Awakening the Sustainable Self: How Motivational Interviewing Can Spur Environmental Action
Surely if the right fact was presented to someone, they would feel compelled to act on climate change and other pressing environmental issues. This has been the thought process and hope of many environmentalists and scientists for decades.
To some extent, providing the public and lawmakers with facts has helped move the needle. Humanity is now heading for 3℃ of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100 instead of the 5℃ once projected in the early 2000s. In the last 25 years, countries have seen a drastic increase in concern about climate change, which has spurred policies and technological developments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Positive, yes, but still a far cry from what is needed to avoid the destruction of coral reefs and more than a foot of sea level rise.
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Humans may not be as logical as some like to think they are. Oftentimes, being told facts or what to do can cause people to get defensive or disconnected from the conversation. But psychological research supports promoting conversations where each side feels heard and can comfortably come to their own conclusions. Therapy practices have evolved to recognize this, with one of the most consequential methods being an approach known as “motivational interviewing.”
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Co-Developed to Treat Addiction
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Motivational interviewing was co-developed by Dr. William Miller and Dr. Stephen Rollnick in the 1980s to address substance use disorders. As its name suggests, this therapy technique is used to build patients’ motivation to change their behaviors. This is done by asking the patient what their goals are and then helping them work backwards to determine what needs to be done to reach those goals—a technique also known as change talk.
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“Presenting people with information—if it bounces up with a core belief which contradicts with that information—is not going to change them,” explained Dr. Tim Kasser, researcher and Knox College emeritus professor. “I think this is the fundamental thing that [motivational interviewing] recognizes and why it’s so important for addiction.”
Motivational interviewing focuses on showing empathy and supporting a patient’s self-efficacy. It is designed to highlight areas where present circumstances and future goals are not lining up, and it is particularly effective for situations where a patient is resistant to change or potential solutions.
Since growing in popularity in therapeutic spaces surrounding substance abuse, research has shown motivational interviewing to be effective for addressing weight loss, medication adherence, cancer care, diabetes care, and health behaviors in children. But what about climate change?
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Climate Change -- An Emotional Topic
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“There’s all these people out there saying our consumerism is an addiction and our use of resources beyond their ability to regenerate is an addiction as well,” Kasser recalled. “And so I started thinking, ‘If that’s true, then theoretically there should be a treatment that should help with that, if it really is an addiction.”
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Kasser explored this connection with an international group of researchers in a 2016 paper published in the journal Ecological Economics.
As with other therapy topics, climate change is a very emotional subject that some people are more open to discussing than others. It can make people feel scared, angry, defensive, or overwhelmed. Its causes and solutions are also deeply tied to politics because fossil fuels are so engrained in most countries’ current economic and infrastructure systems. People feel strongly about how much control local, state, and federal governments should have. Overall, both problems and solutions can make people feel a loss of control and vulnerable.
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Beyond Information -- How to Motivate
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“Information bounces off of belief,” Kasser said. “And what I think [motivational interviewing] recognizes, and what I think most environmental strategists have recognized, is that information alone is insufficient. You need to have motivation as well. But you’re not going to get motivation by yelling at people or shaming people or arguing with people. It can provide a motivation, but it’s a low quality of motivation that is not going to sustain itself once you leave the room.”
It can feel easier to tell people what to do, and people can naturally feel the need to correct someone’s thinking, a reflex called righting. But psychological research shows this can be unhelpful.
“It’s a complete flipping of the script on how we generally approach changemaking and advocacy and activism,” said Dr. Renée Lertzman, environmental engagement consultant and founder of Project InsideOut. “Most of us who work in environmental activism tend to default to a yell, tell, or sell approach, which is rooted in a very old, outdated theory of change that makes an assumption that if people knew more, if people raised awareness, or if we created enough nudging or incentivizing, people would actually shift.”
Lertzman believes that people continue to use this old method because they’re unaware that there are other communication methods out there. That’s why she developed Project InsideOut, an organization that connects environmental activists with clinical psychologists and evidence-based research to more effectively tackle climate and sustainability issues.
Through her consulting work, Lertzman helps groups within big companies and organizations like Google and PBS to spur long-lasting progress toward sustainability goals. This work leans heavily on motivational interviewing’s focus on “guiding” instead of righting.
“The spirit of [motivational interviewing] is truly rooted in a fundamental respect for the dignity and the integrity and the volition of others for their own actions,” Lertzman explained. “So, you come in with this orientation of ‘I am not trying to make you change. I’m actually here to be a partner with you.’”
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Lertzman told The Earth & I that, after she introduces an organization’s employees to motivational interviewing, she immediately sees a change in how they engage with their stakeholders. People who feel heard and become connected to potential changes are more likely to buy into or vote positively on those changes.
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​The Five Guiding Principles
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“I created these five principles for guiding—and number one is attuning,” Lertzman said. “When we attune to the anxieties, the ambivalence, and the aspirations that people have, we become much more open.”
The other four principles are reveal (be a compassionate truth-teller), convene (talk to, not at, your people), equip (grow people’s capacities), and sustain (build ongoing momentum).
Results can vary, but Lertzman said that many groups she’s worked with have found that progress happens more quickly once they use the guiding principles because they don’t feel like they must constantly convince stakeholders every step of the way.
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Finding What People Care About
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Employing motivational interviewing techniques can require more work than just telling someone what to do, but research shows that helping people find their own motivation creates a more lasting impact. In a 2018 study, Kasser and a Knox College master’s student, Sofia Tagkaloglou, found that motivational interviewing helped people adopt and sustain new environmental habits, especially for participants who already had a propensity for pro-environmental behaviors. People who exhibited less inclination about helping the environment needed more direction on what to do than motivational interviewing alone could provide.
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Because climate change connects to every aspect of people's lives, there is a lot of possibility for them to feel emotionally tied to the issue or passionate about some of the solutions.
“Every other issue dovetails with climate action,” said John Sabin, a psychotherapist and former Citizen’s Climate Lobby (CCL) Great Lakes regional codirector. CCL, a climate activist organization that focuses on pushing for federal policies like a carbon tax, employs motivational interviewing to help connect climate initiatives with lawmakers’ agendas.
“They care about national security? Well, the government says climate change is a national security risk,” Sabin explained.
Granted, talking to a congressperson is a bit different than talking to a patient in a therapy session. A therapist is not usually coming in with as strong an agenda as a lobbyist. But the method of starting with what someone cares about and going backward from there remains a valuable tool in both settings, as does leading with empathy and active listening.
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Creating Safe Spaces
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Sabin sees psychological methods, such as cognitive psychology, continuing to play a bigger role in adjusting climate communication strategies.
He and Lertzman are members of the North American Climate Psychology Alliance, which is a community of therapeutic practitioners, researchers, and thinkers who utilize psychology to help people work through their emotions surrounding climate change. The group hosts “Climate Cafes” to provide safe spaces for people to talk to each other about climate issues and solutions. (They are not the only organization that hosts Climate Café events.) The group also promotes “ecotherapy” where they bring people into natural settings and talk to them about their relationship with nature.
“It’s extremely important that we recognize that, underneath it all, there is a fundamental energy of care, and it’s our job to tap into that and to help people connect with it,” Lertzman reflected. “I’m hoping that’s where the movement goes and that we see much more partnership and collaboration between those in the environmental spaces and those who have psychological training … people who really know how to work with people.”