Bouncing Back and Motivating Action on
Environmental Issues: The Power of Positive Meaning
Scott Sonenshein and Jane Dutton
(with help of Sharon White)
M4 2007 (aka M3 in March)
Overview
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About Climate Change
Research Question
Motivation
Two Studies
Discussion (aka, We Need Your Help!)
The Climate Change Issue
Issue concern: The climate on earth is
changing in potentially harmful ways
Causes
Politics
Science
ISSUE MEANING
Players
Impacts
Doomsday Meanings
Facts from An Inconvenient Truth
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“The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last
30 years.”
“The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled over the
past decade.”
“At least 279 species of plants and animals are already responding to global
warming, moving closer to the poles.”
“Deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years -- to 300,000
people a year.”
“Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice
in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide. “
“More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by
2050.”
LINK
Hopeful Meanings
• Climate Change as a challenge to be overcome
– ”Climate change is one of Canada's biggest challenges as we head
toward the millennium. If we meet that challenge, it will ensure the
continued health of our planet” (Maxwell et al. 1997a, 1).
• Inconvenient truth won an Oscar! It is one of so many signs that
people care about this issue and there is progress being made.
• Climate change is pulling together constituencies who never saw
themselves as connected before.
– Evangelicals and environmentalists
• Dealing with the climate change issue as a human race will prepare
us to deal with even more intractable issues like human poverty.
Research Question
• How does the level and type of positive
meaning about an issue affect individuals’
issue-related actions?
Key Definitions
• Issue = a cluster of events, developments or trends that are
perceived as forming a common concern or common focus of
attention
• Positive issue meaning = beliefs, attitudes, interpretations and
appraisals about the significance, implications and consequences of
an issue that imply something good, desirable or beneficial for the
issue interpreter or someone or something that the issue interpreter
cares about
• Psychological resources = “Entities that are centrally valued in
their own right or act as a means to obtain valued ends” (Hobfoll,
2002, p. 307)
– Motivational resources facilitate proactive action
– Coping resources allow recovery from setbacks
Motivation (Theoretical)
• Integrate issue interpretation, change agent and socialpsychological resourcing literatures
• Show how meaning creates psychological resources
– Cognitive adaptation theory—benefits finding function (Taylor et al,
2000)
– Motivational resources in context of strategic change implementation
(Sonenshein, 2007)
– Endogenous resourcefulness rooted in meaning (Dutton et al., 2006)
• Explain how positive and negative meanings influence
responses to issues
Motivation (Practical)
• Doomsday approach could be harmful
– Psychologically harmful and ineffective at
cultivating proactivity and resilience
• Psychologically strengthen change agents
– Alter their constructions of issue they are
advocating
2-Part Study
• Qualitative:
Exploratory
• Quantitative:
Hypothesis-testing
Research Questions (Qualitative)
Issue-related
Action
Self-Meaning
Issue Meaning
Organizational Context
Study 1: Qualitative
My understandings of the climate change issue
Beginning
End
My actions on the climate change issue
Research Questions (Quantitative)
Positive
Issue
Meaning
Psychological
Resources
Hopeful meanings
Motivational
and coping
resources
Positive
Expectations
Belonging
Transcendence
Positive Affect
Self-Efficacy
Proactive
Behaviors
and
Resilience
Activism at
work
Bouncing back
from setbacks
Study 2: Field Experiment
Hypothesis
The more that individuals can construct and
elaborate positive meanings about
environmental issues (such as climate
change), the more resourceful they are in
responding to and acting on the issue,
resulting in more proactive issue behaviors
and greater issue resilience.
Study 2: Field Experiment
Pre-Survey
Doomsday
Meaning
Resilience
Proactive
Behaviors
PRIME
Journal about
The issue
(1 time for 4
consecutive
days)
Positive Meaning (3 versions)
Control
Scenario
-Issue
setbacks
-DV: proactive
behaviors and
resilience
(behavioral)
Post-Survey
Resilience
Proactive
Behaviors
Potential Manipulations for Meaning
1. Positive Expectations condition: optimism, control and
confidence: “Please write about all the ways that you are optimistic
about the future course of the climate change issue.”
2. Belonging condition: part of a larger community of individuals
interested in issue: “Please write about all of the individuals you
know who are working on the climate change issue and how you will
work with them on climate change.”
3. Transcendence condition: connect to a higher purpose and
meaning of the universe : “Please write about how the climate
change issue will be important for connecting to a higher purpose.”
4. Control condition: generic description of the issue, followed by a
broad prime: “Please write about the issue of climate change means
to you.”
Discussion
• What is positive meaning?
• How does positive meaning strengthen
individuals? (i.e., mechanisms)
• How should we measure proactive
behaviors and resilience? (pre-post survey
and behaviors)
Other Areas of Help
• What’s (not) interesting here?
• What should we read?
• Other reactions
The Climate Change Issue
• Contested impacts:
– Current: Satellite measurements show that the
waters around the world rose 3.3 millimeters
per year, averaged from 1993 to 2006. The
IPCC foresaw 2 millimeters per year.” (3)
– Future: “Crop output could fall 5% to 10% by
2030, according to estimates by the
meteorological administration.” (2)
The Climate Change Issue
Issue concern: The climate on earth is in
decline
• Contested causes:
– Carbon Dioxide contributes most to Global Warming
• Average global citizen emits 4.5 tons of carbon dioxide per year
• Average U.S. citizen: 21 tons (1)
– “Cosmic rays and water vapor, rather than carbon dioxide, (have
been implicated) as the main drivers of climate change. Indeed,
they have put down up to 75% of all change to these drivers.”
(5)
– “[Reports] have overestimated the human influence on climate
change since the Industrial Revolution by at least one-third.” (4)
Research Questions (Qualitative)
1. How does the construction of an issue relate to
how individuals see themselves acting on that
issue?
2. How does how individuals see themselves relate
to how they see the issue and/or act on the
issue?
3. How does how individuals see the organization
context relate to how see the issue and/or act
on the issue?
Research Questions (Quantitative)
1. How does positive meaning explain proactive
change behaviors and the resilience of change
agents working on the climate change issue?
2. Which positive meanings are most potent in
fostering proactive behaviors and change agent
resilience?
3. What mechanisms explain the relationships
among positive meaning and proactive
behaviors/resilience?
Study 2: Field Experiment
• Provide brief description of climate change issue
using the doomsday construction
• Participants write four short narratives about
issue
• Participants receive different primes for a
meaning construction
• DV: Scenario depiction of issue with set-backs;
measure proactive behaviors and resilience