You may decide to leave the car behind and use public transport or the bicycle more frequently starting now. It’s not a long way to work, and you can walk to the grocery store – and carry the groceries in a bag or trailer. Everything seems feasible. But the next morning it rains. It’s not far to the S-Bahn stop, but you’ll get wet in any case. The same goes for the bike. And sprinting to the office on foot in the rain? No, somehow you don’t feel like it…
So what do you do? You reach for your car keys as a matter of course so that you don’t arrive at the office soaked. Your guilty conscience gnaws at you, but after all, you have a good reason. When it’s raining, no one can expect you to give up your car – and not even when you feel too tired, have to go fast, are running late, have a headache, or have an extremely important appointment.
You won’t be the only one who might feel this way. Statistically, only one in four people manage to change their habits in the long term. And that doesn’t just apply to New Year’s resolutions. But why actually? To understand the various reasons more precisely, it’s worth taking a look at what motivates and pushes us. In this way, a sustainable change of habit can be achieved, which will also be reflected in the brain structure.
So let’s look again at the example where you are trying to get around in a more environmentally friendly way by leaving your car behind and switching to public transportation instead. Why do you want to change your behavior in the first place? The reasons could be that you want to get fitter, do your bit in the fight against climate change, or save on fuel costs.
But there is more behind the question of why. Do you want to switch to cycling or public transport to feel better about your day or to please others? Do you want to save money for your retirement or is your family urging you to be frugal? Do you care about doing something for the climate yourself or are your closest friends demanding more commitment from you?
According to self-determination theory, three basic needs influence human motivation. The conditions for sustainable behavioral change are best when we can act as part of a social community (belonging), act independently, i.e. without the urging of third parties (autonomy), and express our inclinations and competencies (ability). It is particularly important that we want to change things of our own free will and that we enjoy the new behavior – and not out of compulsion or pressure from outsiders. This means that behavioral change always requires both intrinistic and extrinistic motivation. So if you have your own benefits in mind – possibly even put them down in writing – it’s easier for you to cycle or walk through the rain than if you do it for others.
Is it about the good image?
But this does not mean that we only change something if it is good and useful for ourselves. Maybe you have children or even grandchildren and are therefore intrinsically motivated to preserve the natural foundations of life on planet Earth. And extrinistic motivation is not necessarily ineffective: You may want to avoid others giving you a bad conscience if you drive the short distance by car and thus create an image advantage over the others. In addition, we are strongly oriented to our environment. Social norms dictate what others expect of us. And they can change. For example, it was once considered customary and absolutely necessary to shake hands when greeting someone. With Corona, this behavior has fundamentally changed, and shaking hands will cause some people much more discomfort than friendliness.
Above all, the nearby environment plays a major role here. Maybe you have just started a new job. If there is a lot of attention paid to environmentally friendly behavior (and possibly even special payments are made to those who openly communicate environmentally friendly actions to the outside world), you would also like to show this behavior and change it accordingly. This will lead you to internalize this norm and refrain from driving in the future, although you may not face any disapproval from your colleagues because this environmentally harmful behavior is not subject to any social punishment.
We can use the interaction between our own behavior and that of others, for example, to exchange experiences and further optimize behavior. After all, we don’t want to disappoint our allies. And last but not least, it is much more fun to work on something together than alone. To this end, it can be useful to share goals on social media with others, for example when it comes to engaging in health-promoting behavior and exercising more. Because it turns out that people who can observe fitter or more athletic behavior in the feed of others are intrinsically more motivated to imitate this behavior.
But that doesn’t mean sharing goals with as many people as possible always seems useful. It’s worth thinking carefully about who you entrust your project to. Our studies on this have shown that successful implementation is achieved above all when the project is shared with people who have a higher social status than oneself and whose opinion is particularly valued. In addition, you should be aware of what is preventing you from successfully making changes. Behind this are often systematic distortions of our perception, which ensure that we unconsciously allow ourselves to be influenced by all kinds of things. For example, there is the present bias, which says that the present seems more important than the future. Accordingly, you would rather reach for the car key now instead of doing something good for the environment and your health in a sustainable way in the long term.
Hidden influences
Another bias makes more recent information seem more important than older information. This means that the last impression counts. If you have a flat tire on your way home, have to laboriously push the bike home and then have to patch it up, your motivation is in the basement the next morning – even if you enjoyed the days before in the fresh air plenty. The opposite happens with the primary effect: The only thing that counts here is the first impression – and this is very difficult to drown out by the current impression.
Furthermore, we have to consider loss aversion, where we weight losses higher than gains. Unfortunately, we do not make frequent use of this effect, although it can contribute to showing new behavior again and again and thus help to implement it in the new circuits of the brain. For example, a bonus system in which you lose points if you don’t exercise regularly can ensure that you drive your sustainable behavior change and recall it again and again. Health insurance companies, fitness studios or mobility service providers can also take advantage of this.
Are financial incentives able to lead to healthy blood pressure?
But the prospect of reward also has an effect. In a study in our laboratory in Zurich, for example, we gave people with a tendency toward or an actual condition of high hypertension financial incentives to keep or maintain it at a healthy level. We did not give them precise instructions on how to do this. We did, however, provide them with information material on healthy and tolerable behavior.
We divided our subjects into two groups: The first received a financial incentive of €20 for each laboratory visit with a clinical examination to ensure that they maintained the behavior until the end six months later. The subjects in the second group received additional money if the examination showed that the readings also improved – the greater the improvement, the greater their gain. As expected, the readings of the second group were better than those of the first. When the financial incentive was lost, the measured values again deteriorated significantly, which shows: Those who have a reward to look forward to – and the higher the reward given – the greater and more sustained the behavioral change toward improved health.
A common error in thinking is that the right attitude is enough to change habits. In reality, however, we base our behavior on past actions rather than logical thinking. Because you’ve always driven your car (you’ve always done it that way), you tend to keep doing it – even though you know you’re harming the environment and your health. But if you have to ride your bike because your car is in the shop, you might find that you enjoy cycling. This may make it easier for you to adjust your behavior. This can also happen if something happens by chance and you have to take a new route because of a detour.
That the right attitude is not enough is shown by another psychological principle. In cognitive dissonance, we are convinced of something, but do not act accordingly. This means that we may be aware of the fact that we absolutely have to make our behavior climate-friendly (e.g., give up the car, eat less meat), but we don’t do it. For example, animals are still denied sentience, which makes people’s conscience of eating meat every day seem ethical and socially acceptable.
So what to do about it? It helps to take a closer look at your goals. If you formulate a clear goal (e.g., to eat meat only one day a week) and eliminate words like “more often” or “less often” from your vocabulary, a change in behavior becomes more likely. It may also help to set intermediate goals, because you can only make sustainable progress if you take small steps. In other words, don’t immediately resolve to give up eating meat every day, but start with three times a week. If you manage this behavior over a few weeks, you can set your next goal a little higher.
It should also be noted that behavioral changes do not follow a linear journey. There will be setbacks and days when your intrinsic motivation is in the basement. The first question you should ask yourself is whether you have chosen the right goal. If so, why didn’t it work? It’s a matter of accepting the problems and refocusing on the goal. It is also important to set the right focus, i.e. if, for example, the public transportation network is insufficiently developed, it will be difficult for you to switch to buses and trains. In other words, sometimes it’s simply not our fault that a destination is inaccessible.
But if you are aware of this and are motivated enough to achieve your goal of a more environmentally conscious approach to mobility, if you have thought about the way there, if you are prepared for bad weather with rain gear, there is hardly anything to stop you from reaching your goal.