Good Morning SuperForest,
For several months now, I’ve been getting emails from the most wonderful SuperForester. SuperForester Patricia is living in the jolly Ol’ UK and regularly sends me emails of such astounding quality and clarity that I eventually said: “Look, I could keep formatting these, or you could do me a huge favor and join Team SuperForest.”
And I believe that she’s accepted? (Patty, if you accept go on and say yes in the comments, cool? :))
Check out this radness:
“Happy Monday SF!
Just a quick note as I saw this and thought you might get a kick out of how the SF Way of celebrating the positives rather than focusing on the negatives is more effective in encouraging people to take action / change habits…
New Scientist: “Positive Thinking for a Cooler World” & “How Psychology Can Help the Planet Stay Cool”
It’s a short article and editorial talking about how positive encouragement works better than overwhelming people with the scale of problems, and how a ‘community’ message (well, they says ‘conformity’ with your neighbours but that sounds so sad) is an effective way of nudging changes in behaviour.
“”In another study, the researchers told households what others in their neighbourhood used on average. High users cut their consumption in response, but low users increased theirs. The problem disappeared if the messages were reinforced with sad or smiley faces.
The smileys received by the residents who were already saving energy provided sufficient encouragement for them to keep doing so
”
Seriously? A smiley face is enough!? Imagine what an actual real life smile could do.
The fact that positive encouragement can be *better* at encouraging change on a personal/community level than doom’n'gloom?
Writing it down like that seems absurdly self evident… But it took the scientists this long to catch up, so I don’t feel too bad ;)I am kind of surprised though – surely you have to be educated about the, admittedly scary and negative and serious, issues to even think of changing them?
I dunno. But I’ll take a smiley face with it.
Love,
P”
Righteous! Using positivity to try to change the world totally works!
Thank you very much, Miss Patricia!
Can’t wait to hear more from you soon!
Love,
Jackson
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