Behaviorally Inadequate: A Situationist Critique of Environmental Virtues

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Behaviorally Inadequate: A Situationist Critique of Environmental Virtues

(Environmental Ethics, 2014)

ABSTRACT: This paper explores challenges to environmental virtue theory provided by situationism and environmental psychology. Environmental ethicists promote proenvironmental behaviors capable of providing adequate protection for the environment, but situationist critiques suggest that character traits are not as behaviorally robust as is typically supposed. I discuss Robert Adams’ response to situationists in order to present a dilemma: environmental virtue theorists can either reject the behavioral adequacy criterion for environmental ethics, and in so doing strengthen their argument against situationism, or they can claim that environmental virtue theories are behaviorally robust and capable of providing adequate protection for the environment. In either case it seems the environmental ethicist will have to sacrifice something important. 1.0 Introduction

This paper will explore various challenges to environmental virtue theory provided by

situationism and environmental psychology. Situationist critiques, such as that of John Dorisi and

Gilbert Harman,ii cast doubt on the existence of broadly efficacious character traits, claiming that

virtues, if they exist, are not as robust as is traditionally assumed.iii Environmental virtue

theorists have yet to address the criticisms provided by situationists, but that’s not to suggest that

they lack the resources to do so. I argue that situationist critiques present a dilemma for the

environmental virtue theorist. Environmental ethicists have long emphasized that environmental

ethics must produce behavioral change capable of providing adequate protection for the

environment. However, the most threatening aspect of situationist critiques is that character traits

are not as behaviorally robust as is typically supposed. Thus environmental virtue theorists are

faced with a decision: they can either reject this behavioral criterion for environmental ethics

(what I will call behavioral adequacy), and in so doing strengthen their argument against

situationist critiques, or they can take the situationist head on, and claim that environmental

virtue theories are behaviorally robust and capable of providing adequate protection for the

environment. If they take the former route, they sacrifice an important component of

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environmental virtue theory, and if they take the latter route, they must demonstrate the

behavioral adequacy of environmental character traits—a significant challenge.

While this dilemma leaves some options for environmental virtue theorists, I will further

claim that the relationship between environmental virtues and environmental behavior is tenuous,

and is in fact inadequate for forms of environmental ethics that emphasize proenvironmental

behavior. People are not sufficiently capable of adopting proenvironmental behaviors. Moreover,

the extent to which people act towards the environment—positively or negatively—is largely due

to situational and other non-trait-like psychological factors. This should be troubling to any

environmental ethicist, but particularly for those who wish to promote environmental virtues.

The paper will proceed as follows: Section 2 will lay out a rough outline of

environmental virtue theory and the features I take to be essential to my argument. In Section 3, I

will apply the situationist critique to environmental virtues, and discuss one experiment to

illustrate situationist worries as they apply to the environment. Section 4 will attempt to develop

what would seem to be the best response an environmental virtue ethicist could propose,

focusing chiefly on the position of Robert Adams, someone who has developed a prominent

theory of virtue outside of the environmental context. The main line of reply taken from Adams

is to deemphasize the behavioral aspect of virtues. In application to the environment, Adams’

position entails that taking proenvironmental action is not a necessary requirement for possessing

environmental virtues. Section 5 will amplify and strengthen the situationist critique by

describing the importance of other psychological biases. I will argue that the combination of

psychological biases and situational factors explain the majority of our environmental behaviors.

Section 6 will conclude by briefly summarizing the challenges facing environmental virtue

theorists.

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2.0 Environmental Virtue Theory

I will emphasize four features in characterizing how my argument relates to key

components of environmental virtue theory. These features don’t pretend to capture any one

person’s views but rather draw from many prominent accounts of environmental virtues.

Highlighting these features within a generic account of environment virtues will help set up

subsequent discussion of situationism and environmental virtues.

The first feature is the role of what I will refer to as behavioral adequacy. Behavioral

requirements are central to some theories of virtueiv but have a particularly significant role in

environmental theories. For instance, Ronald Sandler argues that efficacious behavior is a

necessary component of any adequate environmental ethic.v On Sandler’s view, an adequate

environmental ethic “must be efficacious in promoting solutions to real world environmental

problems. It must help bring about, not merely justify, environmentally sustainable practices,

policies, and lifestyles.”vi In order for environmental virtue theories to be adequate, they must

actually translate into proenvironmental behaviors. They must promote environmental virtues

that will have real effects on the environment. The demand this places on moral agents is

substantial: someone fully possesses the environmental virtues only if those virtues produce

proenvironmental behaviors to a sufficient degree.

The second feature is the role of dispositions. Dispositions in virtue theory have generally

been understood to entail dispositions to various mental states but also, importantly, to entail

dispositions to act.vii In attributing to someone the virtue of benevolence towards the

environment, we are saying both that they positively value the environment and that they are

disposed to act on behalf of the environment. However, according to the behavioral adequacy

criterion, the most important virtues are those that involve a disposition or motivation to act

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(particularly if they have significant proenvironmental effects). Those virtues that do not

motivate action will fail to have an impact, and thus cannot be endorsed by an adequate

environmental ethic.viii This raises broader questions about the role of motivation in dispositions,

and whether dispositions to think a certain way involve dispositions to act as well. The

relationship between dispositions and enacting proenvironmental behaviors will be discussed in

detail later in this paper.

The third feature is the role of excellence. One feature in common between

environmental virtue theories and traditional virtue ethics is that virtuous agents must act

excellently in pursuing relevant goods.ix With respect to the environment, excellence requires us

to go beyond mere adequacy in pursuing environmental goods.x Different theories of virtue

disagree, however, over exactly what this entails behaviorally. For example, we might wonder

whether it is sufficiently excellent to significantly reduce one’s personal energy consumption, or

whether excellence requires that others be convinced to do the same. A related question, one

suggested by the behavioral adequacy criterion, is whether excellence requires not only that

others are convinced to change their environmental behaviors but also that they are successful in

changing their behaviors. How one defines and specifies the demands of excellence thus has

significant behavioral implications for environmental virtue theory.

The fourth feature, another one widely shared among different theories of virtue, is that

virtues are generally expected to contribute to specifically human flourishing. Like excellence,

this too entails different behavioral requirements. While environmental ethicists are generally in

agreement that acting well towards the environment contributes to one’s flourishing,xi it’s not

clear whether acting well towards the environment requires that we sacrifice at least some

portion of our own good in the process.xii For instance, there is a wide array of behaviors that

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individuals can adopt to positively (and significantly) impact the environment, but many of these

behaviors don’t seem to have any obvious relationship to one’s flourishing, and in some cases

might actually be a source of frustration (e.g., certain recycling programs). A common criticism

of environmental virtue theory is that it focuses too much on the flourishing of humans, when it

should instead be concerned with the flourishing of the environment.xiii If people are focused too

much on the role of human flourishing, perhaps they won’t be willing to make the sacrifices

required to provide adequate assistance to the environment. Research relevant to this question

will be discussed in more detail in section 5.

3.0 Situationist Critique of Environmental Virtues

The behavioral adequacy criterion demands that practicing environmental virtues will

actually have an impact on the environment. I’ll show below how this behavioral aspect of virtue

theory has been criticized by situationists. I will not be endorsing any specific variety of

situationism, but will instead emphasize the features of situationist experiments that seem to

present significant psychological obstacles for virtue theory. The now-standard situationist

critique will be presented in this section, followed by a discussion of how environmental ethicists

might respond to this critique.

3.1 The Situationist Critique

The main line of critique for situationists is that the character traits thought to underlie

virtues are not as broad or as behaviorally efficacious as they’re supposed to be. As Doris

understands the traditional view of character traits within virtue ethics, “If a person possesses a

trait, that person will engage in trait-relevant behaviours in trait-relevant eliciting conditions with

markedly above chance probability p.”xiv Doris and others point to experiments in which the

relevant eliciting conditions are present but the traits are either unexpressed or expressed only

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weakly, due to other, often trivial, situational factors. For example, we can imagine otherwise

tidy campers who fail to clean up after themselves when trashcans are further away than normal,

or steadfast recyclers who throw away recyclables because the garbage man has changed his

pickup schedule. Examples such as these abound, suggesting that character traits are frail and

inefficacious.

Situationists claim that the pervasive causal influence of situational factors suggests that

traits, when they are expressed, are only expressed in particular situations. They do not hold

across a broad range of conditions but are fragmentary and narrow. So, for instance, we might

express virtues that support proenvironmental behaviors very strongly when recycling, or

perhaps when considering what foods to buy, but not when considering personal energy

consumption or driving habits.

Further implications of the situationist position will become clear in later sections. To

state the problem in a slightly different way, the traditional view in virtue ethics holds that

character traits are enduring dispositions capable of producing behaviors relevant to the

respective virtue. They shouldn’t function in one setting but not another similar setting, and their

efficacy shouldn’t vary according to trivial modifications in situation or circumstance. If

character traits aren’t actually expressed in these ways, then the traditional theory of virtues

appears to be problematic.

It is somewhat unclear whether or not there is consensus among environmental virtue

theorists about the precise way in which character traits are broad and efficacious. Van

Wensveen, for instance, says that virtues imply “constancy over time.”xv Hursthouse says that a

morally virtuous person “reliably and consistently does what is right”xvi and Kawall asserts, “a

person who only very rarely helps others (given ample appropriate opportunities) is clearly not

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benevolent.”xvii Others claim that virtues require various sorts of “consistency.”xviii The only

mention of situationism in the entire literature on environmental virtues, from a footnote in Ron

Sandler’s Character and Environment, asserts, “[Situationist] claims do not undermine the

standard conception of character in virtue-oriented ethics.”xix Sandler does not elaborate on this

assertion, so it’s not clear what he takes the “standard conception” to be.xx

3.2 Smiley Faces

Before entering into further discussion of what virtue ethicists think about character

traits, consider one experiment that indicates the sort of issues situationists are worried about.xxi

I’ll call this the Smiley Faces experiment. Wesley Schultz and colleaguesxxii collected energy

consumption rates from 290 households in San Marcos, California, which they then used to

calculate a baseline consumption rate in the neighborhood (15.03 kilowatt hours per day [kWh]).

They then provided each household with basic information about how their consumption

compared with this baseline rate, and continued to track their energy consumption, so as to

measure the effects of the information.

The basic finding demonstrated strong social conformity: people tended to modify their

consumption to bring themselves closer to the norm. Those who were above average decreased

their consumption (from an average of 21.47 to 20.25 kWh), while those who were below

average increased their consumption (from an average of 10.38 to 11.27 kWh). So those who

were doing well (environmentally speaking) consumed more than usual. The only identifiable

causal factor to explain this change was situational—information about local norms.

An additional variable was included, however, that gets more precisely at situationist

concerns. Some households received additional social feedback on their informational flyer in

the form of either a smiley face or a frowny face.xxiii Those who were above average received a

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frowny face while those who were below average received a smiley face. These households

showed differential responses to the flyers. Those who were above average and received frowny

faces decreased consumption even more than above average consumers who were simply

informed of their consumption (from 20.63 to 18.91 kWh). More importantly, those who were

below average and received a smiley face sustained their normal level of consumption (from

10.34 to 10.58 kWh). So while merely knowing the norms of one’s community was enough to

increase low (and commendable!) levels of consumption, receiving positive feedback in the form

of a smiley face was enough to convince people that they should persist in their commendable

levels of consumption.

The take home point of this experiment is that trivial social feedback can significantly

alter people’s normal energy consumption. Furthermore, it would seem that we are surrounded

by similar forms of information concerning our environmental behaviors all the time. The

argument from situationists is that the relative content and stability of these situational factors is

capable of explaining a great deal of our environmental behavior, or at least much better than

character traits.

Of course the virtue ethicist has some interpretive options here. To pursue responses to

this particular experiment and situationism in general, I will move now to more recent

discussions of dispositions and character traits. Environmental ethicists have yet to respond to

situationism, so I will attempt to construct what I take to be the most plausible kind of response

environmental virtue ethicists could offer.

4.0 Responses to Situationism

Consider again the Smiley Faces experiment. Though it showed the causal impact of

trivial situational factors, there are yet numerous responses available for virtue theorists. For one,

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they could say that no virtues are operational in the experiment. This experiment only counts in

the situationist’s favor if low consumers (prior to manipulation) consumed less out of virtue, and

because consuming less energy is virtuous. By hypothesis, if these consumers were virtuous,

they should be less likely to modify their behavior in response to community norms. That the

consumers in this experiment did not resist social influence could just be taken as evidence that

they were not virtuous.

Virtue theorists could also point to the fact that low energy consumption existed prior to

any social feedback. Some stable character trait must have existed, one could argue, for this to

occur. The situationist can reply that this previous level of consumption was also due to social

feedback (or other situational constraints), but this merely displaces the burden of the argument

onto the virtue theorist, rather than clinching the argument with convincing evidence.

Both of these types of replies are legitimate and require further attention. They point to

issues regarding the psychology of virtue theory and how it can be properly tested, a topic that

has been the focus of much recent discussion of situationist critiques. Here I will focus

specifically on Robert Adams’ position on these questions. I focus on Adams, rather than other

responses to situationism, for a couple reasons. One is that John Doris has explicitly endorsed

Adams’ criticism of situationism, specifically his discussion of dispositions and behavior.xxiv A

second reason is that the framework of Adams’ account is broad enough to capture other more

recent critiques. If Adams’ account succeeds (or fails), then many other critiques are likely to

succeed (or fail).xxv

4.1 Dispositions and Behavior

As the behavioral adequacy condition suggests, environmental virtue ethicists must

endorse a strong link between dispositions and behavior. Dispositions here can function as a

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stand-in for any number of internal psychological states. Whatever it is that environmental

virtues influence—be it values, attitudes, emotions, beliefs, or desires—they should be expressed

in corresponding behaviors. If environmental virtues are not linked to behaviors in a strong way,

then the environment will receive inadequate protection and assistance, and environmental virtue

theory must be rejected.

However, many influential virtue theorists, primarily Robert Adams as discussed here,

have endorsed a move away from a strong behavior-disposition link.xxvi This has the effect of

providing a more effective response to the situationist. If the traits (or whatever internal state)

affected by virtues are strongly separable from behaviors, then situationist experiments showing

that behaviors and traits are inconsistent fail to hit their mark. The result of the argument to be

presented here is that environmental virtue theorists must make a choice: they can either reject

the behavioral adequacy criterion for an environmental ethic, and in so doing offer a stronger

response to the situationist, or they can take the situationist head on, and claim that

environmental virtue theories are behaviorally robust. In either case it seems the environmental

ethicist will have to sacrifice something important.

Consider Robert Adams’ perspective on dispositions. Adams proposes a distinction

between two types of dispositions that virtues can be directed towards: roughly, some virtues are

directed more at internal states and a certain type of psychology, while others are directed at

behaviors. The latter he calls direct behavioral dispositions. For instance, someone might say

that to be honest is to be disposed to behave honestly.xxvii Though Adams thinks that some

virtues will be more behavioral than others, in general he thinks that virtues, properly conceived,

will influence internal states more directly. For instance, he says, “the dispositions involved in

[virtues] will typically be dispositions, first of all, to types of psychological processing, rather

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than directly to types of observable physical behavior.”xxviii And on the specific virtue of

benevolence, “benevolence as such is a motive, defined by an end desired, and is thus a

disposition to a type of psychological processing rather than directly to a type of behavior,”xxix as

well as the virtue of conscientiousness, a popular one for environmental ethicists, “Being

conscientious is largely a matter of being committed to moral principles. So understood,

conscientiousness is not simply a behavioral disposition, though it surely involves at least an

indirect behavioral disposition to be guided in action by the principles to which one is

committed.”xxx

This strategy of Adams’ in responding to situationists (though he has others) denies that

the behavioral expressions in situationist experiments accurately gauge the existence of character

traits, properly conceived. Character traits consist of many things besides behaviors, including

various beliefs and attitudes, as well as how we govern our ethical thinking. The behaviors

expressed in situationist experiments fail to indicate much in the way of these features (or so is

the argument). Consider the Smiley Faces experiment. Adams would say that focusing only on

the situational factors in this experiment ignores a number of important traits internal to the

agents. Assuming some of these people were in fact virtuous, it shouldn’t just be their energy

consumption that should be under consideration. Those who are virtuous will also have various

pro-attitudes towards the environment, and that should matter. Adams acknowledges that

situational factors can have significant causal impact (which will be discussed further in the next

section), but denies that this excludes the existence of important internal traits integral to virtue

theory.xxxi

A further look at the reasoning behind the situationist critique can help illuminate how to

explore the relationship between dispositions and behaviors. We can express the thinking of

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situationists as follows. They reason that if people possess trait A, then they will evince behavior

B.xxxii They claim that the evidence shows that people who supposedly possess A do not in fact

express B, so trait A must not in fact exist in those people. The response from Adams above,

however, says that situationists are wrong to think that traits entail specific behaviors. There

might be other ways of verifying the presence of a trait, but it is not by looking for specific

behavioral expressions.

Adams would not wish for virtue theory to become unfalsifiable though. It must still be

the case that traits are predictive of behaviors, even if situationists have misconceived which

behaviors are tied to traits and how strongly they are connected. Perhaps a trait only predicts a

behavior 10% of the time, because the other 90% of the trait is directed purely at non-behavioral

internal states. Nonetheless, that 10% should still be predicted by the relevant trait. Another way

of thinking about it, then, is to say that if a trait A is not predictive of B, then A does not qualify

as a virtue, as virtues are traditionally conceived. If traits are generally not predictive of

behaviors, then this is good reason to think that traits in general do not qualify as virtues, as

virtues are traditionally conceived. However, Adams position still applies here. He thinks that

traits are predictive of behaviors, just not at the level assumed by situationists.xxxiii

4.2 Frail Virtues

A question that follows from Adams’ discussion is exactly how much a trait is supposed

to be tied to behaviors. If, as Adam suggests, most virtues require less behavioral expression than

situationists envision, then the situationist critique is weakened. However, the dilemma for

environmental virtue ethicists is that endorsing the move away from behavioral dispositions

violates the behavioral adequacy criterion. They cannot allow for the possibility that

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environmental virtues will fail to be strongly tied to behaviors, if they are to uphold behavioral

adequacy.

One could object, however, that the situationist critique still allows for character traits

with some degree of behavioral adequacy. And perhaps this is all that is needed in order to

demonstrate the existence of broad character traits. For instance, someone might argue that

virtues need not operate in all relevant situations, but rather only when the right situational

triggers are present.xxxiv To consider one example, attributing to someone the character trait of

being helpful doesn’t entail that the person will express helping behavior whenever someone is in

need of help. If significant situational factors are present, then helping behaviors will be

inhibited. This is consistent with the idea that a broad character trait to help—when the right

triggers are present—does indeed exist. At the very least, moderate and low-level character traits

are possible.xxxv

For environmental ethics, we can think of this line of argumentation in terms of a

counterfactual claim: if situational constraints are removed, the relevant dispositions will be

expressed as proenvironmental behaviors. Consider one experiment that supports this claim.

Corraliza and Berenguer gave people a list of 16 proenvironmental behaviors and asked people

the degree to which they felt morally obligated to adopt these behaviors.xxxvi They also asked

people whether they in fact practiced those behaviors. Items included recycling habits, methods

of transportation, home fixtures, and energy use. They also asked people how constrained they

felt to enact these behaviors.xxxvii They indeed found that, so long as people did not feel

constrained, their values tended to predict adoption of the behaviors. This is the sort of evidence

that the virtue ethicist should look for in responding to the situationist. Situations alter the

probability that traits will be expressed in the way they would otherwise. In short, the upshot of

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this is that what people do in one situation is often predictive of what they will do in other

situations, and the best explanation for this, it seems, is character traits.

However, in regard to environmental concern, a high degree of behavioral adequacy is

likely to be required, regardless of any constraints. Moderate and low-level virtues may provide

inadequate environmental protection. Even if the situationist critique has been neutralized for

some virtues, the situationist can return to the issue of practically effective behaviors. This is one

feature of the situationist critique that retains significant implications for virtue theory,

particularly for environmental virtues. As Doris says, “A practically relevant character ethics

should have something to say about securing ethically desirable behavior.”xxxviii If virtues are not

behaviorally robust, then their potential to provide practical solutions is decreased.

5.0 Psychological Limitations in Attaining Environmental Virtues

This section will present evidence from environmental psychology demonstrating a

significant disconnection between values and behavior. Expressed proenvironmental values and

attitudes do not predict proenvironmental behaviors. Perhaps even more importantly, the

proenvironmental behaviors that are expressed are best explained by a combination of situational

factors and other non-trait-like psychological factors. Both of these considerations serve to

amplify the situationist critique.

5.1 The Value-Attitude-Behavior Gap

One of the most prominent problems with improving proenvironmental behaviors is what

has been termed the value-behavior gap. Proenvironmental values and attitudes rarely lead to

proenvironmental behaviors. The most cited evidence for this gap comes from multiple meta-

analyses of the relationship between a combined measure of proenvironmental values-attitudes-

intentions and proenvironmental behaviors.xxxix These analyses have found an average

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correlation of 0.30 between values-attitudes-intentions to act positively towards the environment

and subsequent proenvironmental behaviors. While this is a positive correlation, it is quite

small.xl This is in fact right at the .30 “predictability ceiling” used by personality psychologists.xli

A common heuristic used by personality psychologists is to treat as unreliable any correlations

lower than .30 between traits and behaviors; such a low correlation cannot be relied upon for

accurate prediction. At this level, any correlation observed between a trait and a behavior in one

instance does not reliably predict that correlation in any other instance, even if the situational

variables remain unchanged. Thus, the value-behavior gap indicates that proenvironmental

values are nowhere near as strong as most scientists and activists would say is needed to obtain

improved treatment of the environment.

Hines and colleagues’ analysis, the most extensive to date, focused on 128 studies

conducted over a 17-year period. They focused only on experiments in which people expressed

specific intentions to conduct specific environmental behaviors, and the time between expressing

the intention to act and having the opportunity to act was minimal. Even with all of these factors

present, Hines et al. report an average correlation of .35, the highest of any relevant meta-

analysis. In summarizing this evidence, Bamberg states, “Taken together, the general attitude

environmental concern seems to explain not more than 10 per cent variance of specific

environmental behaviors.”xlii Additionally, other research reports that knowledge about

environmental problems leads to pro-environmental behaviors about 6% of the time.xliii

None of these numbers hold much hope for getting proenvironmental behaviors out of

proenvironmental knowledge, values, attitudes, or intentions. Environmental virtue theorists

presumably must hold that virtues will influence one of these mental states in such a way that

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proenvironmental behaviors will be expressed. The empirical evidence suggests otherwise,

however; human beings are not behaviorally adequate.xliv

5.2 Amplifying the Situationist Critique: Psychological Biases

This is not the end of the story, however. Psychologists have recognized this gap between

values and behaviors and sought various ways of reducing it. Rather than alter internal traits

when targeting specific behaviors, social scientists have had more success at removing structural

barriers (such as those inhibiting neighborhood recycling and reduced home energy use). These

obviously fall under the category of situational factors.

Consider the converse of the situationist worry that traits are not predictive of behaviors.

The converse of this is whether behaviors are predictive of traits. Do proenvironmental behaviors

entail proenvironmental attitudes? If we observe someone recycling, does this mean they value

recycling? Though it’s obviously false to say that behaviors entail virtues, most psychologists

would agree that behaviors entail dispositions. Otherwise, there would be nothing to account for

those behaviors. To run the situationist critique a different way, the worry is that the dispositions

entailed by environmental behaviors are not character traits, and certainly not virtues; they are

instead best accounted for by situational factors.

While structural barriers (such as neighborhood recycling programs) are obviously

situational factors, their impact, according to situationists, is still due to internal states. Though

this has been less explicit in situationist criticisms, it’s worth pointing out that the paradigmatic

cases of situational influence rely quite heavily on implicit biases prevalent in our species.

Stanley Milgram’s shock experiments, for instance, rely on our tendency towards conformity,

especially when under the influence of authority figures.xlv It has also been speculated that

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Darley and Batson’s helping experiment relies on the bystander effect, such that an unwitting

passerby feels less responsible for providing assistance.xlvi

This feature of the situationist critique also applies to environmental virtues. The Smiley

Faces experiment relies heavily on conformity and our tendency to be influenced by social

norms. It also relies on social feedback, even if this comes in the form of a smiley face. Other

research has found a “like me” bias, such that people will only adopt proenvironmental behaviors

to the extent that others they see as being sufficiently similar to them (usually along

socioeconomic criteria) have also adopted those behaviors.xlvii For the situationist, these biases

consist of any non-trait-like psychological features that impact our behavior. They stand in

contrast to other structural barriers, such as technological limitations (e.g. fuel efficient vehicles),

economic forces (e.g. poverty), or inconvenience (e.g., lack of a recycling program in one’s

neighborhood or a very expensive recycling program), but they are nonetheless crucial to the

situationist critique.

What other sorts of biases apply to environmental virtues? Psychologists attempting to

support proenvironmental behaviors have found two important biases that limit people’s

behavior: a low-impact bias and a single action bias. The low impact bias refers to people’s

tendency to adopt only low-impact proenvironmental behaviors. For instance, when people are

provided an array of options by which they can reduce energy consumption or environmental

impact, they tend to choose only those that would have little environmental impact (e.g.

recycling, lowering one’s thermostat, or maintaining proper tire pressure instead of insulating

one’s home or buying fuel-efficient vehiclesxlviii).

The single action bias refers to the phenomenon whereby taking a single action causes a

reduction in motivation to take further actions, even when it is acknowledged that these actions

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are necessary to reach a certain goal.xlix So not only do people tend to choose low-impact

behaviors, they also limit their pursuit of these behaviors. Buying a fuel-efficient car, for

example, may be enough for people to think they’ve “done their part,” and refrain from

conserving energy in other non-negligible ways.

The psychological processes summarized to this point form a potent challenge to

effective proenvironmental behaviors: knowledge and endorsement of proenvironment values

tend not to lead to behavior change, behaviors that are adopted are usually low impact and short-

lived, and any changes that are made are likely to recidivate unless the surrounding society

approves of the changes. These limitations amplify and strengthen the situationist critique. It’s

not just that traits fail to predict environmental behavior (or lack thereof) but also that expressed

behavior is attributable to various psychological biases, not traits. Moreover, it would seem that

these biases are manageable primarily by modifying situational factors, such as structural

barriers that biases interact with. The low-impact bias, for instance, would have a less deleterious

effect on environmental behavior if high-impact behaviors were easier to perform. Insulating

one’s home or buying fuel-efficient vehicles could be assisted through structural and institutional

change, but probably not by low or even moderate-level character traits.l

6.0 Conclusion

The argument here has been that environmental behaviors primarily result from a

combination of situational factors and non-trait-like psychological processes. Because ethicists

cannot rely on virtues to produce proenvironmental behaviors, the only real way of salvaging

environmental virtue theory is to reject or at least minimize the requirement that environmental

ethics must provide protection and assistance to the environment. At the very least, given the

limitations discussed in the previous sections, it would seem that our expectations for

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environmental virtue theory must be extremely low. People are not behaviorally adequate.

Without significant structural and institutional changes, our most appropriate goals for

proenvironmental behavior must be those that are relatively easy to perform.

A conflict that arises as a result of the argument presented here, however, is one between

actions and reasons for action. The behavioral adequacy criterion requires that environmental

virtues result in a very specific outcome: sufficient assistance to the environment. However,

environmental ethicists would be hesitant to endorse any theory that provides benefits to the

environment absent good reasons for doing so. Virtue theory is often favored by

environmentalists precisely because it does matter what one’s reasons are for acting, even if

one’s actions are ineffective at producing positive results. In fact this is precisely the move

Adams wishes to make. One could argue that environmental virtues should still be promoted,

notwithstanding my criticisms, because valuing the environment and having reasons to value the

environment are good things. Even if the environment does not receive adequate protection and

assistance (assuming the environment is not being directly harmed), behaviorally ineffective

virtues might still be endorsable.

In reply to this line of thought, it would seem that endorsing behaviorally ineffective

virtues, for whatever reason, entails that environmental ethicists are abandoning the goal of

helping and protecting the environment. Rather than pursue this route, I would suggest that

environmental ethicists focus instead on the role of situations. The relevant contrast is not

between minimally effective behaviors performed virtuously on the one hand and maximally

effective behaviors performed viciously or unreflectively on the other. Environmental

psychology shows that people possess a wide range of values and beliefs about the environment.

The problem, according to situationists, is that human psychology does not function in the right

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sort of way for these values and beliefs to help the environment to a sufficient degree, regardless

of one’s virtues or degree of excellence. In order to achieve many of the goals of environmental

ethics—the most fundamental of which are certainly worth retaining—we must look elsewhere

than the virtues.

i John Doris, “Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics,” Nous 32 (1998): 504-530; Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002). ii Gilbert Harman, “Moral Philosophy Meets Social Psychology: Virtue Ethics and the Fundamental Attribution Error,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 119 (1999): 316–31; “Skepticism About Character Traits,” Journal of Ethics 13 (2009): 235–42. iii Environmental ethicists have contributed to theorizing about virtue with great zeal. Louke Van Wensveen, Dirty Virtues: The Emergence of Ecological Virtue Ethics (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2000), for instance, counts 189 virtues and 174 vices proposed in the environmental literature from 1970 to 2000. There is no shortage of candidates for environmental virtues, or the solutions they are meant to provide: there are patriotic environmental virtues, social justice environmental virtues, historical fidelity virtues, and many others, all of which are said to protect some aspect of the environment. This stands in contrast to recent skepticism about virtue ethics from Doris, Harman, and others. Philip Cafaro, “Patriotism as an Environmental Virtue,” Journal of Agricultural & Environmental Ethics 23 (2010): 185-206; Paul Haught, “Environmental Virtues and Environmental Justice,” Environmental Ethics 33 (2011): 357; Ronald Sandler, “Global Warming and Virtues of Ecological Restoration,” in Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change, ed. Allen Thompson and Jeremy Bendik-Keymer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), pp. 63-80. iv Most prominently Julia Driver, Uneasy Virtue (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Thomas Hurka, Virtue, Vice, and Value (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). v Ronald Sandler, “The External Goods Approach to Environmental Virtue Ethics,” Environmental Ethics 25 (2003): 279; “Towards an Adequate Environmental Virtue Ethic,” Environmental Values 13 (2004): 477-495; Character and Environment: A Virtue-Oriented Approach to Environmental Ethics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). vi Sandler, “Character and Environment,” pp. 107-108. Among environmental virtue theorists, Sandler is the most explicit about the need for practical efficacy, but environmental ethicists in general have also been preoccupied with constructing theories with practical significance that provide real benefits to the environment. See J. Baird Callicott, “The Search for an Environmental Ethic,” in Matters of Life and Death, ed. Tom Regan et al. (McGraw Hill, 1993), pp. 322-382; J. Baird Callicott, “The Pragmatic Power and Promise of Theoretical Environmental Ethics: Forging a New Discourse,” Environmental Values 11 (2002): 3-25; Geoffrey B. Frasz, “Environmental Virtue Ethics: A New Direction for Environmental Ethics,” Environmental Ethics 15 (1993): 259; Andrew Light and Eric Katz, ed., Environmental Pragmatism (London and New York: Routledge, 1996); Bryan G. Norton, “Why I Am Not a Nonanthropocentrist: Callicott and the Failure of Monistic Inherentism,” Environmental Ethics 17 (1995): 341. vii This is illustrated by discussions of habit formation among virtue theorists. For instance, Allen Thompson, “The Virtue of Responsibility for the Global Climate,” in Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change, ed. Allen Thompson and Jeremy Bendik-Keymer (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012), p. 218 says, “Environmentally good human beings recognize what is fine in and about the natural world and are habitually disposed to act well regarding these values, thus enabling the goodness of nature to have a substantive role in human flourishing.”

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viii For a good discussion of the role of motivation in environmental ethics, especially for an adequate environmental ethic, see Carol Booth, “A Motivational Turn for Environmental Ethics,” Ethics & the Environment 14 (2009): 53-78 and Ronald Sandler, “Environmental Ethics and the Need to Motivate Pro-environmental Behavior,” Philosophy in the Contemporary World 9 (2002): 101-105. ix As Allen Thompson, “Virtue of Responsibility,” p. 218 defines environmental virtues, “Environmental virtues…are excellences regarding various relations to the organisms and ecosystems of the terrestrial biosphere where our specifically human lives unfold.” x More ambitious, though contrasting, definitions of excellence can be found in Robert Adams, A Theory of Virtue: Excellence in Being for the Good (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 126) who characterizes excellent things as being intrinsically good, and Rosalind Hursthouse “Virtue Ethics and the Treatment of Animals,” in The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp and Raymond G. Frey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 126, who says, “something that is excellent is as good as it could reasonably be expected to be.” xi John O’Neill, Ecology, Policy, and Politics (London and New York: Routledge, 1993); John O’Neill, Allen Holland, and Andrew Light, Environmental Values (New York: Routledge, 2008). xii One point of contention among environmental virtue theorists that relates to human flourishing is the relationship between human-oriented virtues and environmental virtues. Is the virtue of compassion, expressed towards nonhumans, just an extension of compassion expressed towards one’s friends? If it is, does this make environmental virtues dependent on human virtues? These questions will not be addressed in any detail, though they do hold important behavioral implications for environmental virtues (see Katie McShane, Allen Thompson, and Ronald Sandler, “Virtue and Respect for Nature: Ronald Sandler's Character and Environment,” Ethics, Place & Environment 11 (2008): 213-235 for further discussion of the problem of how environmental goods relates to human flourishing). xiii E.g., Holmes Rolston, III, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World (Temple University Press, 1988). xiv Doris, Lack of Character, p. 19. xv Louke van Wensveen, “Ecosystem Sustainability as a Criterion for Genuine Virtue,” Environmental Ethics 23 (2001): 228. xvi Hursthouse, “Treatment of Animals,” p. 125. xvii Jason Kawall, “Reverence for Life as a Viable Environmental Virtue,” Environmental Ethics 25 (2003): 355. xviii Thomas E. Hill, “Ideals of Human Excellence and Preserving Natural Environments,” Environmental Ethics 5 (1983): 211-224; Bernard Shaw, “A Virtue Ethics Approach to Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic,” Environmental Ethics 19 (1997): 53-67; Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). xix p. 167 xx Sandler’s own view, which doesn’t seem to resolve the issues raised here, states, “Character traits are dispositions to take certain kinds of considerations to have normative or motivational force with respect to actions, emotions, and desires, under certain circumstances.” Character and Environment, p. 13. xxi The classic studies cited by situationists include John Darley and C. Daniel Batson, “From Jerusalem to Jericho: A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 27 (1973): 100–108; Alice Isen and Paula Levin, “Effect of Feeling Good on Helping: Cookies and Kindness,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 21 (1972): 384–388; Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority (New York: Harper and Row, 1974). xxii P. Wesley Schultz, Jessica M. Nolan, Robert B. Cialdini, Noah J. Goldstein, and Vladas Griskevicius, “The constructive, destructive, and reconstructive power of social norms,” Psychological Science 18 (2007): 429-434. xxiii They resembled the standard J or L. xxiv John Doris, “Heated Agreement: Lack of Character as Being for the Good,” Philosophical Studies 148 (2010): 135-146.

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xxv It should be noted that the empirical details of certain critiques, such as Nancy Snow, Virtue as Social Intelligence: An Empirically Grounded Theory (New York: Routledge Press, 2010) and Daniel Russell’s, Practical Intelligence and the Virtues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) use of Cognitive Affective Processing Systems (CAPS), are quite relevant here. However, I am ultimately skeptical that CAPS offers a solution to the behavioral adequacy problem for environmental virtue theory. My criticisms of environmental virtue theory arise out of the greater behavioral demands it places on moral agents, and there doesn’t appear to be anything about CAPS that vitiates this stronger behavioral component. Furthermore, Adams’ account is much more clearly tied to environmental virtue theory than is that of Snow or Russell, and it’s probably not worth delving into points of divergence that would only detract from the issues most pertinent to environmental virtues. xxvi As Doris, “Heated Agreement,” p. 140 notes. See also Julia Annas, Intelligent Virtue (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 173 and Kieran Setiya, Reasons Without Rationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 76. xxvii E.g., Hursthouse, “Treatment of Animals,” p. 126. xxviii Ibid., p. 132. xxix Ibid., p. 133. xxx Ibid. xxxi Similarly, as Christine Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 30 says, “for a virtue ethicist, a virtue is not simply a disposition to perform acts of a certain type (e.g. beneficent acts). The possession of virtue requires also the possession of fine inner states.” A point also made by Rachana Kamtekar, “Situationism and Virtue Ethics on the Content of Our Character,” Ethics 114 (2004): 458–491 and Snow, Virtue as Social Intelligence. xxxii Of course this is usually understood probabilistically (as indicated in the quote from Doris above), but this is still the general form of reasoning. xxxiii Among environmental ethicists, Sandler, “Adequate Environmental Virtue Ethic,” pp. 483-484 makes certain statements that seem to indicate that he ties dispositions strongly to behaviors. xxxiv A point also made by Christian Miller, “Social Psychology and Virtue Ethics,” The Journal of Ethics 7 (2003): 365–392; “Empathy, Social Psychology, and Global Helping Traits,” Philosophical Studies 142 (2009): 247-275. xxxv Sandler, Character and Environment, p. 90 similarly thinks that situational factors do not prevent someone from achieving excellence in character. xxxvi José A. Corraliza and Jaime Berenguer, “Environmental Values, Beliefs, and Actions,” Environment and Behavior 32 (2000): 832-848. xxxvii Specifically, they were asked to rate on a scale from 1 to 6 how much “My immediate physical environment facilitates/inhibits my carrying out the following actions.” xxxviii Lack of Character, p. 110. xxxix Jody M. Hines, Harold R. Hungerford, and Audrey N. Tomera, “Analysis and Synthesis of Research on Responsible Environmental Behavior: A Meta-analysis.” Journal of Environmental Education 18 (1987): 1-8; Anja Kollmuss and Julian Agyeman, “Mind the Gap: Why Do People Act Environmentally and What are the Barriers to Pro-environmental Behavior?” Environmental Education Research 8 (2002): 239-260; Sebastian Bamberg and Guido Möser, “Twenty Years after Hines, Hungerford, & Tomera: A New Meta-analysis of Psycho-social Determinants of Pro-environment Behaviour,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 27 (2007): 14-25; Richard Osbaldiston and John Paul Schott, “Environmental Sustainability and Behavioral Science: Meta-analysis of Proenvironmental Behavior Experiments,” Environment and Behavior 44 (2012): 257-299. xl The range of possible correlation is from -1 to +1, where 0 represents no relationship at all (i.e., no mutual predictability) between the variables. xli Though see David C. Funder, “Persons, behaviors and situations: An agenda for personality psychology in the postwar era,” Journal of Research in Personality 43 (2009): 120-126. Funder argues against this use of a predictability ceiling as evidence for situationism on the grounds that personality traits and situational

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factors interact to contribute to behavior, and thus a correlation of .30 is unsurprising (and in many cases will be greater than situational factors). While I agree with this point, I don’t think it affects my argument because I am arguing that 1) environmental virtue theory demands a relatively large correlation between traits and behaviors, and 2) I am presenting other, independently persuasive, evidence to suggest that proenvironmental behavior is primarily due to situational factors. xlii Sebastian Bamberg, “How Does Environmental Concern Influence Specific Environmentally Related Behaviors? A New Answer to an Old Question,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 23 (2003): 21-32. This refers to how much of an observed phenomenon can be accounted for or predicted by the proposed variable. Here, the variable of environmental concern is accounting for a very small portion (10%) of observed environmental behaviors. xliii Jacqueline Frick, Florian G. Kaiser, and Mark Wilson, “Environmental Knowledge and Conservation Behavior: Exploring Prevalence and Structure in a Representative Sample,” Personality and Individual Differences 37 (2004): 1597-1613. xliv Of course one of the most popular tenets of virtue theory is that true virtue is difficult to obtain. Perhaps, someone might object, the value-behavior gap is capturing only non-virtuous people. I do not have space to address this issue in sufficient detail, but I will briefly mention one experiment that goes some way towards criticizing this rarity feature. Verplanken and Holland (2002) found evidence for anti-environmental behavior even among those who scored in the top 25% for environmental values in a random sample of the population. Their experiment made use of environmental “priming” words (such as green, nature, and Earth) to influence people’s attitudes towards the environment. When people were subliminally exposed to those words they were more likely to purchase a television set that was safe for the environment. Without such primes, however, the default position was to choose televisions that were bad for the environment, even for those who, in a separate test, scored high on environmental values. Like many other situationist experiments, the primes used in this experiment were implicit and low in intensity, and highlight the sort of response situationists can offer in reply to this rarity feature. xlv Obedience to Authority. xlvi “From Jerusalem to Jericho.” xlvii Robert B. Cialdini, “Crafting Normative Messages to Protect the Environment,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 12 (2003): 105-109; Anders Biel and John Thøgersen, “Activation of Social Norms in Social Dilemmas: A Review of the Evidence and Reflections on the Implications for Environmental Behaviour,” Journal of Economic Psychology 28 (2007): 93-112. xlviii J. Stanley Black, Paul C. Stern, and Julie T. Elworth, “Personal and Contextual Influences on Househould Energy Adaptations,” Journal of Applied Psychology 70 (1985): 3-21; Doug McKenzie-Mohr, Lisa Sara Nemiroff, Laurie Beers, and Serge Desmarais, “Determinants of Responsible Environmental Behavior,” Journal of Social Issues 51 (1995): 139-156; Paul C. Stern, Linda Kalof, Thomas Dietz, and Gregory A. Guagnano, “Values, Beliefs, and Proenvironmental Action: Attitude Formation Toward Emergent Attitude Objects,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 25 (1995): 1611-1636. xlix Elke Weber, “Experience-based and Description Based Perceptions of Long-term Risk: Why Global Warming Does Not Scare Us (Yet),” Climatic Change 77 (2006): 103-120. l I am thus at least implicitly taking issue with Thomas Hill’s, “Ideals of Human Excellence,” famous essay, in which he suggests that ethicists should place less emphasis on traditional concerns about the environment (such as the consequences of our actions towards the environment or its intrinsic value) and instead ask what kind of person would treat the nonhuman world in ways we would normally disapprove of. Situationists have tended to deny that asking this latter question will be of much assistance in ethical matters.