"Will you buy fewer plastic bottles?" A simple question can change our behavior.
Are you planning to buy fewer plastic water bottles in the future? Maybe not, but now that you've been asked the question, you're bound to think about it. This psychological effect could be used to encourage people to reduce their plastic consumption.
Bing Bai, University of Montpellier; Laurie Balbo, Grenoble School of Management (GEM) and Marie-Christine Lichtlé, University of Montpellier
With a growth rate of 73% over the last decade, the bottled water market is one of the fastest growing markets worldwide. Unfortunately, this consumption has harmful environmental consequences: increased plastic waste, greenhouse gas emissions linked to the production, transport, and distribution of bottles, and overexploitation of water resources to produce bottled water. These impacts only exacerbate the current ecological crisis. In light of this situation, reducing our dependence on bottled water is emerging as a crucial environmental issue.
In 2020, a study by Futerra and OnePulse revealed that 80% of respondents said they were willing to change their habits to combat climate change, and 50% of them were considering limiting their use of plastic. However, little research has been devoted to communication strategies that would reduce bottled water consumption.
Self-fulfilling prophecies: a question to promote change
Our research explores the impact of what we call self-fulfilling prophecies on reducing the purchase of bottled water in the United States, based on a sample of 269 people. Self-fulfilling prophecies refer to a psychological phenomenon whereby simply asking individuals questions about their future behaviors (e.g., "Will you recycle your packaging?") can increase the likelihood that they will adopt those behaviors. Our study analyzes this process and examines how individual factors can modulate its effects.
Researchers have shown that the effects of self-fulfilling prophecies can be explained by cognitive dissonance theory. When a person is asked to predict their future behavior, they may become aware of a gap between their normative beliefs (what they consider socially desirable or acceptable) and their behaviors. This inconsistency creates dissonance, or a contradiction, which often motivates individuals to change their actions to better align them with their values.
Feeling guilty in advance for an action that goes against our values
In our study, we demonstrate the emotional mechanism by which self-fulfilling prophecy influences pro-environmental behavior through anticipated guilt. In his book entitled A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, American social psychologist Leon Festinger describes dissonance as a state characterized by psychological discomfort, causing aversion and motivation to change behavior. However, he does not explicitly specify the nature of this discomfort. Subsequent dissonance theorists have identified guilt as an emotion caused by dissonance in certain situations.
We explored this idea by focusing specifically on guilt, hypothesizing that individuals anticipate this feeling when they consider not engaging in environmentally friendly behavior. This is particularly the case when this behavior is in line with their normative beliefs (i.e., the social or cultural expectations to which they conform in certain situations). Thus, this anticipation of guilt leads them to respond to requests for behavior aligned with ecological values in order to avoid this negative feeling.
To test this hypothesis, we measured guilt in participants exposed to an advertisement containing a predictive question aimed at reducing their purchases of plastic bottled water. These participants felt more guilt in advance than those in the control group, who were exposed to an advertisement without a predictive question. This anticipated guilt, in turn, reduced their intention to buy bottled water.
Effects that vary from person to person
We explored two factors that may influence the effectiveness of the self-fulfilling prophecy technique: normative beliefs and the motivations that drive people to engage in an action.
Previous research has highlighted the importance of normative beliefs. Individuals who are strongly attached to their beliefs are more likely to predict that they will adopt behaviors consistent with those beliefs and to actually implement them. We examined how different types of norms influence intentions. Some norms are descriptive (what most people do), others are injunctive (what we think is expected of us), and finally, some are personal (our own internal moral standards).
The results show that these three types of norms directly influence anticipated guilt. Participants believe that most people buy fewer bottles, that it is socially expected to do so, and that it corresponds to their personal beliefs. The stronger these norms are, the greater the anticipated guilt in the event of non-compliance. However, we did not observe any interaction between norms and the prediction question. This suggests that a prediction question does not make normative beliefs more salient at the time of prediction, and therefore does not guide participants in their decision-making.
In addition, we studied approach motivation, i.e., the desire to engage in actions that provide positive experiences or rewards. This allows us to measure a score known as BAS ( behavioral approach system): individuals with the highest scores are more likely to try to fulfill their goals, whether concrete (e.g., reaching or grasping an object) or more abstract (e.g., altruism or productivity). These individuals make greater efforts to achieve goals that bring them pleasure, thereby reducing the gap between the goals they set for themselves and what they actually do.
Those most prone to dissonance are those who achieve their goals the least.
Contrary to our hypothesis, individuals who have low sensitivity to rewards and seeking positive experiences feel more guilt than those with high scores. Our interpretation is that although individuals who score low on this test are less motivated to act to achieve their goals, they become more aware of the gap between their current behaviors and their personal standards when asked about it. This increased awareness of the mismatch between their actions and their standards, even in the absence of strong motivation, generates a stronger sense of anticipated guilt. As a result, although they have less impulse to act, this anticipation of guilt increases their intention to reduce their consumption of plastic bottles.
Conversely, individuals with high scores seem intrinsically inclined to align their actions with their standards, thereby reducing their cognitive dissonance. They seem to act proactively to bridge the gap between their behaviors and their goals, thereby reducing anticipated guilt.
Using self-fulfilling prophecies in environmental campaigns
The results of our study open up new possibilities for environmental awareness campaigns. Government agencies and NGOs can easily incorporate predictive questions into their communications to promote environmentally friendly behavior.
Contrary to previous findings, our results did not reveal any effect of normative beliefs on the effectiveness of self-fulfilling prophecies. If such an effect had been observed, we would have found that the more participants adhered to strong normative beliefs, the more their behavior would have been influenced by self-prediction, particularly by adapting their actions to match these norms. However, the literature shows that personal norms influence how individuals form their intentions and adopt environmentally friendly behaviors. We therefore recommend using personal norms in campaigns that use self-fulfilling prophecies, for example by creating messages that highlight the need for pro-environmental actions and the consequences of inaction.
It should also be noted that this study focuses on behavioral intentions. However, previous research has shown the effects of self-fulfilling prophecies on actual (rather than anticipated) behaviors that are repeated over time. For example, some studies have documented improvements in recycling over four-week periods after the protocol, or an increase in gym attendance over periods of up to six months after the prediction. These different results allow us to see that a simple question, by exploiting an emotional lever, can really encourage the public to change their practices.
Bing Bai, PhD student in Marketing at the University of Montpellier – Teaching assistant at EDHEC Business School, University of Montpellier; Laurie Balbo, Associate Professor of Marketing _ Director of the MSc Marketing and MSc Digital Marketing & Data Analytics programs, Grenoble École de Management (GEM) and Marie-Christine Lichtlé, University Professor, University of Montpellier
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.