(gentle music) (gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music continues) - "Eye on Education".

I'm Fred Martino.

There's been an enormous effort over the past decade to help people understand the extraordinary challenge of climate change.

While work to move away from fossil fuels is accelerating, it is a slow process.

A recent report by the McKinsey Global Institute found the energy transition is in its early stages.

That report says only about 10% of the required deployment of low emission technologies by 2050 has been achieved in most areas.

Now, despite this, one of the major US presidential candidates, former President Donald Trump derides climate change as an issue.

In a recent interview with Elon Musk, he even said it would lead to more ocean front property.

Of course, rising sea levels are just one problem.

Meantime, the former president also continues to push even more fossil fuel production, "Drill, baby drill," as a campaign chant.

So, amid the great challenge and that political environment, how do we move forward?

My guest has some ideas.

Her research interests include sustainability psychology, pro-environmental behavior, climate change engagement, and human environment interactions.

I am very pleased to welcome Dr. Kristin Hurst from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Thank you so much for being with us.

- Thank you for inviting me.

I'm happy to be here.

- It is good to have you here today.

So, you know, to start off with, I wanted to ask you a very general question, and I'm sure this is something that you get all the time because of the research that you do, it's very basic.

How much progress are we actually making in changing attitudes about climate change?

- Yeah, that's a great question and that I will say that there has been some progress in this area and there's also been some setbacks.

So, to give you some examples, one key example of the progress that we've made, there was a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center that found that 54% of Americans view climate change as a major threat and that's up from just 44% in 2009.

So that is a bit of progress.

However, if you look at kind of political divides, political divisions around this issue, you do see that polarization is increasing in this area.

I do want to emphasize though, that the majority of Americans do recognize that climate change is a threat and they also want to do something about it, and they support pro-climate policies, in general.

However, you do still see this divide.

So, whereas maybe people who would vote Democratic or identify as politically liberal, maybe those people, you know, 80 to even 90% or more would be very supportive of pro-climate policies.

Maybe you see conservatives or Republicans only in like the sixties, the 50 60% range.

So while that is, to me, that's very promising 'cause that means, hey, everybody's really, you know, not everybody, but a lot of us really wanna see change in this area and really support climate friendly policies.

However, that division that you spoke to a bit in your introduction as well, that is also real.

- Yeah.

So let's kind of delve into the details here.

What do you see from the information that's out there, the research you've done as the big impediments to change?

Because I was really struck even by the mention of the survey that you did there, that you did mention that, and there are different results depending on the survey, but it's still only slightly more than half of people seeing in that result, climate change is an issue.

- Yeah, so a couple things there.

I mean, I would say that the polarization, and especially this can be exacerbated by political leadership as well.

And that is a major barrier to progress.

And that, I will say directly, one thing to to think about there is that when our opinions about a particular issue get wrapped up in our social or political identities, they can become very entrenched and very hard to change.

So that's one reason why you see these kind of political divisions sort of becoming worse over time in this current political climate.

Another impediment to change as well is what I mentioned, is that even though you say, okay, it's only 54% that view, so I have a couple things to say about that, actually, that 54% of Americans that view climate change as a major threat.

One thing to think about there is that people, you know, I would say broadly recognize it as a threat but don't necessarily prioritize it above other issues.

So if you look at kind of policy priorities and people saying, where does the government really need to act?

Climate change isn't in kind of the top three or even really the top third for a lot of people.

- [Fred] Right.

- You find it closer to the bottom of these kind of big picture, you know, issues that people want to prioritize.

So I think there there's an important difference between recognizing that people see that this is happening and know that it's a threat.

That doesn't mean it's always going to be a top priority.

And the other thing is I think that there's, although, you know, I've mentioned already a few times that this polarization does, in fact, exist.

What is interesting about that is that the perception of polarization, there has been some research that's looked at this, that among the general public, the perception of polarization is even worse than it actually is.

- Okay.

- So there's a broad perception among the general public that, you know, climate change isn't something that's widely supported and it's maybe something I shouldn't even talk about if I don't wanna get in a contentious conversation.

- I'm glad you mentioned that because I wondered that that might be something that researchers would be looking at because if we don't have dialogue about an issue, 'cause people are afraid that it will become contentious, it's hard to think about progress because people who have a different view don't even have a chance to maybe learn why their view isn't accepted by everyone, right?

Because they don't have, there isn't the discussion happening.

- Yes, that's right, that's right.

So there is actually a kind of a body of research around this topic, and some people call it "The Climate Change Spiral of Silence" but more broadly, there's a, some research kind of, a line of research that's looking at the importance of conversation and discourse around this topic.

And okay, for one, how do we just get more people to talk about it and when they are talking about it, you know, how might we- - [Fred] Yeah.

- How can we think about those conversations so that they can be constructive?

- Right and we're gonna be talking about that in more depth coming up.

I wanna start though, with something that's positive that many people will say that, "Oh yes, I realize that."

I have noticed, personally, and looking at stories on this research on this, that more young people not only understand climate change, they actively engage and they speak out about climate change.

What do we know about generational differences in attitudes?

- Yeah, well we know that, I mean, you're absolutely right.

You know, young people do more so.

There is this generational gap in the data and you can see that very clearly.

So young people are concerned about climate change.

They do recognize that it will impact their future and they want to be empowered to kind of make change.

And as you know, we have many examples of seeing how young people are starting to demand that change.

And some good news going back to this polarization as well, is that we do see that among young Republicans and conservatives as well, that they are more likely to say, "Yes, climate change is the threat "and we need to do something about it," than their older conservative counterparts.

- You teach college students.

But I want to ask you, how should K 12 schools work to teach climate change education?

What are they doing well and where could we see improvement?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

It's also a very tricky question because it's so variable.

So the next generation science standards, they do recommend integrating climate change education starting in fifth grade.

However, how that's implemented and where that's implemented varies widely depending on the state, you know, it varies at the local level, even in the classroom level 'cause there's variability in terms of, you know, there's some research looking at how confident and prepared do teachers feel teaching this topic.

And, you know, some research has found that, you know, that's an area where we really need to support teachers better so that they go into the classrooms prepared to teach this effectively.

So I know that that's one area that there's kind of a lot of momentum generated around.

But otherwise, you know, I would just say it really just depends, it depends on the school.

And just how, you know, how much that's prioritized, how it's integrated.

I do know from the literature on, you know, how to make climate change education more effective for that, for younger students, students who are in middle school or high school, in particular.

There's some, you know, some things that we know about that.

And one of them is making climate change relevant to the students.

So rather than talking kind of in abstract terms or talking about impacts that might be happening far away or distant in the future, kind of bringing things home, like how is climate change impacting, you know, my local area and thinking about it in more kind of localized here and now type terms.

And also doing more kind of hands-on activities that involve more engagement from the students can be effective as well.

- Very interesting.

Well, you co-authored an article entitled, "Beyond the Classroom: Influence of a Sustainability "Intervention on University Students' "Environmental Knowledge and Behaviors".

Tell us about that research.

- Sure, so that was a very fun project.

It was actually my first project, research project I did when I arrived at SIU in the fall of 2021.

And I collaborated with Dawn Null, Leslie Duram, and in my department.

And yeah, so we collaborated together and what happened was, what we did is we did an intervention, it was an educational intervention and an informational intervention that took place in the dining halls right here at SIU campus.

And so what that involved was sustainability education trivia that we put on the tables throughout the dining halls as well as informational posters.

And we did surveys where we measured sustainability knowledge, as well as some sustainable eating behaviors, both before and after the intervention.

And what we found was that, in fact, you know, this several week long intervention was effective at helping students learn more about sustainability.

So over, you know, on average their scores on the sustainability knowledge measure increased, and people also reported reduced meat consumption following the intervention.

- Wow, that's really interesting.

We're gonna delve into a little more depth now on something we talked about earlier.

This relates to some other research that you've done.

You co-authored an article entitled, "Let's Talk About It: "Increasing Sustainability Behavior Through Conversation".

So as we talked about, this can be a delicate issue in the politically charged environment.

Tell us how we can talk about the issue and maybe even make some headway.

- Yeah, that's a really great question.

So a couple things I'll say is that, you know, it depends on the issue and it depends in part on how divisive and contentious the issue is.

So when we're talking about sustainability, so the, actually the issue that we looked at in that paper, it was about increasing the availability of plant-based foods on Ohio State campus.

So I did that with some colleagues that, when I worked at the Ohio State University, and that turned out to not be a particularly divisive or contentious issue among the students that we, you know, who we were working with in that project.

- [Fred] Sure.

- So what we did is we had them have conversations in pairs about what do you think about this new policy to bring more plant-based foods to Ohio State campus?

And we asked them to have a little three minute conversation about it and then to work together to make a commitment to take action on the issue.

And we found that when they had that conversation, not only did they build rapport, you know, in that pair, did they build rapport with each other, but that also led to stronger commitments to take action on that issue.

And I think that that's, it was important for me to mention that this wasn't a highly contentious or divisive issue because I think that that was effective in that term because it kind of helped people, you know, it made the the topic more salient.

It helped them kind of brainstorm ways they could make a difference and sort of realize, oh yeah, this is something that I could get behind and support.

- [Fred] Yeah.

- But if we're talking about a highly divisive issue and you're going in a conversation where you know that somebody else, you know, maybe strongly disagrees with you on this issue, I think your approach would be a little bit different.

- Yeah.

- It wouldn't just, we wouldn't necessarily tell people just go in and say what you think, you know, you might, there are other strategies to help that conversation go a little bit better.

- [Fred] Yeah.

- And one of those strategies really is just a form of perspective taking, where you have people kind of get to know each other and make a connection on a more human level, find something that they, you know, that they have in common, or find some areas where they maybe have commonality in their values and make a connection that way.

And that helps people kind of let their guard down a little bit in the conversation.

And rather than saying, you know, recognizing that this isn't my opponent, right.

This is a person, another person just like me who happens to disagree with me on this issue.

- Always a good idea no matter what you are talking about, but particularly when something is controversial.

- Yes, that's right.

- So, very interesting.

So now we move to another side of this.

I found this particularly interesting, making people feel guilty is something we often try to avoid in conversation.

But I found it interesting, you co-wrote an article that found guilt might be effective sometimes.

Guilt, this is the name of the article, guilt consistently motivates pro-environmental outcomes while pride depends on context.

Tell us about this.

- Yeah, sure.

So those can I think be a little, that can be a little bit counterintuitive and so I wanna be kind of careful about the implications and what that research is actually suggesting.

- [Fred] Right, right.

- So what what it is suggesting is that this was, this study was done in the context of providing feedback on pro-environmental behavior.

So there are a couple different ways we did that.

We did kind of a home carbon footprint calculator and provided either positive or negative feedback on how people were doing overall and their carbon footprint.

- Okay, so it personalized the information.

- Yeah.

- They could see how they were doing that.

- Yes, that's right.

And in the second study for that paper, we gave feedback on the carbon footprint of the company that, from a product that they were said to have purchased in the study.

So in both of these cases, they were getting either negative or positive feedback on their own behavior.

And so, and we found that yes, in fact when people received negative feedback, they felt guilty about it.

And that tended to motivate, you know, consistently across our studies pro-environmental behavior.

So rather than taking this as saying, oh, well we should go around, you know, making people feel guilty for the sake of the environment, I think that that's definitely the wrong thing to take away from that study.

But rather you have to think about, well when you give feedback to somebody, say you're in a position of leadership or a teacher, even a parent, when you give feedback to someone, you recognize that there are emotional consequences to that feedback.

And this type of study helps us understand what those are and what the behavioral consequences of those emotions might be.

And in this case, we found that kind of reminding people, the feedback sort of served to remind people that in this domain of life, they really could be doing better to achieve their goals.

So I think the really, the caveat to that is to only provide that feedback to people when, you know, there's very clear places where they can improve and it's not necessarily that they're already doing everything they can.

- [Fred] Right.

- Right, because then if they're already working really hard in this one domain or working toward this one goal and they receive that negative feedback, it's likely to be demotivating.

- Yeah.

- Or even demoralizing.

- That's great context too because it implies that perhaps when you are giving someone criticism, if you're also showing them a way where they can make improvement that may have a different effect.

- Yes.

- Yeah, so very interesting.

So great transition to another piece of research that I wanted to ask you about what we say matters, but who says it matters as well.

Another article, you co-wrote is entitled "Messaging "for Environmental Action, the Role of Moral Frame "and Message Source".

Tell us about that.

- Yeah, sure.

So this study was looking at, it's in the broader context of understanding how can we communicate better about environmental issues across the political spectrum.

So going back to sort of overcoming this polarization, and I think some of those things I said about how to have productive conversations with people who disagree with us also gets at this.

But the other kind of key point of if we want to overcome polarization is another type of perspective taking, I would say, is thinking about kind of what are the core moral values that the another person that you're trying to communicate holds?

And how can I make connections between this issue that I care about and those core moral values and research has generally found that in the environmental domain, a lot of environmental communication relies only on one or two kind of moral values or morally based arguments, which is care and fairness.

But that also, but that in fact, many people, and this includes many people who don't generally already support pro-environmental action, have a much broader, what's called moral matrix.

They care about care and fairness of course, but they also care about, you know, in group loyalty and doing your duty and sort of the sanctity of things more so than, you know, maybe like a traditional liberal would.

And so what we did in this study is we've framed environmental messages to tap into different combinations of these core moral values.

And we found that in fact when we tapped into sort of the broader moral matrix of these different, not just care and fairness, but also in group loyalty and, you know, doing your duty, that those messages were more, resonated more with our conservative participants.

And this was especially the case when it was said to come from an in-group source.

- Interesting, interesting.

So tell me about your background.

How did this work become your passion?

- Yeah, so I think it was, that's really a process of kind of taking opportunities to align what I see as kind of my intrinsic interests and skills in order to address issues that I care about.

So I came into this saying, I really care about environmental issues and I wanna make a difference in this area, but how can I think about where do my interests lie and how can I really make a difference in this?

And so I did that and when I asked myself that question, I said, well, you know, I'm really interested in people and I'm interested in relationships and human behavior.

And so kind of following along that track, I just took on opportunities that really allowed me to study environmental issues from a human perspective.

- Yeah and your research even that we've talked about in this short amount of time is very interesting to me because, of course, when we have conversations with others, you can appeal to the very specific kind of data driven approach that you talked about where you tell someone here's your carbon footprint.

- [Kristin] Yeah.

- But also people, other people may be very affected by hearing from individuals who, for instance, might have suffered, lost their home due to a wildfire, their home is gone now.

And the emotional impact of hearing that, you know, we see more wildfires connected, we believe, to climate change and drought.

And here's someone who's suffering from that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So it's very interesting.

Tell me about your choice to teach at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

I see in your educational background you moved around a lot, like many of us do from Boston to Texas, Virginia Tech, and you mentioned Ohio State.

- Yeah, so that really just aligns with the answer to my previous question, which is just a, it has been a process of sort of embracing the opportunities that come my way.

And so for all of those other institutions that you mentioned, you know, that's where I did my undergrad, my master's, my PhD, my postdoc.

So each time I was moving I was just sort of taking advantage of kind of, okay, what is the next step in my sort of educational and professional journey?

And to come here, you know, to teach at Southern Illinois University, it was a similar thing is that this job opened up in the department in the School of Earth Systems and Sustainability and they were, you know, looking for somebody who had my skills and expertise to, you know, supplement all of the great stuff that they already have going on, so.

- That's fantastic.

- Yeah.

- Well we only have about 90 seconds left- - Okay.

- So they won't do this question justice perhaps, but is there research that looks at attitudes about environmental protection being influenced by where we live and and how much time we spend in nature?

- Yeah, absolutely.

There's a whole body of research that really explores that question in depth and looking at especially, I mean there's a few things that come to mind, but one that really comes to mind, one area of research is looking at, you know, experiences in nature, especially childhood experiences in nature and how that connects to sort of a sense of connectedness to nature and generally, of course, like all bodies of research, it's complex and you know, there are nuances, but generally the answer is yes.

The more time we experience in nature, especially when those are positive experiences, of course, the more people tend to hold pro-environmental attitudes and engage in pro-environmental behavior.

- Very interesting.

So it can perhaps make a difference.

And we live in a beautiful place with lots of opportunities to be out in nature.

So good for people to know.

Kristin, it was such a delight talking to you.

Thank you for being with us today.

- Thanks, this was great.

- Alright, that is "Eye on Education".

My guest was Dr. Kristin Hurst.

She is an assistant professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Watch all of our episodes online at wsiu.org or subscribe to the WSIU-TV YouTube channel so you never miss a segment.

For everyone at WSIU, I'm Fred Martino.

Have a great week.

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