The first part of this series discussed the ways in which an understanding of advances in human psychology have laid the basis for a transformation in the way civil society groups operate. Attempts to promote “win-win” scenarios or reach new audiences by appealing to certain types of motivation – such as status, security, or materialism – appear to reinforce precisely those values that impede change in the long term. Changing attitudes, behaviours and ultimately policies therefore seems to require that we avoid fostering these impulses – concentrating instead on cultivating concern for the welfare of all people, animals and the natural world.

This task is daunting in its scale, and fundamentally challenges a variety of entrenched cultures and practices. For both of these reasons, it often meets with scepticism, and a range of challenges. Some of the most frequently offered objections are outlined and discussed below. A third part will discuss the practical implications of this research: ways forward, and key areas of focus, for civil society.

Is this ethical?

One of the strongest lines of objection is not practical but ethical. Shifting our values is seen as a form of social engineering: the audience seems immune to the message, so we seek to change the audience. For some, the idea that we can “frame” messages to “activate” certain components of people’s psyches in particular has unpalatable connotations of “mind control”. The proposed remedy in the “Common Cause” report is to embed “transparency” in our communications. Yet this solution seems question-begging, and ultimately unconvincing. It is difficult to see how communications could be both effective and sufficiently transparent: isn’t this ultimately akin to advertisers’ appeals to greater “media literacy” instead of effective regulation?

This line of objection has some merit, then. But it fails to appreciate that any form of policy, communication, culture or institution will reinforce certain kinds of values and suppress others. Ignoring this effect does not make it disappear: it simply means that we are no longer conscious of it, and become incapable of steering it in less harmful directions. By definition, a society free of policies, communication, cultures and institutions is impossible: we can change or replace them, but never abolish them. The relevant ethical question is therefore similar to that raised by education: not whether we engage in it – because some form of education will take place regardless – but how.

As a society, we already (though to a woefully limited extent) pursue policies designed to influence attitudes and behaviour – drink-driving, smoking, seatbelt-wearing, eating healthily, and so on – where these impact on our own and others’ wellbeing. These are generally regarded as acceptable forms of influence. Even stronger forms of social influence – such as “interventions” by friends and family – are regarded as acceptable when we are seriously undermining our own (or others’) wellbeing. Why not also attempt to influence our values, then, if – as the evidence suggests – they too have significant effects on our own and others’ wellbeing?

Isn’t it easier to turn existing motivations towards different expressions in attitudes and behaviours?

Some of the most concerted attacks on the values-driven approach to social change have come from social marketers. It is surely far easier, they object, simply to “attach” the behaviours and attitudes we want to promote to existing motivations – by finding aspects of our goals that are more likely to motivate them.

While this approach is tempting, unfortunately there is little substantive evidence to suggest that it will work. Even were it to prove successful in one or a few major areas of policy, moreover, the potential for “spillover” from fostering anti-social values could have some profoundly damaging effects.

Most social marketers’ counter-proposals – concentrated in the environmental sphere – focus on “easy wins”. Car culture may currently pose a problem, but we can easily sublimate the desire for exciting status symbols into electric cars. A desire for “energy security” – inflected with a degree of racism – or for domestic green jobs may convince deeply hostile sections of the public to invest in renewable energy. We can make “slow travel” appealing with tips on chatting people up on long journeys (a serious suggestion). Carbon itself could even be sold as a low-status activity, “carbon slimming” high status.

Much of this paints a picture of an unappealing world – but perhaps it would at least (its advocates contend) be successful in addressing climate change. Unfortunately, it can hardly be said even to meet this objective. Electric cars are hardly carbon neutral, and, if their use were normalised, would represent a relatively profligate use of a restricted energy supply – even before other major resource constraints were taken into account. The idea that status-driven aspirations for electric car ownership could be sustained in the face of a rising global middle class is unconvincing. Desires for energy security and employment can equally be wrested from our hands to garner support for investment in coal – which is plentiful in the UK, and disastrous in climate change terms – or indeed in tar sands and unconventional oil. How would the goal of chatting people up on coaches dissuade them from chatting them up on long-haul flights – or indeed taking flights without compunction when schmoozing was not a priority?

What of the goal of simply making carbon “low-status”? Given the degree of sacrifice that would in reality have to be made –while other, more appealing status-driven activities continued to be promoted – this goal seems unrealistic. Any such attempt would set the stage for an unprecedented tide of corporate greenwash, as companies attempted to sell fake, “easy option” low-carbon lifestyles.
More importantly, it is difficult to see this option motivating essential policy changes. Such a shallow, presentational level of commitment tends not to produce genuine political pressure (as Neil Kinnock learned to his cost). Status has arguably had deeply invidious effects in US politics, where it is implicated in the profound backlash against “liberal elites”, and a (fantasised) culture war on behalf of the working man. Why would such a backlash not occur against high-status “carbon slimmers”?

Equally, what if the practice proved a thoroughgoing success in generating aspirational behaviour? As sociological evidence made abundantly clear, definitions of high-status behaviour constantly shift: social elite groups adjust their cultural norms as aspiring lower-class groups begin to imitate them. Once the fad had run its course – becoming irredeemably vulgar in the eyes of its former adherents – how exactly could it be resurrected?

Finally, what sort of rebound effects would reinforcing and normalising such values – as any such campaigns would necessarily do – have for society? Deeply unethical forms of low-carbon lifestyles can be sustained with ease: from biofuels driving starvation, to the new forms of imperial violence and repression that could easily result from sourcing Europe’s energy from North Africa – with potentially disastrous implications for the people of the region. What incentive would our status-driven “carbon slimmers” have to give a stuff about human rights (even if this was the very reason we were moved to care about climate change in the first place)? In fact, this population would be more likely to support a whole range of other unethical policies – precisely because of the values we had helped to promote.

Can we really change values?

Another frequent objection – articulated in more or less “strong” forms – is that we are simply unable to change values. Perhaps the strongest position is a pessimistic variant of neo-Darwinism, for which self-interest is an inevitably dominant strand of human nature. Yet evidence of our innate tendencies towards helpfulness, altruistic concern and a sense of fairness – as well as of a neurological basis for empathic response – suggest that this is wide of the mark. Moreover, the changes in values over time documented in the broad psychological literature seem to accord more with evidence of “neuroplasticity”: cultural and social surroundings are effective in reinforcing and suppressing our ingrained tendencies.

A softer variant – derived from the Maslowian tradition in psychology – suggests that a sequence of various “needs” must be met before our predispositions can change. To a limited extent this is vindicated by the psychological literature on values: fulfilling needs for love and security does help more “self-transcendent” values to flourish (a sense of threat in particular has been shown to be associated with a shift towards “self-enhancement” values). But the relationship is nowhere near as fixed as the neo-Maslowians suggest. The popular “post-materialism” hypothesis – that values have shifted away from materialism as countries have become more developed – has been undermined by recent evidence. Poorer people often display stronger tendencies towards altruistic concern and behaviour than their richer counterparts. And simple “priming” (reminding people of certain values) and “social modelling” (reinforcement in our social or cultural surroundings) are effective in orienting us towards certain values and away from others. From a neo-Maslowian perspective, social marketing approaches are also not unproblematic themselves: rather than helping us fulfil needs, marketing generally aims to twist the knife a little, stimulating (for instance) new security- or esteem-based desires and keeping us on an “hedonic treadmill” that brings us no nearer their satisfaction.

That values are not fixed, of course, does not tell us much about how malleable they will be in practice. This subject is certainly debatable. But the evidence – particularly from studies on the effects of education and media on our values – suggests that they can certainly be stimulated in the short term and cultivated in the long term.

Do we have time?

Value-change is often held to be a slow-moving process. As chair of the polling organisation MORI Robert Worcester puts it:

“Opinions are the ripples on the surface of the public’s consciousness, shallow and easily changed. Attitudes are the currents below the surface, deeper and stronger. Values are the deep tides of the public mood, slow to change, but powerful.”

Many of the problems we confront carry a degree of urgency, and environmental problems arguably represent a category of their own in this respect. The timescale thus appears incompatible with the goal of shifting values.

Rapid or not, however, if changing our values orientations is the only way to effect real and significant change – as the evidence suggests it is – we have no option but to engage with this reality. The evidence is far from conclusive on the question of whether values can be changed quickly – but suggests that there may be periods – so-called “critical junctures” – when social change can spiral rapidly from one “steady-state” to another.

In any eventuality, such a reorientation provides the most optimistic basis for dealing with the dislocations we are likely to confront this century. As WWF’s Tom Crompton has put it:

“We are in for a rocky ride whatever happens. I’d prefer to be going forward while promoting a set of values which offer the best hope of humane and compassionate responses to the challenges we confront.”