Uploaded June 2019 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

---

HUMAN NATURE – SIGNALLING
OK – here is a while-viewing task for your students (just on the off-chance you may want to use it for practice purposes in class…)

i) What are the factors that make it difficult for people to care about the environment?
ii) Why was the To yota Prius more successful than the Honda hybrid car?
iii) In what ways are his Prius-driving friends different from his non-Prius-driving friends?
iv) What is the moral of all this?

The great Dan Ariely draws our attention to a key human motivator: signalling. Much of what we do in life (and about 99% of what we do in the social media) serves to signal to others what wonderful people we are. So why not use this natural tendency to get people to do what is right for the environment, for the planet – for all of us?
And yet we are reluctant to do this– it somehow feels like cheating. This may well be a mistake though. According to Rory Sutherland, 'The error of the environmental movement seems to me to be assuming that it is not only necessary for people to do the right thing, but that they must do the right thing for the right reasons' (‘Alchemy’ – p. 313). Perhaps we should think again…

[NB: I do not own the copyright to this video clip. I have uploaded it here for educational purposes].