*[Enwl-eng] Feature: Context Setting Critical to the Psychology ofSustainability

[ENWLine]

More on Simran's ideas about The Green Brain can be found at:
http://www.simransethi.com/thegreenbrain

* * *

http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2013/02/28/getting-behind-psychology-sustainability?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonva%2FPZKXonjHpfsX56%2BwuWaK2lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4AScpmI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFSLHEMa5qw7gMXRQ%3D

*Getting behind the psychology of sustainability*

By Hannah Miller
Published February 28, 2013

While helping to develop the climate change plan for Lawrence, Kan.,
sustainability journalist Simran Sethi was having trouble getting her
message across to the Chamber of Commerce. "The science is uncertain,"
one banker argued. She was shocked.

How could anyone still believe this? she wondered. Sethi, a journalism
professor from "the green bubble of New York," listened to the banker's
perspective --- and heard it. He had a daughter with asthma, so in his
view, air pollution was the salient idea, and a strong reason to clean
up the local coal plant.

This experience shaped Sethi's interest in "the green brain," an
exploration of how human beings are wired for (and against) taking care
of the planet in business and elsewhere. Her talk, presented at the
GreenBiz Forum in San Francisco on Wednesday, was titled, "It's All in
Our Heads: The Psychology of Sustainability."

Her main point: context. A sustainability discussion with no context ---
and no listening --- is not effectual for companies or individuals, she
said.

Our psychology and our geography are our biography," she said. "They
shape our stories and sense of the world."

Sethi detailed some theories that impact sustainability efforts in
consumer behavior and inside companies. Although sustainability
advocates may see opponents as intractable, the human brain is in fact
wired to reward understanding in the neurochemistry of both parties, she
said.

Illustration Omitted:
Photo of Simran Sethi at GreenBiz Forum San Francisco by Goodwin
Ogbuehi/GreenBiz Group

Next page: Lighting up the brain's "reward centers"

"Reward centers" distributed throughout the brain light up when
differences are overcome --- the same ones that light up with you
exercise or have sex. That's right: Agreeing with someone about climate
change is biologically akin to having an orgasm.

"We struggle to understand each other because we care. Our brains have a
predisposition toward cooperation and helpfulness, and our reward
circuits light up when we do this," she told the audience at the UCSF
Mission Bay campus.

Sethi also explained how the brain prioritizes concerns. Although action
on sustainability is traditionally motivated by concern for large-scale
problems, she said, social psychologist Daniel Gilbert says human beings
are wired to concern themselves with imminent and short-term concerns.
All the others fall through, particularly those far away.

"There's a finite pool of worry --- there's only so much we can care
about," said Sethi. "We can't ask people to worry about things that are
far away unless we displace the worries in their heads, or work within
existing cares."

Sethi's work includes writing on seeds and food, environmental justice
and most recently, a piece on growing the green economy through ethical
markets.

She teaches at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minn., acts as a
senior communications adviser to the Center for Environmental Health and
is the founder of the interdisciplinary beta website Metamorphose.

Sethi has been named as one of the top 10 "eco-heroes" of the planet by
the U.K.'s Independent and as an "environmental messenger" by Vanity Fair.

Her move to Kansas to teach sparked her interest in this cultural
divide. Despite Kansas being the nation's breadbasket and having a deep
connection to the land, the majority of residents didn't identify as
environmentalists, she said. What does the word environmentalist mean, then?

"This was a fight over affiliation (with a specific region or place) ...
not over a desire for a healthy community," she said.

In some ways, nature may have already started contextualizing things for
millions of Americans who live, work and play in drought-ravaged
regions, or in the path of Hurricane Sandy. As ecoAmerica's blog puts
it, 2012 was "The Year Climate Change Got Real."

Now might be the time for those contextualized pitches, said Sethi.
"Instead of a company saving water and then telling customers about it,"
she said, it will be necessary to think about place and mindset when
appealing to green consumers.

"We have to tell different kinds of stories, that are personalized and
immediate," she said. "To inspire visions of a world that Bryan Welch
calls 'beautiful and abundant.'"

Hannah Miller is a writer with expertise in sustainable business, media
trends, online communications, political campaigns, ecology, online and
offline community-building, and the Internet industry. She has written
for newspapers and magazines including The Los Angeles Times, Forbes,
Salon, Shareable.net, E the Environmental Magazine and The Arizona Republic.

*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational
purposes only. ***



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