Blog Post from the Class “The Psychology of Sustainable Behavior”
By: Olivia Forsheé Now that our zero-waste project is over, I’m finding that a lot of what I felt as “stress” and “guilt” during the 10-days was due to the induced hypocrisy paradigm. The induced hypocrisy paradigm is the dissonance you feel when you say you will do something or live a certain way and you don’t follow through (Scott, Amel, Koger, and Manning. 2021). This concept stems from the human evolutionary need to stay with your group. When an individual had ideas or acted in ways that didn’t mesh with the communities beliefs, they were often cast out and this most surely was a death sentence. So, fast forward, and thankfully the consequences are not as severe, but still, every time I threw something in my jar I felt guilt for letting my class and myself down for going directly against our social norms and the commitment I had made to produce zero-waste. For the longest time I have preached that I care about the environment, and yet I had no idea my seemingly simple de
