as I prepared this talk it was part of a month of a six- week period which has been full of horror I started thinking about my talk in Canada when I was there visiting family the Orlando Massacre was on the news 50 young people shot in a gay nightclub killed and another 50 injured families distraught communities grieving shortly afterwards the police shot yet more unarmed black men in various cities and then a new and even more or equally barbarous event when police officers who were themselves guarding black lives matters protesters were in turn gunned down
by a sniper and of course the stories go on all around the world there was a crazy man who drove a truck into a crowd of people looking at fireworks deliberately aiming at Children and Families there are many other disasters faced with these events you might think to yourself what is happening is this unimaginable horror this parade of unimaginable Horrors endless humans don't act as though they think so after every event people come together they come together to grieve they come together to remember and celebrate the dead they come together to try to change now
the form of that change and the effectiveness of that attempt is what we're talking about today in the United States to an outsider to a Canadian to an Australian there seems to be a point of change easily accessible let's try not to sell assault rifles to crazy people who are on a terrorist watch list who already have been found to be violent maybe that's the point of change gun control laws now in the US after every Massacre and there are many massacres people mobilize towards gun control here are some examples in the leftand pictures on
the screen but if I say to you what do you think are we close to a change in the gun control laws in the US are we almost there where we could see sensible measures introduced I think you're going to say to me no and that's not the only difficult problem that our society faces the previous speaker raised one we are destroying the Earth we are harvesting its resources at a rate that we can't sustain people are taking action all over the world they're taking strange actions right you can paint yourself green you can bicycle
naked through the city to raise awareness about fossil fuels you can climb the Sydney Opera House you could be in a March all of these change attempts have been happening now for years and with special urgency in the last 5 and 10 years but if I say to you are we close are we close to stopping habitat destruction are we close to stopping The Descent towards climate change are we close I think you would say to me no we're not close and things that seem even simpler there are so many health issues binge drinking cigarette
smoking drug use among teenagers and adults these are preventable problems the Obesity epidemic is another we've seen a change in our culture of increasing risk mortality morbidity people have been campaigning about this for years and if I say to you are we close are we about to change is this working are we building up to a solution I think you would say to me no so there are a range of areas where we know how as a society to solve our problems and there are another range of areas where we seem to be stuffing up
that's what we're talking about in my talk and I'm going to tell you three things that I don't think you know that I would like everyone to know about how to change intractable and difficult problems I'm calling it getting a grip on problems you know we love our acronyms academics don't we we're going to think about groups the inclusiveness of groups and prioritizing change we're going to think about these three things today all right if I say to you how would this message save the world this message today I think you would say to me
well it would be something like this I learn something as a psychologist and I tell it to you as a Ted speaker you hear me as a Ted audience and then you tell your colleagues and your workers you tell other students you tell academics you tell NOS a messages spread through our social networks or maybe we shortcircuit it you know maybe we put it out in the mass media that's how information gets out and that information changes the world but what about the end of the world so aely introduced by Our Last speaker what do
I mean I mean this data this fabulous data from The Washington Post published in 2014 so the title of the graph is the severity of recent natural disasters is idence of and the results show a survey of American respondents the green bar the leftand bar from your perspective is people who are answering that the bushfires the floods the Cyclones the typhoons these are potential warning signs of global climate change now the brown bar on the right side from your perspective is people saying that these these fires these floods these disasters are evidence of the biblical
end times some of you might be thinking what end times the biblical end times when God is going to destroy the world and lift up the Saved and cast out the Damned now what you can see in this graph is that in some Faith communities a majority of people believe that the fires and floods are evidence that the biblical end times are coming they're upon us well that's going to affect your motivation to deal with climate change isn't it it's going to affect whether you think it's worthwhile or even desirable to fight against it that's
one point to draw but here's another I've just told you that some people think that bushfires in Australia and floods are evidence of the end of the world coming are you convinced no matter how many times I repeat that message are you going to be convinced and that's my point right when we pass information to each other we can only do that if we have trust and openness in our relationship what is the limit of Education what is the limit of the strategy of information transmission the boundaries of groups no matter how many times people
in that Faith Community tell me their belief I'm not convinced if I'm not in their faith community and we can have 50 years of climate science that repeat a message that we believe to be true urgent and danger dous but if it's running into a group boundary education will not take us through that wall that's the first point I want you to know okay if we then know we do need to focus on groups we have groups here problematic groups and I'm an authority or an NGO or maybe I'm just a passionate person like our
fabulous speakers before us what do I do next I'll tell you first what the mistake is that most people do they realize there's a problem group let's say we're dealing with terrorists they're a group and they're scary right now they are a small group but they speak they claim on behalf of a bigger group let's say we talk about these Muslim terrorists so-called we'll problematize that these terrorists say they're talking about opposition to the bombings and the invasions in Syria and Iraq opposition to political strategies in which Australia is implicated and in turn these Pol
iCal opponents speak on behalf of an even larger group the entire Muslim Community all people in the Middle East now that's how they pitch themselves okay now what I'm in the authority what do I do a very common mistake is to draw a line between yourself and the entire Community oh we have a problem with Muslims we have a problem with Muslim violence now what is the problem with that well first you've created what we just discussed you've now put a group boundary between yourself and the target audience that will mean there is no trust
and openness that's one problem there's another you've given the terrorists what they illegitimately claimed you're acting as though the terrorists are the leaders of the entire Muslim Community but they're not you've made invisible the real leaders the real moderate and legitimate leaders within that group so you're going to be less persuasive because of the way that you've approached these groups what do you need to do you need to draw a boundary between the terrorists and the political opponents there's lots of social rhetorical political strategies that you could employ we could talk for an hour about
that but you could start with the rhetoric right let's say something like there are hundreds of thousands of Australians who are profoundly opposed to the bombings in Syria and Iraq and who are sick with disgust when they hear that 85 people were killed last week as is as is the case in an accidental bombing from a western strike force with children's body parts scattered all over the road when people hear that they are disgusted they are horrified and they want it to stop these people are together with us we are speaking to each other about
problems that we see and we are finding Solutions together that is our rhetorical approach that provides us with the basis for True persuasion inclusive Ness allows you to proceed towards trust and openness whereas those group boundaries do not now it's normally easy for a left-wing audience to see how a right-wing politician that stigmatizes all Muslims because of terrorists is doing the wrong thing but let's try something trickier let's try some left-wing issues let's say that you're worried about the environment and let's say you're worried about fossil fuel use now everyone who drives a car uses
fossil fuels and even if you don't drive a car we all use fossil fuels indirectly it's the basis for our society fossil fuel use implicates us all so we're aware of that as environmentalists how common is it to draw a boundary between ourselves and the entire Australian Community Australia the most wasteful Society in the world Australia the highest energy users per capita in the world among them well of course it may be true but is it persuasive does it help Australians to listen to your message no when they hear that message the trust and the
openness is reduced they are less likely to attend to you what we need to do is acknowledge the reality there are hundreds of thousands of Australians driving cars and using fossil fuels that are worried about climate change they don't know the answer now but if they could flick a switch today and turn their cars from fossil fuel use to something else they would flip that switch they know there's a problem they are sharing with you the search for a solution that's the rhetorical space to begin from and here's one more very relevant at a time
when many of us are really alarmed about Donald Trump he was scary Pauline Hansen scary Sonia Krueger scary right now how easy is it for us to say yeah these bigots you know and everyone that's worried about all those issues immigration Sharia laws terrorism everyone that's even part of the passive community that tolerates and supports these views how easy is is it for us to draw a line between the enlightened and the Australian Community the most racist country in the world or Australia a place of entrenched chronic and ongoing racism you may feel that to
be true but is it persuasive does that sound like the best way to open a comment with an Australian you know no we need to divide fear and hate don't put them in together they're very different we need to divide the worriors from the the bigoted we need to divide the people who are advocating banning all Muslims from Australia from the ones that are scared of Muslims the second group is bigger than the first and we need to say there are lots of people that are worried they are worried about the safety of their children
they are worried about these rumors that they hear of homophobia of uh sexism of violence being taught in schools they're worried but you know what they don't want they don't want to see the police stopping you on the street asking you what is your faith and they don't want to see institutionalized discrimination where Muslim school children fear that they're going to be intern in camps they don't want that so what we share is the awareness of the problem and together we are working on a solution those bigoted people have a solution but a lot of
these Warriers will not Embrace that bigotry if they see an alternative which they can believe in which addresses their concerns all right so we Define our group inclusively we include our target audience the problem group we Define them narrowly very narrowly they're on the other side of the wall everyone else is together with us working on a common Solution One Last point we need to realize we cannot focus on the problem in the present alone we have to prioritize change even these problems that seem like they've been going on for years and they'll never change
they had a start and they have an end fossil fuel use 150 years ago there there were no cars in 150 years does anyone here think we'll still be driving fossil fueled cars no so that is already happening the future is coming we just need to steer towards it right these issues with um islamophobia are recent in Australia 15 years old we've had Muslims since 700 in another 15 years we hope this time of fear will have passed let's get there quickly so let's steer towards these positive changes now what does it look like when
you do that well here's what I don't want you to do so here's some examples from the environment space yes it looks like they're saying we should be more environmental but let's take a closer look what does the one on the left say European week for Waste reduction 51 reeks of the year of unlimited waste isn't that what that says stop trashing the climate what do we see a mountain of rubbish is that what that says and here's another one of course it's an anti-gun poster but what does it show lots of guns what is
a common way of framing gun control there's lots of guns there's lots of gun massacres we should have less so as a social psychologist I can ask because it's an empirical question if you tell people a behavior is common and it shouldn't be done does that motivate them to change no let's see some studies right I'm going to go through them quickly here's an environmental one this condition in red highlights that when you tell people environmental behavior is rare and should be done more often not only does it not increase their intentions it significantly decreases
them whoops here's another one with healthy eating what if you tell people you know everyone's eating really unhealthily but we shouldn't do that does that increase their intentions no in that condition not only do intentions to eat healthily not go up they significantly drop that wasn't what you were trying to do right here's another one now here's a key study one of the um studies from my lab this one highlights that if I think about how some people in our society are doing the right thing and some are doing the wrong thing and I already
have a strong passionate desire to do the right thing then when I hear that message when I'm reminded of that conflict I'm energized okay my intentions go up now is that the target audience of any inter vention people who already have strong favorable attitudes no so what happens among those people that don't have favorable attitudes are they energized you guys know what I'm going to say they are not their intentions go down if you have mild aversion to the environment you know no one's truly negative but it's just I wish you would stop talking about
it makes me uncomfortable or even mild positive attitudes then when you hear this message about how some people do the right thing some people do the wrong thing you're like woo dropping I'm in that camp I'm in the bottom one right that's me is it possible that activist design campaigns that motivate ourselves and demotivate our targets that governments that NOS routinely put out ads that energize themselves and not only fail to work on the target audience they actually undermine the desired Behavior not only is it possible it is happening it is happening in every area
of social marketing of social campaigning of social media it is a common problem and a common tactic I hope that you are convinced that we need to think about groups to think about inclusiveness to prioritize the positive change not the problem in the present what would it look like if we did that well let's say gun control is it helpful for me to put up an ad saying no guns I don't think so but you know what might be good this might be good makes you feel a bit weird if you're crazed anti-gun person which
of course many Canadians are many Australians also right to to turn to gun owners and work with them but you know what gun owners for responsible ownership those people might actually be persuasive to other gun owners unlike you right now maybe there's an issue where you feel like there's no in there's no minority within the group that can work with you what if you're trying to sway Pauline Hansen's One Nation voters to be less uh hostile to Muslim immigration maybe there's no minority within that right well what could you do I'm calling it chain of
trust you try to give the message to someone that they might trust so in the case of gun owners anti-gun control anti-gun Advocates cannot say something useful but maybe doctors can it look something like this maybe a gun owner would see a headline like that and maybe they'd read it they wouldn't turn off and maybe if they read it they might think about it differently than if you or I said it of course there's a third approach that you could do you could think yes I am in a contest with another group I'm going to
try and attack and defeat their leadership I'm going to try and grind their uh mobilization their organization into the Dust now that is a strategy that might work or it might just escalate their commitment and despite this I think it's the most popular strategy when people start coming to terms with the group communication situation that habit of attack attack of your enemies that is the the go-to I think so just to repeat what I'm saying among those three gun control messages I think two are more effective with the target audience and I think the third
is the most popular maybe the most effective with the activists themselves now I hope that you can see the applicability of this in your everyday lives whatever message you're communicating whether it's about the acceptability of stem cell work or the need to change the environment or the need to mobilize people around health concerns we need to think Beyond educating individuals to groups we need to get a grip on problem thank you [Applause]
