Making a change: how collective self-regulation might save the world

Collective Self-Regulation: The Case of Climate Change Mitigation

Real social change only occurs where there is a cultural transformation that results in widespread changes to the ideas and practices of community members.

But what does it take for people to change their behaviour and beliefs?

Professor Angela Paladino of the Management and Marketing Department has joined forces with researchers from the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences to develop a new theory of collective self-regulation, with researchers arguing that cultural transformations are achieved, in the main, through people’s willingness to regulate their own temptations and actions for the good of the society.

Funded as an Australian Research Council Discovery project and using the contentious issue of climate change to test their theory, they will provide a theoretically informed analysis of the difficulties faced in achieving such change.

Impact

With climate change mitigation one of the most complex problems currently facing the world's policymakers, the research team hope their theory of collective self-regulation will provide guidance for future policy development and deliberations for sustainability, in relation to climate change issue and any other social issues that involve collective self-regulation.

Investigators

Dr David Keisuke Sewell, Department of Psychology, University of Queensland