Encouraging ecological behaviour through induced hypocrisy and inconsistency: A commentary

Abstract

A recent study established a connection between the experience of cognitive dissonance and participation in an ecological behaviour (Priolo et al., 2016), and indeed there is a record of empirical investigations examining cognitive dissonance as a behaviour change tool in an environmental context. Importantly, the practical implications regarding the use of dissonance as a behaviour change tool are overstated given the experimental procedure used in the study. Specifically, the researchers conclude that dissonance interventions can be applied to encourage ecological behaviours without the use of a face to face situation. However, the study relied on a face to face procedure between an experimenter and participants, and past dissonance studies that have also used the hypocrisy procedure rely on face to face interactions. As such, the practical implications of the study are unwarranted and despite a desire for simple and effective behavioural interventions we must acknowledge that considerable work remains to establish empirically-supported interventions in specific contexts for specific groups of people.