Jhenna reflects on the Psychology of Environmental Stewardship

00:04 Hello, my name is Jenna Puckett and I am a senior at the University of Michigan. Today I will be interviewing myself to reflect on what I have learned while taking the Psychology of Environmental Stewardship course. Today is April 25, 2022 and I give consent for this interview to be uploaded and shared with the public on StoryCorps. So to begin, the first question that I will be answering is while reflecting back on the course, what were some of the most meaningful concepts that you learned? So the concept of envisioning change was one of the most interesting concepts that I learned in this class. Groups being able to envision a more sustainable future through shared effort is a very inspiring idea to me. Envisioning leads to problem solving which then leads to new implementation. Clear goals are set to become closer to reaching the envisioned future. So for me, I took this as envisioning is the first step to change and it was really interesting to me to see how envisioning can turn into implementations this class Another key concept that I have learned is that small interventions are capable of having large impacts within a community. We have learned this through the A2.0 plan. Generally it is easy to assume that the involvement of more people would be more effective, but we have learned through this course that that is not necessarily true. Small groups tend to be easier to manage and participation is stronger on average. Moving on, the second question I will discuss is what behavior change strategies worked well, which behavior change strategies didn't work well and why? So, like I mentioned in the previous question, small group experiments worked really well. This was demonstrated when learning about ecoteams as well as in our own teams when working on the semester long project. Meetings between these small groups presented information to all participants, allowed planning and goal development, offered feedback on project and encouraged the exploration of new fields, all while enhancing community bonding. Team based models show that in most cases citizens are not the biggest problem when thinking about the climate crisis and also allow them to feel satisfaction of doing their part in helping the environment. On the other hand, extrinsic rewards for behavior and fear appeals did not work as well. Extrinsic rewards are incentives offered for sustainable behavior changes. However, when effectiveness of intrinsic rewards were studied, we learned that this can undermine the desire to continue a behavior if the reward is terminated or altered at some point. It may also change the motives for completing a behavior and may result in the expectation that other behavior should be rewarded as well. Fear appeals are reliable, but their effectiveness is weak. It was surprising to me to realize how much we are exposed to fear appeals in our everyday lives for things such as the prevention of smoking and the promotion of sunscreen use. Overall, fear appeals must be used wisely as they often result in desensitization, overloaded, worry, distrust, denial, reactance and avoidance from those affected. So, moving on to the next question, Question three is what are two to five salient concepts that you will take with you as you pursue your future career? So the first concept that I will carry on with me is goal setting with meaningful action and evaluating feedback as a good way to measure growth and effectiveness. I will continue to use these strategies throughout my life as I plan to accomplish other achievements. Goal setting is a great way to make change attainable, to stay organized and also keep progress on track. Particularism is necessary to consider as goals must be tailored depending on the situation. Speed of change will also look different for various goals as they may be long term or short term goals. The next concept that I will take with me as I plan to pursue a future career are the Idea of Education based models is another helpful concept taught. A big takeaway from education based models in this class has been that education is one of the most powerful tools.

05:22 Use to implement change.

05:25 The more people that are educated on the topic, the majority who grow to care more and are more willing to help solve the issues at hand. Education based models can also provide participants with the information needed to perform pro environmental actions on their own. Things like this enhance the durability of the model as knowledge is gained and this is a strategy that my team used while implementing our own behavior change in our assigned neighborhood. This semester in class we learned that it is best to start educating younger populations to make them more aware of environmental issues and to make them have.

06:12 Positive attitudes towards conservation behaviors. This enhances the generalizability of the models as young students are likely to influence the behaviors within their family and households. The last concept I will discuss is intrinsic motivation. Yeah, intrinsic motivation is another concept that will stick with me beyond this class and that is because intrinsic motivation actions that are supposed to be done for one's own satisfaction, but they are also done and for to help benefit the earth. So some of these satisfactions include higher competence, frugality and a sense of participation. Intrinsic behaviors that are done because it is what the participant just thinks is right. We have learned that behaviors that we must adopt to respond to the climate crisis obtain their own rewards. However, intrinsic motivations can give meaningfulness to a model and can also benefit the emotional state of those completing eco friendly behaviors. A personal cause of intrinsic motivation is wanting to leave the world in a better condition than it is and now for future generations to come. So, wrapping up, the final question reads, what are one or two major ways that the approaches outlined in this course differ from that of more conventional behavior change approaches? This is a good question. I do feel like this is one of the more unique classes that I've taken at the University of Michigan and one of the more unique environment courses that I've taken. But overall, this course offered many different approaches and models that are used to implement change that are able to fit various groups of people. These models can be modified to achieve just about any desired outcome. I feel there is not a one size fits all model for environmental stewardship and this allows us to try multiple strategies to figure out what works best for different types of people. Another big takeaway from this course is that people can only change if they want to change. We cannot force anyone to want to be sustainable. This class embraces the fact that it takes time to make significant behavioral changes. Failures are expected, but effort counts and will lead to other ideas for more sustainable for a more sustainable environment. So basically I've learned that progress, not perfection, is what is important, which takes off a lot of pressure of just doing everything right all the time regarding the environment. So that was really cool. As a conservation biology major, I thoroughly enjoyed taking this course. This course was unique as we were taught that moving towards sustainability is possible and shown the tools needed to implement change, while most of my environment courses just discuss the severity of the climate crisis and don't offer real solutions to this issue. So I'm grateful for the opportunity to have taken the Psychology of Environmental Stewardship course and the important knowledge that I've gained from it. So yeah, thank you for listening.