Communication Strategies for Moral Rebels: How to Talk About Change in Order to Inspire Self-Efficacy in Others

Brouwer, C., Bolderdijk, J.-W., Cornelissen, G., 

& Kurz, T. (2022). WIREs Climate Change, e781.

https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.781

Abstract

Current carbon-intensive lifestyles are unsustainable and drastic social changes are required to combat climate change. To achieve such change, moral rebels (i.e., individuals who deviate from current behavioral norms based on ethical considerations) may be crucial catalyzers. However, the current literature holds that moral rebels may do more harm than good. By deviating from what most people do, based on a moral concern, moral rebels pose a threat to the moral self-view of their observers who share but fail to uphold that concern. Those observers may realize that their behavior does not live up to their moral values, and feel morally inadequate as a result. Work on “do-gooder derogation” demonstrates that rebel-induced threat can elicit defensive reactance among observers, resulting in the rejection of moral rebels and their behavioral choices. Such findings suggest that advocates for social change should avoid triggering moral threat by, for example, presenting nonmoral justifications for their choices. We challenge this view by arguing that moral threat may be a necessary ingredient to achieve social change precisely because it triggers ethical dissonance. Thus, instead of avoiding moral justifications, it may be more effective to harness that threat. Ethical dissonance may offer the fuel needed for observers to engage in self-improvement after being exposed to moral rebels, provided that observers feel capable of changing. Whether or not observers feel capable of changing, however, depends on how rebels communicate their moral choices to others—how they talk about change.

From the Conclusion

The theories reviewed point to the crucial importance of people feeling confident about their capabilities to change when they are confronted with their own perceived shortcomings. That is, rebel-induced dissonance must be accompanied by perceived self-efficacy (i.e., the belief that one is capable of change). Thus, rather than avoiding presenting a threat to others' moral self-views by, for example, using morally neutral justifications, we proposed that moral rebels should harness that threat, provided they talk about change using words of encouragement that helps inspire perceived self-efficacy in others.

To that end, we recommended that moral rebels should ensure that observers can preserve their belief in being a good person, despite their moral hiccups, and not discourage them in their capabilities needed for self-improvement. They should make those observers become more aware that their habitual choices incidentally produce harmful outcomes, and avoid suggesting that morally suboptimal actions are the result of having bad intentions, for instance through signaling self-compassion. Second, moral rebels could inspire self-efficacy by focusing on the fact that one's abilities can be developed in the pursuit of self-improvement and are not fixed traits that render one either born to succeed or doomed to fail. Finally, it may be more fruitful to focus on the “baby steps” it takes to reach a higher self-defining goal by promoting maximal moral standards (e.g., praising the incremental changes to observers' behaviors), rather than promoting minimal moral standards (e.g., a requirement for observers to make radical lifestyle changes to gain any moral cache). In sum, these strategies are focused on avoiding observers lapsing into a debilitating state of harsh self-criticism and/or feeling overwhelmed by the required change, but instead making them believe they too have the capabilities required for self-improvement.

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Do People Want to Be More Moral?

Jessie Sun and Geoffrey Goodwin
PsyArXiv Preprints
Originally posted August 26, 2019

Abstract

Most people want to change some aspects of their personality, but does this phenomenon extend to moral character, and to close others? Targets (N = 800) and well-acquainted informants (N = 958) rated targets’ personality traits and reported how much they wanted the target to change each trait. Targets and informants reported a lower desire to change more morally-relevant traits (e.g., honesty, compassion), compared to less morally-relevant traits (e.g., anxiety, sociability). Moreover, although targets and informants generally wanted targets to improve more on traits that targets had less desirable levels of, targets’ moral change goals were less calibrated to their current levels. Finally, informants wanted targets to change in similar ways, but to a lesser extent, than targets themselves did. These findings shed light on self–other similarities and asymmetries in personality change goals, and suggest that the general desire for self-improvement may be less prevalent in the moral domain.

From the Discussion:

Why don’t people particularly want to be more moral? One possibility is that people see less room for improvement on moral traits, especially given the relatively high ratings on these traits.  Our data cannot speak directly to this possibility, because people might not be claiming that they have the lowest or highest possible levels of each trait when they “strongly disagree” or “strongly agree” with each trait description (Blanton & Jaccard, 2006). Testing this idea would therefore require a more direct measure of where people think they stand, relative to these extremes.

A related possibility is that people are less motivated to improve moral traits because they already see themselves as being quite high on such traits, and therefore morally “good enough”—even if they think they could be morally better (see Schwitzgebel, 2019). Consistent with this idea, supplemental analyses showed that people are less inclined to change the traits that they rate themselves higher on, compared to traits that they rate themselves lower on. However, even controlling for current levels, people are still less inclined to change more morally-relevant traits(see Supplemental Materialfor these within-person analyses), suggesting that additional psychological factors might reducepeople’s desire to change morally-relevant traits.One additional possibility is that people are more motivated to change in ways that will improve their own well-being(Hudson & Fraley, 2016). Whereas becoming less anxious has obvious personal benefits, people might believe that becoming more moral would result in few personal benefits (or even costs).

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Compassion fatigue resiliency training: the experience of facilitators

Potter P, Pion S, Gentry JE.
J Contin Educ Nurs. 2015 Feb;46(2):83-8.
doi: 10.3928/00220124-20151217-03

Abstract

This qualitative evaluation examined compassion fatigue facilitators' perceptions of the effects of a compassion fatigue resiliency training program in an urban medical center in the midwestern United States. Nine months after completing a compassion fatigue resiliency facilitator training program, 15 participants wrote short narratives describing how the program affected them. Participants described how the training program benefited them both personally and professionally. Two main themes were identified from the narrative analysis: self-improvement and application of resiliency. All of the participants described one or more self-improvements as a result of the program, particularly in regard to emotional health. All of the participants also described how they regularly applied one or more of the resiliency skills taught in the class to improve their ability to manage stress and prevent compassion fatigue. This program shows promise in ameliorating compassion fatigue and burnout in health care providers.

The entire article is here.