Political Ingroup Conformity And Pro-Environmental Behavior: Evaluating The Evidence From A Survey And Mousetracking Experiments

Previous work reveals that political orientation is a relevant social identity for many people and that the desire to conform to political ingroup norms can drive belief and behavior change. Because pro-environmental behaviors are viewed as stereotypically liberal in the US, American conservatives may be less likely to engage in pro-environmental behavior, particularly when political identity and normative information are made salient. In four studies, we examine whether heightening the salience of political identity and providing information that one is conforming to or failing to conform to political group norms influences engagement in a pro-environmental behavior (recycling). Study 1 showed that undergraduates falsely believed that liberal students at their university recycled more than conservatives. In turn, while liberal and moderate students' self-reported recycling behavior was predicted by their perceptions of liberals' (but not conservatives') behavior, conservative students' behavior was predicted by perceptions of other conservatives' (but not liberals') behavior. Studies 2-4 use a novel computerized recycling task and mouse-tracking software to examine whether, among politically conservative Americans, receiving feedback that their recycling behavior is inconsistent with stereotypic ingroup norms modifies behavior and motivates individuals to "recycle" less in the computerized task. In Studies 2 (university student sample) and 3 (preregistered; MTurk worker sample), those who received this feedback adjusted their automatic, but not deliberate responses, although patterns differed slightly between studies. However, in Study 4 (preregistered; MTurk worker sample), this effect was not found. Collectively, these studies suggest that inaccurate meta-beliefs may drive political polarization with respect to pro-environmental behavior, but inconsistencies in results across studies leave open questions about how they do so. This research also contributes to the literature by introducing new methodologies to study pro-environmental decision-making processes.