Communication strategies for moral rebels: How to talk about change in order to inspire self‐efficacy in others

Abstract

Current carbon‐intensive lifestyles are unsustainable and drastic social changes are required to combat climate change. To achieve such change, moral rebels (i.e., individuals who deviate from current behavioral norms based on ethical considerations) may be crucial catalyzers. However, the current literature holds that moral rebels may do more harm than good. By deviating from what most people do, based on a moral concern, moral rebels pose a threat to the moral self‐view of their observers who share but fail to uphold that concern. Those observers may realize that their behavior does not live up to their moral values, and feel morally inadequate as a result. Work on “do‐gooder derogation” demonstrates that rebel‐induced threat can elicit defensive reactance among observers, resulting in the rejection of moral rebels and their behavioral choices. Such findings suggest that advocates for social change should avoid triggering moral threat by, for example, presenting nonmoral justifications for their choices. We challenge this view by arguing that moral threat may be a necessary ingredient to achieve social change precisely because it triggers ethical dissonance. Thus, instead of avoiding moral justifications, it may be more effective to harness that threat. Ethical dissonance may offer the fuel needed for observers to engage in self‐improvement after being exposed to moral rebels, provided that observers feel capable of changing. Whether or not observers feel capable of changing, however, depends on how rebels communicate their moral choices to others—how they talk about change. This article is categorized under: Perceptions, Behaviour and Communication of Climate Change > Behaviour Change and Responses

“Do you consider animal welfare to be important?” activating cognitive dissonance via value activation can promote vegetarian choices

“…Specifically, our value activation strategy for animal welfare, which stimulates people to reflect on whether they consider animal welfare to be important, increased the amount of dissonance people experienced when thinking of consuming meat, which in turn increased the intention to order a vegetarian meal (Study 1) and (almost) doubled the percentage of vegetarian burgers ordered in the real-life study (Study 2). This finding adds to the existing literature on meat-related cognitive dissonance, that often portrays cognitive dissonance as something to avoid in animal advocacy (Brouwer et al, 2022;Bryant et al, 2022), by showing the positive potential of triggering and harnessing cognitive dissonance regarding meat reduction. We reveal that cognitive dissonance can translate into meat reduction, provided that people are no longer able to mentally decouple meat consumption from their moral self-image.…”

“…Cognitive dissonance can potentially act as fuel for change (Brouwer et al, 2022;Onwezen & van der Weele, 2016), and the fact that meat consumption harms animals is common knowledge. Yet, meat consumption is not declining (Verain et al, 2022).…”

Validating a measure for eco-anxiety in Portuguese young adults and exploring its associations with environmental action

“…In contrast, we noted that anxiety about one's impact on the environment is akin to self-conscious emotions, such as guilt about contributing to the problem. Self-conscious emotions function to regulate behaviour [19], and thus, we expected anxiety regarding personal impact to be associated with reducing one's impact on the planet by engaging in more pro-environmental behaviours. We also speculated that by keeping environmental impacts front-of-mind, the ruminative element of eco-anxiety would demonstrate a unique positive association with behaviour, although due to the lack of evidence, we made no firm prediction on this point.…”

The Temporal Dynamics of Attitudinal Conflict in Daily Life: An Experience Sampling Study of Conflict Emergence and Resolution

“…Targeting interventional information to specific times of attitudinal conflict and omitting the times at which people are likely to engage in dissonance reduction may increase the cost-effectiveness of behavior change campaigns. Policy-makers, non-profit organizations, and social marketing agencies could further amplify this effect by designing intervention contents that facilitate the regulation of meatrelated conflict through a willingness to change (Bastian, 2019;Brouwer et al, 2022;Minson & Chen, 2022;Pauer, Gainsburg, et al, 2023). We expect that numerous domains that entail frequent attitudinal conflicts involve similar opportunities for targeting interventions to their temporal dynamics, such as for recycling, physical exercise, and smoking cessation (Hahn et al, 2021;.…”