Devlin O'Keefe

Presentation Title

Social Visibility and the Performance of Environmental Actions 

Abstract

How do humans show others who they are without speaking to each other? Every day we take actions that signal to others some aspect of our identities. Identity signaling allows us to curate an image of our self through our actions. Is this process influenced by our social visibility to others–whether we are observed or potentially visible? Prior work has shown that individuals may be more likely to perform actions that are congruent with their identity when they perceive them as visible to others. Across two studies, I test this relationship using individuals’ environmentalist identity and their performance of pro-environmental behaviors. In Study 1, I employ a large, cross-sectional dataset (N = 1000), and in Study 2 (N = 300) I experimentally manipulate the salience of social visibility to provide causal evidence for the effect of social visibility on pro-environmental behavior. This work provides insights into a unique lever for psychological interventions: the observation of others, both real and imagined.