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Please imagine the following situation: A group of people is sitting on an inflatable life raft, close to each other, floating on the open sea. The shipwrecked hope for help soon.
Suddenly someone hears a faint hiss, then someone and someone else. Small holes in the rubber have been created in different places around the life raft. Small enough to hold it with a damp finger, but big enough that the island is slowly losing air.
First finger yoga
"Hold the hole right there in front of them!" someone shouts, and the addressee replies: "There is also a whistle with them, hold your hole shut!" A few already press their index fingers convulsively on the rubber, but it still hisses and whistles in various places. "My hand is already hurting now!" Groans someone, "Your hole is much bigger than mine! Close it first!" The woman addressed turns deaf and prefers to tense the horizon.
"It doesn't do anything with your fingers and is far too exhausting!", A man in a suit tries to steer the debate in another direction, "what we need is a good idea! Doesn't anyone have a good idea?" Silence. "Until we have an idea, we shouldn't do anything at first. Only innovation can save us!" Instead of an answer, you only hear soft hissing.
"Hysteria!"
Then suddenly a lot of voices voiced: someone asks if someone does not have a bicycle repair kit with them. A middle-aged woman loudly and firmly declares that she will close her hole soon, that she only has to finish her finger yoga exercises beforehand. One calls out that his hole was created much later than the others, they should now go in advance.
Another explains with a threatening undertone that he will only close his hole if he is assured that he will get an extration from the water and food supplies. A man with a red head angrily shouts that he is tired of this hysteria, everyone should shut up now. Meanwhile, the edge of the life raft is slowly becoming softer.
The situation described is called a social dilemma in game theory: many would have to do something to help everyone, but nobody wants to start. Of course, in reality hardly anyone would behave like that, that would be suicidal.
Or?
In fact, there are a number of psychological experiments that raise doubts. Three factors play an important role here:
- Diffusion of responsibility - there are so many people there, should do the others first.
- "Pluralistic ignorance" - we automatically orient ourselves in our behavior in unfamiliar situations and prefer how the others behave. But if nobody does something, nobody can serve as a model for active intervention.
- "Rating fear" - if I do something now, it may be the wrong thing and then the others will laugh at me.
A terrifying number of times, as a large number of studies have shown, people do, especially when there are many others, in dangerous situations: nothing. For example, they do not intervene, although they are apparently witnessing the beginning of rape. The initial occasion for this research branch was a sex murder in New York that 39 people heard without intervening.
This is called the viewer effect in social psychology. The more others there are, the less likely someone is to act.
How embarrassing
The current situation of mankind is not quite comparable to the experiments cited, but it can be compared to the situation described above: there are no uninvolved spectators in the climate catastrophe. We are all potential victims, and our children and grandchildren even more so. Nevertheless, responsibility diffusion is in full swing. Individuals, industries, states: everyone wants others to act first. This was impressive to see again this week in Madrid.
Even the "fear of evaluation" sometimes arises: in almost every online discussion about national measures, sooner or later someone claims that Germany is already doing too much anyway: "The other countries are laughing at us."
Of course that is nonsense. But the basic psychological mechanisms that sometimes prevent people from acting in dangerous situations also apply here. Someone is watching us, how embarrassing.
It continues to whistle
However, the two other factors are more important, preferably in combination:
"We're just a small country out of many, someone will do something."
"First see what the others are doing."
If everyone behaves like this, the air will continue to whistle out of the life raft. In the "FAZ" there was only another guest post this week in which the author calculated how pointless it was that the small New Zealand wanted to become CO2 neutral. He also deduces from this that it would be better for everyone else to do nothing at first - and to wait for "innovations".
Meanwhile, the air is slowly blowing from the liferaft.
According to the psychological literature, two factors can help to overcome the viewer effect. One is a feeling of competence: if someone thinks they know how to act in the current emergency, the presence of others can even increase the likelihood that they will act.
The second factor is education: if people are aware of the viewer effect, responsibility diffusion and pluralistic ignorance, they are more likely to oppose them. The better we understand ourselves, the sooner we can save ourselves.
Finally someone does (hopefully)
This is precisely why the "Green Deal" that the EU has rallied to this week in parallel to the Madrid climate summit is so important: that such a large and economically important block of states is openly and explicitly committed to finally doing more to combat the climate crisis , is a signal to others. It is possible to do something, and someone is doing something too. The EU has finally decided to be a role model, more determined than the hesitant and hesitant national governments, albeit with somewhat vague plans for action. The announcements of the "Green Deal" must now be followed up with action.
This is the only way to break the cartel of inaction that is exacerbating the climate crisis month by month. If nobody starts, we'll all go under.
