Marney reflects on Psychology of Environmental Stewardship ENV 361

00:02 Hi, my name is Marnie Brown and Today's date is April 25, 2022. Today I'll be conducting a self reflection.

00:10 Interview evaluating my learning from the course Psychology of Environmental Stewardship.

00:15 But before I would begin, I would like to state that I verbally consent.

00:20 To record and share my interview with a public community. Before beginning.

00:29 For the first question, reflecting.

00:31 Back on the course, what were some of the most meaningful concepts you learned?

00:38 To me, the most meaningful and empowering.

00:41 Concepts in this course were centered around the individual's own capabilities to incite change. For example intrinsic motivation, the C model and small experiments, which I will talk about more later. I think that confidence in your own abilities and the self motivation to problem solve are the drivers of change.

01:06 I think the expression goes change starts.

01:09 With the individual and I agree with that. But then how does change continue? I think that happens when this change in the individual then gives them the confidence to seek out others who are also creating or looking to create change as well. This unity between individuals can then inspire others to make the same changes until eventually humanity reaches a point where frugality, resilience and sustainability practices are just the norm. I think that another meaningful concept to me was learning sort of how to be able to bridge the gap between factual knowledge of problems and actions. I feel that much of my schooling and academics were learning more factual knowledge and memorizing it. Whereas through this course I felt that it was extremely refreshing to feel that I'm at the forefront of possible change and learning all these methods that are being used to incite change.

02:30 Okay, for the second question, what behavior.

02:34 Change strategies worked well, what didn't, and why? In terms of the A2.0 project, my group members and I studied the garden homes neighborhood and what worked well was our adapted version of the C model, which heavily promoted the aspect of intrinsic motivation.

02:54 We chose it because it promotes beneficial.

02:57 Stewardship practices without causing guilt or fear. The C model or Supportive Environments for Effectiveness model includes the concepts of model.

03:09 Building, being capable and meaningful action.

03:13 But we focused on the concept of model building for our paper. Model building includes mental models that are built through repeated and varied experiences that will set up the individual to be able to envision and set up their own goals, which further empowers change. For our neighborhood. We wanted to implement a community garden to increase resiliency in the area. And this meant setting up regular meetings with local gardening experts to act as a model for how to maintain the gardens.

03:49 I think this model worked well because.

03:52 As humans, our brain naturally will create patterns and mental Models that aid us throughout our lives. These cognitive maps can also help build the basis of knowledge needed to desire for one's own understanding or exploration or really whatever they aim to do. And then maybe they can even become models for someone else in the future. Through focusing on these mental models, we hope that the residents were not pressured to focus direct attention on learning a completely new skill out of their capability, thus preserving their mental vitality for the next steps in the model. However, not everything we tried worked. The first model we tried to implement was the Hind model or the model of responsible environmental behavior. This model, we thought, carried with it an aspect of too much personal responsibility attached, and we didn't want the residences to feel like they had an obligation to participate. We really were aiming to inspire residents to act in self motivation rather.

05:14 Question 3 what are two to five salient concepts that that you will take.

05:19 With you as you pursue your career?

05:22 As I continue to pursue my career.

05:24 In the environment, the concepts I'll take with me are framing small experiments and self interest. Framing is the idea of setting an issue within a specific context to achieve a desired interpretation or perspective.

05:43 It involves tailoring a message to a.

05:46 Specific audience to add weight to the message. This concept can feel negative at times because of the selective behavior, but I think it only makes sense to relay information in a way that sparks a personal obligation to act. I think this method, because it could work in many different facets of this.

06:10 World, it could also work on both.

06:15 A smaller, more individualized level and a more broad, generalizable level, because I think that's how people work. We have generalizable worries about our health, our safety, our livelihoods, for example. And we have more specific worries too that depend on our lives and our interests.

06:39 Another concept I'll take with me in.

06:40 My future career is small experiments.

06:45 Small experiments can include pilot programs, field tests, demonstration sites, and trial runs.

06:52 Or they can be as common as testing which shampoo brand is the best for your hair. Whatever your case may be, small experiments put power into the hands of the individual without the barriers of needing experts or formal research. These experiments must be manageable and not overly complex. They must have a sampling method for generalizability. They must have their data be tracked, and you're encouraged to share the experiment with others.

07:29 But perhaps what is more important than.

07:31 Their findings is the positive psychological effects that these experiments have.

07:37 They allow people to explore their choices.

07:39 Support diversity, allow for financial stability, and allow for distributed leadership.

07:46 I think that this can be useful.

07:48 For people who feel like the problems of the climate crisis are too complex for an individual to decipher, so I think it helps to combat that sense of hopelessness that I feel like we all share right now.

08:03 I also think that it's a very.

08:05 Strong method for everyday life to spark even inspiration and curiosity in the world that we live in.

08:13 The last concept I'll take with me.

08:15 After this course is self interest, which I was very curious about actually when we first started learning it, because I thought it was counterintuitive towards all my environmental studies. And while there is usually a negative connotation attached, it can be a powerful tool in changing the behavior of communities. Self interest is not only limited to internal wants and needs, self interest can be directed toward helping one's local environment.

08:52 As well Question number four Briefly evaluate using at least two of the evaluation metrics.

09:06 An important aspect of this class was evaluating how effective interventions would be during the intervention. During and after the intervention, I will evaluate both of the above mentioned in the last question through the lenses of generalizability and the speed of change. First of all, generalizability is measured through if a person became a change agent for the target behavior, if they encourage others to do a behavior, and if there is a tendency for the person to adopt behaviors not targeted by the intervention. A speed of change will assess how rapidly the intervention can affect the behavior. First is framing.

09:56 Interventions using framing have a high speed.

09:58 Of change during the intervention because most.

10:02 Of the time the intervention itself is.

10:05 Quite quick and evokes an immediate response.

10:09 In terms of generalizability, I believe that.

10:12 Much of framing is based on assumptions, assumptions of how individuals would react when faced to the news of a climate crisis and therefore needs to be general in order to affect enough of the general population. And next I'll evaluate small experiments. Interventions using small experiments may not be able to affect immediate change because of how specific each experiment is to each individual.

10:44 However, when applied to an experiment with a broader sampling size, I think that.

10:50 It could lead to a faster rate of change due to the generalizability.

10:56 And the Last Question Question 5 what are.

11:00 The one or two major ways that the approaches outlined in the course differ from that of more conventional behavior change approaches?

11:09 A major way in which this course.

11:11 Differs from that of conventional behavior change.

11:14 Is through the lack of guilt and shame put on the individual. Many of the conventional tactics are made.

11:23 To shame and scare people into making the necessary changes.

11:27 However, throughout this course it seems that.

11:30 There was an emphasis on doing the exact opposite and showing us more ways of encouraging and incentivizing environmental stewardship rather than just handing people information with no instructions.

11:45 I think that work like this will.

11:47 Be extremely important in the future. Overall, thank you to Dr. DeYoung and my GSI, Katie Barr, for everything this semester. Thank you.