When we, as individuals, encounter situations where we will be made worse off than others, we perceive relative deprivation. And yet, in many such situations, individuals are willing to sacrifice for collective well-being. This is a particularly relevant phenomenon when discussing macroeconomic challenges, such as climate change and public health. How do individuals decide when collective well-being is more important than their perceived relative deprivation? And how can communities organize with the understanding of the limitations of individual willingness to sacrifice?
What would it look like to minimize perceived relative deprivation and maximize collective well-being in the context of addressing climate change? To explore this question, I reached out to Leaf Van Boven, a researcher and professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the director of the Environment, Decision, Judgment, and Identity Lab (EDJI) and has been investigating how cognitive, emotional, and social dynamics influence attitudes toward pressing issues like climate change. I asked Van Boven what I think are the five most important questions to help us understand how communities and individuals can approach maximizing collective well-being while minimizing perceived sacrifices of individuals.
JP: How do social preference and pro-social behavior impact personal and collective well-being?
LVB: Prosocial behavior is required for collective welfare and collective action. It’s a fundamental dilemma for humans: Maximizing personal and collective well-being requires some measure of self-sacrifice and pro-social behavior. Fortunately, there is ample research showing that people experience positive emotions and boosts in happiness when they behave pro-socially. So, what is good for society is good for us personally.
JP: How can individuals reshape their thinking to maintain their individual well-being while promoting collective well-being?
LVB: The reshaping is often a question of attention and awareness. Most people recognize the value of pro-social behavior—but they sometimes forget or become highly self-focused. In many cases, "reshaping" can be accomplished simply by reminding people of their personal prosocial values. People want to be pro-social; they just need the occasional reminder.
JP: How can we apply behavior science to climate change mitigation and adaptation?
LVB: Climate change is, perhaps, the most challenging collective action problem of our time. There are many views on the role of behavioral science in addressing it. My view is that, first and foremost, we need large-scale policy changes to support an energy transition away from fossil fuels and other carbon-intensive practices. It’s nearly impossible to “bend the curve” on climate change without policy change. In a sense, this simplifies the answer because the same insights behavioral science offers for other collective action problems—from civil rights to education to healthcare—apply equally, if not more so, to climate change. Civic action. Voting for policymakers who support climate policy. Activism to support climate policy. These are all critical parts of advancing climate policy. Of course, individual behavior change is good. But it needs to be in concert with broader systems change.
JP: How do we measure changes in pro-social behavior and associated impacts on collective well-being?
LVB: Behavioral science has a large toolbox for measuring pro-social behavior. This includes simple behavioral economic games, self-report measures of happiness and behavior, and incidental measures like facial expressions. There are many approaches to measuring prosocial behavior and well-being, and we should use all of them.
JP: How do we continue to iterate on and advance this work to develop more effective strategies to change behavior and improve collective well-being?
LVB: I’ll state the obvious. Iterating and advancing this work requires large-scale support for basic psychological science. The scientific endeavor, as a self-correcting, if imperfect, form of knowledge generation, is well equipped to make progress on critical questions about collective well-being. Scientists are eager to do that work. That requires a supporting infrastructure like that which has existed at the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Society and the policymakers we elect will have to decide if that work is worth continued investment.