psychological barriers that limit climate change mitigation and adaptation. American Psychologist, 66, 290-302.
34. Gigerenzer, G., & Todd, P. M. (1999). Simple heuristics that make us smart. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
35. Gladwell, M. (2002). Tipping point: How little things can make a big difference. New York: Back Bay
36. Godoy, R., Reyes-García, V., Leonard, W. R., Huanca, T., McDade, T., Vadez, V., & Tanner, S. (2007). Signaling by consumption in a native Amazonian society. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28, 124-134.
37. Goldstein, N. J., & Cialdini, R. B. (2007). Using social norms as a lever of social influence. In A. Pratkanis (Ed.), The science of social influence: Advances and future progress (pp. 167-192). Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.
38. Goldstein, N. J., Cialdini, R. B., & Griskevicius, V. (2008). A room with a viewpoint: Using social norms to motivate environmental conservation in hotels. Journal of Consumer Research, 35, 472-482.
39. Goldstein, N. A., Griskevicius, V., & Cialdini, R. B. (2012). Reciprocity by proxy: Harnessing the power of obligation to foster cooperation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 56, 441-473.
40. Gotts, J., & van Vugt, M. (2014). Environmental behavior as mate quality signal. VU University, submitted.
41. Green, L., & Myerson, J. (2004). A discounting framework for choice with delayed and probabilistic rewards. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 769-792.
42. Griskevicius, V., Delton, A. W., Robertson, T. E, & Tybur, J. M. (2011). The influence of mortality and socioeconomic status on risk and delayed rewards. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 241-254.
43. Griskevicius, V., Tybur, J. M., Ackerman, J. A., Delton, A. W., Robertson, T. E., & White, A. (2012). The financial consequences of too many men: Sex ratio effects of saving, borrowing, and spending. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 69-80.
44. Griskevicius, V., Tybur, J. M., Sundie, J. M., Cialdini, R. B., Miller, G. F., & Kenrick, D. T. (2007). Blatant benevolence and conspicuous consumption: When romantic motives elicit strategic costly signals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 85-102.
45. Griskevicius, V., Tybur, J. M., & Van den Bergh, B. (2010), Going green to be seen: Status, reputation, and conspicuous conservation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 392-404.
46. Haley, K., & Fessler, D. (2005). Nobody's watching: Subtle cues affect generosity in an anonymous economic game. Evolution and Human Behavior, 26, 245-256.
47. Hamilton, W. D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behavior, I, II. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7, 1-52.
48. Hardin, G. (1968). Tragedy of the commons. Science, 162, 1243-1248.
49. Hardin, G. (1995). Living with limits: Ecology, economics, and population taboos. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
50. Hardy, C. L., & Van Vugt, M. (2006). Nice guys finish first: The competitive altruism hypothesis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 1402-1413.
51. Haselton, M. G., & Nettle, D. (2006). The paranoid optimist: An integrative evolutionary model of cognitive biases. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(1), 47-66.
52. Hawkes, K. (1992). Sharing and collective action. In E. Smith & B. Winterhalder (Eds.), Evolutionary ecology and human behavior (pp. 269-300). New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
53. Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2007). Made to stick: Why some ideas survive and others die. New York: Random House.
54. Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan A. (2010). Most people are not WEIRD. Nature, 466.
55. Iredale, W., & Van Vugt, M. (2012). Altruism as showing off: A signaling perspective on promoting green behaviors and other acts of kindness. In S. C. Roberts (Ed.), Applied evolutionary psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
56. Iredale, W., Van Vugt, M., & Dunbar, R. I. M. (2008). Showing off in humans: Male generosity as a mating signal. Evolutionary Psychology, 6, 386-392.
57. Kameda, T., Takezawa, M, Hastie, R. (2003). The logic of social sharing: An evolutionary game analysis of adaptive norm development. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7, 2-19.
58. Kaplan, H. S., & Gangestad, S. W. (2005). Life history and evolutionary psychology. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), Handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 68-95). New York: Wiley.
59. Kaplan, R., & Kaplan, S, (1989). The experience of nature: A psychological perspective. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
60. Kenrick, D. T., Griskevicius, V., Neuberg, S. L., & Schaller, M. (2010). Renovating the pyramid of needs: Contemporary extensions built upon ancient foundations. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 292-314.
61. Keizer, K., Lindenberg, S., & Steg, L. (2008). The spreading of disorder. Science, 322, 1681-1685.
62. Keizer, K., & Schultz, P. W. (2012). The role of social norms in understanding and changing pro-environmental behaviour. In L. Steg, A. van den Berg, & J. de Groot (Eds.), Environmental psychology (pp. 153-164). Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
63. Komorita, S., & Parks, C. D. (1994). Social dilemmas. Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark.
64. Lederbogen, F., Kirsch, P., Haddad, L., Streit, F., Tost, H., Schuch, P., ... Meyer-Lindenberg, A. (2011). City living and urban upbringing affect neural stress processing in humans. Nature, 474, 498-501.
65. Lerner, M. J., & Clayton, S. (2011). Justice and self-interest: Two fundamental motives. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
66. Low, B. S. (1996). Behavioral ecology of conservation in traditional societies. Human Nature, 7, 353-379.
67. McClure, S. M., Laibson, D. I., Loewenstein, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2004). Separate neural systems value immediate and delayed monetary rewards. Science, 306, 503-507.
68. Milinski, M., Semmann, D., Krambeck, H., & Marotzke, J. (2006). Stabilizing the earth's climate is not a losing game: Supporting evidence from public goods experiments. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, 103, 3994-3998.
69. Miller, G. F. (2009). Spent: Sex, evolution, and consumer behavior. New York: Viking.
70. Nesse, R. M. (2005). Evolutionary psychology and mental health. In D. Buss (Ed.), Handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 903-927). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
71. Neuberg, S. L., Kenrick, D. T., & Schaller, M. (2010). Evolutionary social psychology. In S. T. Fiske, D. T. Gilbert & G. Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology, 5th ed. (pp. 761-796). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
72. Neufeld, S. L., Griskevicius, V., Ledlow, S. E., Li, Y. J., & Neel, R. (2013). Going green to help your genes: The use of kin-based appeals in conservation messages. Working paper, Global Institute for Sustainability, Arizona State University.
73. Nolan, J. P., Schultz, P. W., Cialdini, R. B., Goldstein, N. J., & Griskevicius, V. (2008). Normative social influence is underdetected. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 913-923.
74. Nowak, M. A., & Sigmund, K. (2005). Evolution of indirect reciprocity. Nature, 437, 1291-1298.
75. OECD (2012). OECD environmental outlook to 2050. Paris, France.
76. Öhman, A., & Mineka, S. (2001). Fears, phobias, and preparedness: Toward an evolved module of fear and fear learning. Psychological Review, 108, 483-522.
77. Ornstein R., & Ehrlich P. (1989). New world, new mind: Moving toward conscious evolution. New York: Touchstone Books.
78. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
79. Palmer, C. T. (1991). Kin-selection, reciprocal altruism, and information sharing among Maine lobstermen, Ethology and Sociobiology, 12, 221-235.
80. Park, J., Schaller, M., & van Vugt, M. (2008). The psychology of human kin recognition: Heuristic cues, erroneous inferences, and their implications. Review of General Psychology, 12, 215-235.
81. Penn, D. J. (2003). The evolutionary roots of our environmental problems: Toward a Darwinian ecology. Quarterly Review of Biology, 78, 275-301.
82. Penn, D., & Mysterud, J. (2007). Evolutionary perspectives on environmental problems. London: Transaction Publishers.
83. Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate. London: Penguin Classics.
84. Powers, N., Blackman, A., Lyon, T. P., & Narain, U. (2008). Does disclosure reduce pollution? Evidence from India's Green Rating Project. Discussion Paper, Resources for the Future, RFF 08-38. Downloaded January 12, 2013 from http://www.rff.org/RFF/Documents/RFF-DP-08-38.pdf.
85. Rees, W. (2010). The human nature of unsustainability. Post-Carbon Reader Series. Santa Rosa, CA: Post-Carbon Institute.
86. Richardson, N. J., Shepherd, R., & Elliman, N. A. (1993). Current attitudes and future influence on meat consumption in the UK. Appetite, 21, 41-51.
87. Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2006). Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
88. Ridley, M. (2003). Nature via nurture. London: Penguin.
89. Roberts, S. C. (2012). Applied evolutionary psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
90. Rogers, E. (1995). Diffusion of innovations. New York: The Free Press.
91. Saad, G. (2007). The evolutionary bases of consumption. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
92. Saad, G. (2011). Evolutionary psychology in the business sciences. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer.
93. Schultz, P. W. (1999). Changing behavior with normative feedback interventions: A field experiment of curbside recycling. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 21, 25-36.
94. Schultz, P. W. (2002). Inclusion with nature: Understanding the psychology of human-nature interactions. In P. Schmuck & P. W. Schultz (Eds.), The psychology of sustainable development (pp. 61-78). New York: Kluwer.
95. Schultz, P. W. (2010). Making energy conservation the norm. In K. Ehrhardt-Martinez & J. Laitner (Eds.), People-centered initiatives for increasing energy savings. Washington, DC: American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Online book available at: http://www.aceee.org/people-centered-energy-savings.
96. Schultz, P. W. (2011). Conservation means behavior. Conservation Biology, 25, 1080-1083.
97. Schultz, P. W., Khazian, A., & Zaleski, A. (2008). Using normative social influence to promote conservation among hotel guests. Social Influence, 3, 4-23.
98. Schultz, P. W., Nolan, J. P., Cialdini, R. B., Goldstein, N. J., & Griskevicius, V. (2007). The constructive, destructive, and reconstructive power of social norms. Psychological Science, 18(5), 429-434.
99. Schultz, P. W., & Zelezny, L. (2003). Reframing environmental messages to be congruent with American values. Human Ecology Review, 10, 126-136.
100. Schwartz, S. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 1-65.
101. Simon, H. (1990). A mechanism for social selection and successful altruism. Science, 21, 1665-1668.
102. Smith, E., & Wishnie, J. (2000). Conbservation and subsistence in small scale societies. Annual Review of Anthropology, 29, 493-524.
103. Slovic, P. (1987). Perception of risk. Science, 236, 280-285.
104. Steg, L., & Vlek, C. (2009). Encouraging prosocial behavior: An integrative review and research agenda. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29, 309-317.
105. Stern, P. C. (2000). Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant behaviour. Journal of Social Issues, 56, 407-424.
106. Steentjes, K., & M. van Vugt (2013). Exposure to nature promotes cooperation in social dilemmas. Working paper. Department of Social and Organisational Psychology, VU Amsterdam.
107. Sundie, J. M., Cialdini, R. B., Griskevicius, V., & Kenrick, D. T. (2006). Evolutionary social influence. In M. Schaller et al. (Eds.), Evolution and social psychology (pp. 287-316). New York: Psychology Press.
108. Sundie, J. M., Kenrick, D. T., Griskevicius, V., Tybur, J. M., Vohs, K. D., & Beal, D. J. (2011). Peacocks, Porsches, and Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous consumption as a sexual signaling system, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 664-680.
109. Swim, J. K., Stern, P. C., Doherty, T., Clayton, S., Reser, J., Weber, E, Gifford, R., & Howard, G. S. (2011). Psychology's contributions to understanding and addressing global climate change. American Psychologist, 66, 241-250.
110. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In H. Tajfel (Ed.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33-47). Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole.
111. Tenbrunsel, A. E., & Messick, D. M. (1999). Sanctioning systems, decision frames and cooperation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44, 684-707.
112. Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2008). Nudge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
113. Tinbergen, N. (1963). On the aims and methods of ethology. Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 20, 410-433.
114. Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1992). The psychological foundations of culture. In J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 19-136). New York: Oxford University Press.
115. Trivers, R. L. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology, 46, 35-57.
116. Ulrich, R. S. (1984). View through a window may influence recovery from surgery. Science, 4647, 420-421.
117. UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) (2012). Downloaded June 12, 2013 from http://www.unep.org/geo/geo3/english/221.htm.
118. Uzzell, D. L. (2000). The psycho-spatial dimension of global environmental problems. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 20, 307-318.
119. Uzzell, D. L., & Raethzel N. (2009). Transforming environmental psychology. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29, 340-350.
120. Van der Wal, A., Krabbendam, A. C., Schade, H., & van Vugt, M. (2013). Do natural landscapes reduce future discounting in humans? Proceedings of the Royal Society-B, 280, no. 1773 20132295.
121. Van Lange, P. A. M., Balliet, D. P., Parks, C. D., & van Vugt, M. (2013). Social dilemmas: The psychology of human cooperation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
122. Van Lange, P. A. M., De Bruin, E., Otten, W., & Joireman, J. A. (1997). Development of prosocial, individualistic, and competitive orientations: Theory and preliminary evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 733-746.
123. Van Vugt, M. (2001). Community identification moderating the impact of financial incentives in a natural social dilemma: Water conservation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 731-745.
124. Van Vugt, M. (2009). Averting the tragedy of the commons: Using social psychological science to protect the environment. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 169-173.
125. Van Vugt, M., & Ahuja, A. (2011). Naturally selected: the evolutionary science of leadership. New York: Harper.
126. Van Vugt, M., & Hardy, C. (2010). Cooperation for reputation: Wasteful contributions as costly signals in public goods. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 13, 101-111.
127. Van Vugt, M., Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R. (2008). Leadership, followership, and evolution: Some lessons from the past. American Psychologist, 63, 182-196.
128. Van Vugt, M., Roberts, G., & Hardy, C. (2007). Competitive altruism: Development of reputation-based cooperation in groups. In R. Dunbar & L. Barrett (Eds.) Handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 531-540). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
129. Wilson, E. O. (2006). The creation: An appeal to save life on earth. New York: Norton.
130. Wilson, M., & Daly, M. (1997). Life expectancy, economic inequality, homicide, and reproductive timing in Chicago neighborhoods. British Medical Journal, 314, 1271-1274.
131. Wilson, M., & Daly, M. (2005). Carpe diem: Adaptation and devaluing the future. Quarterly Review of Biology, 80, 55-60.
132. Wilson, M., Daly, M., & Gordon, S. (2007). The evolved psychological apparatus of human decision-making is one source of environmental problems. In D. Penn & I. Mysterud, (Eds.) Evolutionary perspectives on environmental problems. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
133. Wilson, D. S., Van Vugt, M., & O'Gorman, R. (2008). Multilevel selection theory and major evolutionary transitions: Implications for Psychological Science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 6-9.
134. Zahavi, A., & Zahavi, A. (1997). The handicap principle: a missing piece of Darwin's puzzle. New York: Oxford University Press.