Motivations of Indifference

Principal Investigator: Professor Peter Goldie, School of Social Sciences (Philosophy)

The project Motivations of Indifference (2009-2010), funded by the Sustainable Consumption Institute, was conducted by Prof. Peter Goldie, Dr. Michael Scott (Principal Investigators), and Dr. Michiru Nagatsu (Postdoctoral Fellow) based in the Philosophy Discipline Area, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester. The project focused on one of the causes of the discrepancy between people's pro-environmental values and pro-environmental behaviour, which is what economists and psychologists call the social dilemma problem. A social dilemma is defined as a situation in which everyone in a group prefers receiving the benefits of mutual cooperation, but at the same time everyone prefers free-riding more, i.e., receiving the fruits of cooperation without incurring individual costs. For example, although most people prefer a clean neighbourhood to a dirty one, they would be even better off if they could enjoy a clean neighbourhood while avoiding slight inconvenience, such as carrying banana peel or greasy crisp bags with them until they find a bin.

The question we addressed was: What exactly is the underlying psychology of voluntary cooperation? Do people frame the social dilemma from a group's point of view and accordingly play their part as members of the group (what we have termed we-thinking)? Or do they cooperate merely because they want to avoid embarrassment of transgression (I-thinking)? While both factors are likely to come into play in different contexts, our hypothesis was that if it is possible to sufficiently attract individuals' attention to their common interests with other members, then we-thinking considerations will become more prominent in their evaluations and modify their behaviour accordingly.

In June 2010 we organised a conference on behavioural change, entitled Green Nudges, in which people from Keep Britain Tidy, defra and Manchester City Council, among others, participated, and it was a considerable success. We are now seeking funding for further research in this area, in particular to (i) extend our understanding of the psychological mechanisms underlying voluntary cooperation in groups, building on our research to date; and (ii) apply the results in the specific context of littering. In August 2010 our postdoc Michiru Nagatsu presented some of the results from our research at the Conference on Collective Intentionality VII: Perspectives on Social Ontology held in Basel, Switzerland. Nagatsu proposed a new experiment to test the we-thinking hypothesis in social dilemma games.

Potential policy and research benefits of our research
Our aspiration is that our research should benefit policy communities interested in changing people's behaviour towards sustainability. For example, in a recent report, KBT urge that further research is required to better understand the effectiveness of longer-term campaigns on the public's values, norms and behaviours regarding littering (This is our Home: Evidence Paper Three 2010, p.30). Since many of their social advertisements are implicitly trying to exploit either people's social norm conformity or group identity, or both, a deeper understanding of the exact relation between these two types of motivations of voluntary cooperation will be helpful in developing more focused and effective advertisements.

In addition to the traditional social advertisements, KBT have recently been putting more emphasis on their litter-pick campaign, known as The Big Tidy Up, which has so far achieved a modest success compared to similar, but more popular campaigns carried out in several small European countries (Let's Do It! campaigns in the Baltic States, Slovenia, Portugal, etc. since 2008). Since our research examines exactly the motivations of such voluntary actions in the absence of the strong social norm of volunteering, KBT will find it useful in developing its litter-pick campaign more successfully.

In addition, of course, our research has proved to be of considerable academic interest: to experimental and behavioural economists, social psychologists working on the models of team reasoning, philosophers interested in collective intentionality and group agency (both within the UK and globally), and to academics working on social capital and happiness/well-being.