CLAS: Colby Liberal Arts Symposium

Identity and the Likelihood of Green Behaviors

Parker-Reed, SSWAC

Our study examined the effects of primed identity and the likelihood of ones engagement in green behaviors. Specifically, we looked at how provincial identity priming (i.e. thinking of yourself as primarily a Colby College student) makes one recall more engagements in green behavior, e.g. composting, recycling cans, etc. We manipulated three different identities to see which identity has made students recall most instances of green behavior. We hypothesized that identities that are closer to ones immediate context, for example, thinking of oneself as primarily a Colby College student above college student in general, would make participants think of themselves engaging in more green behaviors. All participants were randomly allocated to three different conditions of either Colby College student, general college student and control condition, and were then asked to think about and write down what they have in common with fellow Colby students or average college students, and the control condition were asked to write down the directions for a simple recipe. After being primed for their assigned group, participants filled out surveys that asked in the next two weeks how likely the participant believed they themselves would engage in each high cost or low cost green behavior, and how likely others from their assigned group would engage in these behaviors.

https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/clas/2015/program/41