The power of shame

For some years now governments around the world have been trying to move the needle on various public crises using “nudge theory.” Sometimes referred to as “choice architecture,” nudge theory was popularized by economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein in their 2008 book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

The idea of nudge theory is that you continue to give people all the options they currently have, however you design those options in a particular way, understanding concepts like the “default effect” which suggests that people will choose the default option available to them, even if it is not the best option. The example often provided is organ donation: if you give people a form where the default option is to opt out of organ donation, most people will opt out; if you give people a form where the default option is to opt in to organ donation, most people will opt in. Clearly, in a society that needs organ donors, it makes sense to design the form in a way that results in more donors. People still have the same choices, they are just nudged toward a “better” choice.

Clearly, nudge theory is also active in the environmental consumer domain. A good example would be plastic shopping bags: sure, you can still have one, but it’s going to cost you a nominal fee to buy it, and people are going to think you’re not a particularly responsible person (at least if you happen to be shopping among environmentally aware folks).

Sometimes nudges look quite extreme, such as the use of graphic imagery on cigarette packets: people can still buy cigarettes, they’re just made to feel bad about it, both for their own health, and the judgment they may receive from others when they put the packet on the table.

A recent article in the British Medical Journal explores how to take this one step further, arguing for similarly graphic imagery on products that are damaging to the environment, such as petrol pumps and airline tickets:

Warning labels connect the abstract threat of the climate emergency with the use of fossil fuels in the here and now, drawing attention to the true cost of fossil fuels pictorially or quantitatively. … They sensitise people to the consequences of their actions, representing nudges designed to encourage users to choose alternatives to fossil fuels, thus increasing demand for zero-carbon renewable energy.

This comes close to moving from a nudge into outright shaming. Is this a useful direction in which to move? Certainly. Shame is a powerful tool in changing peoples’ behavior, particularly when the behavior impacts other people.

A good example for environmentalists to follow would be drink driving campaigns. For a long time people didn’t really care about drink driving (“how else do you get home from the pub!?”), but then they slowly started to see that it was dangerous and, more importantly, dangerous to other innocent people. Now it is considered quite shameful to get caught drink driving. The use of unsustainable products should be considered as shameful as drink driving.

The next analogy is dramatic, but we are in an environmental crisis, so dramatic solutions should absolutely be discussed. The use of unsustainable products should be considered as shameful as child abuse. This is actually quite a reasonable analogy, as by using unsustainable products, consumers are literally performing acts of delayed violence upon future children, not too dissimilar to laying landmines in a playing field and walking away carefree.

This may sound manipulative. But of course, the advertising and public relations industry has been manipulating us for decades to buy their world-destroying filth, so it will take an equal measure of manipulation to establish some kind of equilibrium.

Shaming is a useful tool in changing social attitudes for the better. And once enough people consider unsustainable products to come with a clear element of shame there will be little public resistance to banning them altogether.