Turning Restriction Into Change: Imagine-Self Perspective Taking Fosters Advocacy of a Mandatory Proenvironmental Initiative

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Isabella Uhl-Haedicke¹  Johannes Klackl¹  Christina Muehlberger¹  Eva Jonas¹ 

[1] Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg

关键词: perspective taking;    imagine-self;    restriction;    climate change;    environmental attitude;    environmental policy;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02657

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Mandatory policies are needed to mitigate environmental problems but often elicit resistance if individuals perceive them as freedom restrictions. Encouraging people to take the perspective of individuals who suffer from environmental problems may help increase support. This should especially be the case with imagine-self as opposed to imagine-other perspective taking, because the former elicits more personal involvement than the latter. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two studies in which we announced the introduction of a voluntary vs. a mandatory proenvironmental initiative and asked people to take an imagine-self vs. imagine-other perspective on an individual, who suffers from human-caused environmental problems. The imagine-self condition increased the support of mandatory compared to voluntary initiatives. In addition, we found an influence of environmental attitude: the mandatory initiatives received higher support than voluntary initiatives by environmentally minded individuals. These findings highlight imagine-self perspective taking as a potentially useful tool for implementing proenvironmental policies.

【 授权许可】

CC BY