Abstract
We examine stories as a means of influencing environmentally sustainable behavior. Although stories in the form of fables, histories, parables, and religious narratives are the oldest foundations of human culture, their role in influencing behavior has begun to be studied within the behavioral sciences only in past several decades. Within behavior analysis, it has been proposed that stories influence behavior through the storyteller’s use of establishing operations, which offers a new frontier of behavior-change applications. We define a story in terms of changes in states of equilibrium using Todorov’s (1977) framework, which casts stories in terms of the way in which some disruptive force upsets an initial stable state of baseline equilibrium, provoking an unstable transition state of disequilibrium, and ultimately leads to a new distinct state of renewed equilibrium as the story is brought to a close. In behavior-analysis terms, the disruptor event acts as an establishing operation that motivates behavior. We show how these behavioral processes transpired during the ozone war, a provisionally successful battle to protect the ozone layer of the atmosphere from damaging chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) emissions. The ozone war is important because it represents a successful environmental outcome that serves as a template for overcoming the global warming crisis. We examine establishing operations in autobiographical stories and the way in which people envision themselves as protagonists in unfolding personal narratives that can be reauthored to alter life trajectories. We look at how narratives can mislead and how narrative coherence and fidelity impact the influence of stories. Finally, we consider how stories can sustain environmental health, including explicitly making stories and their influences apparent, collectively engaging in cultural reauthoring, expanding scientific communications to incorporate the beneficial effects of stories, employing imaginative environmental literature, using a variety of narrative genres to tell environmental stories, and teaching narrative literacy.
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Notes
- 1.
The story motivating operation increases the effectiveness of the outcome of the story, but it may be better to say that the motivating operation creates an effective reinforcer because the disruptor event both creates possible outcomes of the story and establishes their effectiveness as a reinforcer. A story does not have an outcome before the story’s protagonist, under the influence of disruptor event and a motivating operation, behaves so as to achieve some reinforcing outcome.
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Grant, L., Forrest, M. (2020). Can Stories Influence Sustainable Behavior?. In: Cihon, T.M., Mattaini, M.A. (eds) Behavior Science Perspectives on Culture and Community. Behavior Analysis: Theory, Research, and Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45421-0_12
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