Keeping Up With The Joneses
Yet another energy awareness savvy article appears this weekend in the New York Times. It discusses the powerful motivator of friendly competition to modify energy use behavior. When people have a notion of normal behavior, they tend to change what they do.
Robert Cialdini, a social psychologist at Arizona State University, studies how to get Americans — even those who did not care about the environment — to lower energy consumption. And while there are many ways, Dr. Cialdini said, few are as effective as comparing people with their peers.
In a 2004 experiment, he and a colleague left different messages on doorknobs in a middle-class neighborhood north of San Diego. One type urged the residents to conserve energy to save the earth for future generations; another emphasized financial savings. But the only kind of message to have any significant effect, Dr. Cialdini said, was one that said neighbors had already taken steps to curb their energy use.
“It is fundamental and primitive,” said Dr. Cialdini, who owns a stake in Positive Energy. “The mere perception of the normal behavior of those around us is very powerful.”
A couple of programs mentioned in the article:
BrainShift Foundation Energy Smackdown
Quality Attributes Software Green Touchsreen used on the PODS Dorm
