Why We're Better With Some Threats Than Others (An Earth Month Re-Run)

Summary

The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos
Episode: Why We're Better With Some Threats Than Others (An Earth Month Re-Run)
Release Date: March 17, 2025

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Introduction

In this Earth Month re-run episode of The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos, Dr. Santos delves into the perplexing psychological barriers that hinder effective responses to global threats, particularly climate change. Joined by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, the discussion unpacks why humanity often fails to address long-term, non-immediate threats despite having the cognitive capacity to recognize and act upon them.

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Understanding Threat Perception

Dr. Laurie Santos opens the conversation by highlighting the persistent challenges posed by climate change—ranging from global heating and forest fires to hurricanes and melting glaciers. She poses a critical question: “Why do so many of us seem to be ignoring a threat big enough to wipe out our entire planet?” (03:10). This question sets the stage for exploring the evolutionary and psychological underpinnings that dictate our responses to various threats.

Dan Gilbert emphasizes the paradox of significant scientific warnings about climate change being met with insufficient action. He remarks, “You'd think that if we knew the real threat, which a lot of people say that they do, we'd be freaked out and we'd be acting, but we're kind of not.” (05:01). This sentiment underscores the disconnect between awareness and actual behavioral change.

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Evolutionary Biases and Threat Response

Jamie Dimon explains that human brains evolved to respond to specific types of threats, mainly those that were immediate and agentive—such as a predator attack. He states, “Climate change has none of the features that trigger this threat response system in the human brain.” (06:04). This evolutionary mismatch means that while our brains are excellent at detecting and responding to sudden dangers, they falter when dealing with gradual, non-agentive threats like climate change.

Key Features of Effective Threats:

1. Agentive Nature: Threats from identifiable sources (e.g., a saber-toothed tiger) elicit strong protective responses (06:04).
2. Intentional Harm: Intent behind a threat amplifies our emotional response. For instance, we react more intensely to deliberate attacks than accidental ones (07:21).
3. Moral Violations: Moral threats, such as insults or injustices, provoke significant emotional and behavioral reactions (09:01).
4. Immediate Impact: Instantaneous changes or threats prompt quick action, unlike slow, creeping dangers that go under the radar (12:14).

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The Role of Intent and Moral Outrage

Jamie Dimon contrasts the public's reaction to deliberate attacks with indifference toward unintentional harms. He notes, “Nobody's actually trying to make the climate warmer. Nobody's trying to melt the polar ice caps.” (07:21). This lack of intentionality diminishes the urgency with which climate change is perceived.

Furthermore, Dan Gilbert and Jamie Dimon discuss how moral outrage—an intense emotional response to perceived injustices—drives significant actions. However, since climate change doesn't present a clear moral violator, it fails to invoke the same level of public outrage. Dimon observes, “You can't point to any particular agent who is doing this in order to harm us or insult us.” (11:51), highlighting the absence of a tangible antagonist in the climate crisis narrative.

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Adaptation and Affective Forecasting

Jamie Dimon introduces the concept of adaptation, explaining that humans are exceptional at habituating to gradual changes. He uses the analogy of a frog in slowly heated water, which never jumps out, to illustrate how gradual environmental degradation becomes normalized (13:14). This ability to adapt, while beneficial in many contexts, poses a significant obstacle in addressing slow-moving threats like climate change.

Affective forecasting, the process by which individuals predict their future emotional states, is another critical factor. Jamie Dimon explains, “You're failing to imagine a number of things. You're failing to imagine how good you're going to feel every time you get in [an EV].” (34:07). People often misjudge the emotional outcomes of sustainable actions, leading to reluctance in adopting behaviors that could mitigate climate change.

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Harnessing Psychological Insights for Climate Action

Despite the psychological barriers, Dr. Santos and her guests explore strategies to overcome these innate biases:

1. Social Norms and Peer Influence:

   • Jamie Dimon cites studies showing that informing individuals that most guests reuse towels in hotels significantly increases towel reuse rates (22:42). This leverages the human desire to conform to social norms.
   • Similarly, publicizing energy usage compared to neighbors' can motivate individuals to reduce consumption out of a desire to match or exceed societal standards.

2. Positive Framing and Economic Incentives:

   • Emphasizing the economic benefits of sustainable practices, such as job creation in the renewable energy sector, can encourage positive engagement. Dimon remarks, “We're doing these things because it's going to create jobs, it's going to create a vibrant new economy.” (32:00).

3. Institutional Support and Policy Change:

   • While individual actions are essential, systemic changes driven by government policies can catalyze widespread behavioral shifts. Jamie Dimon advocates for policy interventions that make sustainable choices easier and more accessible, akin to how retirement savings have been institutionalized (36:32).

4. Community and Collective Action:

   • Highlighting collective efforts, such as neighborhood initiatives to install solar panels, can create a ripple effect, making sustainable practices seem more attainable and normalized (18:29).

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Conclusion and Future Directions

Jamie Dimon acknowledges the progress made in recognizing and accepting climate change as a critical issue. He emphasizes the importance of collective and systemic action over isolated individual efforts: “If you really want to make change, you make change to the system in which people function.” (36:32). However, he remains optimistic, noting that consensus on the reality of climate change has grown, particularly within political spheres.

Dr. Laurie Santos concludes by encouraging listeners to consider both small personal actions and advocate for broader policy changes. She reinforces the idea that every step, no matter how minor, contributes to the larger goal of mitigating climate change and enhancing collective well-being.

Upcoming episodes promise to continue exploring the intricate connections between psychology and happiness, with Dr. Santos teasing insights from the World Happiness Report and practical tips for enhancing personal and communal happiness.

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Notable Quotes

• Dr. Laurie Santos: “Why do so many of us seem to be ignoring a threat big enough to wipe out our entire planet?” (03:10)

• Jamie Dimon: “Climate change has none of the features that trigger this threat response system in the human brain.” (06:04)

• Dan Gilbert: “You'd think that if we knew the real threat, which a lot of people say that they do, we'd be freaked out and we'd be acting, but we're kind of not.” (05:01)

• Jamie Dimon: “We're doing these things because it's going to create jobs, it's going to create a vibrant new economy.” (32:00)

• Jamie Dimon: “If you really want to make change, you make change to the system in which people function.” (36:32)

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Key Takeaways

• Evolutionary Mismatch: Human brains are wired to respond to immediate, agentive threats, leading to inadequate responses to gradual, non-agentive dangers like climate change.

• Moral Outrage: The absence of a clear moral violator in climate change diminishes the emotional impetus to act.

• Adaptation and Normalization: Gradual environmental changes become normalized, reducing the perceived urgency.

• Affective Forecasting Errors: Misjudging the emotional outcomes of sustainable actions hinders behavioral change.

• Leveraging Social Norms and Positive Framing: Utilizing peer influence and economic incentives can effectively promote sustainable behaviors.

• Systemic Change as a Catalyst: Policy interventions and institutional support are crucial for large-scale climate action.

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Timestamp Reference
Anchors in the transcript are referenced by minutes and seconds (MM:SS) to provide context to quotes and discussions.

Transcript

[Ben Walter]

The Unshakeables podcast is kicking off season two with an episode you won't want to miss. Join host Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business, as he welcomes a very special Guest, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon. Hear about the challenges facing small businesses and some of the oh moments Jamie has overcome. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Chase Mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates May apply. Chase JPMorgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC Copyright 2025 JP Morgan Chase & Co.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

The Happiness Lab is proudly sponsored by Amica Insurance. As Amica says, empathy is our best policy. That's why they'll go above and beyond to tailor your insurance coverage to best fit your needs. Whether you're on the road, at home or traveling along life's journey, their friendly and knowledgeable representatives will work with you to ensure you have the right coverage in place. Amika will provide you with peace of mind. Go to amika.com and get a quote Today, as a busy professor and podcast host, I spend more time than I'd like to admit eating on the run. I want to make sure I stay healthy and get enough protein. But I don't always have time to prep a healthy meal, and that's when I turn to Premier Protein. With tasty flavors like chocolate, cafe latte and cookie dough, Premier Protein makes it tasty and easy to meet your health goals. Both their ready to drink protein shakes and their protein powders taste great, which means I get a creamy, quick meal that fits perfectly into my busy schedule. Visit premierprotein.com and go to where to Buy to find a retailer near you or to find where to buy online. Premier Protein Sweeten the Journey Pushkin.

[Dan Gilbert]

He's giving us a thumbs up.

[Jamie Dimon]

Okay, thumbs up.

[Dan Gilbert]

So as usual, we just have you start by introducing yourself.

[Jamie Dimon]

Hi, I'm Dan Gilbert.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Dan Gilbert is a huge figure in happiness science. He's one of the field's most respected psychologists and an absolute whiz at explaining some of the most puzzling aspects of human nature.

[Dan Gilbert]

And that is going to be a.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Big help because the question I have for him is as confounding as it is serious. With Earth Month coming up in April, I wanted to reshare this episode with Dan that we originally released last year. For decades, we've been dealing with a host of disasters related to global heating, raging forest fires, devastating hurricanes, and retreating glaciers. Hearing about these things makes us feel pretty terrible. We feel anxious about our future and that of our children. We get anxious with ourselves and others for letting things get this bad. And we feel overwhelmed and pretty helpless in the face of such a big challenge. I wanted Dan to help me answer a vexing psychological question. We've been talking about the catastrophic danger of global warming for several decades, but people are still debating whether it's a real crisis and how urgently we need to act to fix it. Which is kind of weird because it seems like humans should be pretty good at dealing with life threatening situations. I mean, we've had millions of years of evolution. Our brains should be amazing threat detectors. They should be good at noting when.

[Dan Gilbert]

In danger and taking action.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

Why then do so many of us seem to be ignoring a threat big enough to wipe out our entire planet? The action comes from the fact that our brains are built to deal only with certain kinds of threats. If a saber toothed tiger jumps out at you from a bush, you'd address that threat as best as you could right away. But if I tell you you should probably change your diet or floss your teeth to reduce the risk of health problems developing decades from now, you might dither. It's why we're bad at putting money into our 401ks, and why we sometimes don't put in the work to make our happiness practices part of our daily lives. We're great at addressing the urgent problems, but we're not so hot when it comes to tackling other important ones. And when those important things do become urgent and messy, we wind up kicking ourselves for not acting sooner. And that's why I was so excited to talk with Harvard professor Dan Gilbert. He's been thinking about this mind bias for decades. He wondered why governments seem so bad at coordinating a response to climate change, even though they're really good at urgent action following events like terrorist attacks.

[Jamie Dimon]

You know, everybody in America had a reaction to 9 11, and all of us had the reaction, this is terrible, and thousands of people have died. But because I'm a psychologist, I also had another reaction, which is why are we not equally concerned about all things that have killed even more people in our country, ranging from climate change to the flu? Many more people have died. So why are we so concerned about one thing and willing to sacrifice everything from resources to personal liberty to fight it? But these other threats that are even greater in magnitude, arguably we're willing to do nothing about that seemed to me a curious question that was ripe for a psychological answer.

[Dan Gilbert]

And you really applied that question directly to climate change, too. You'd think that if we knew the real threat, which a lot of People say that they do, we'd be freaked out and we'd be acting, but we're kind of not. And so, talk to me a little bit, why evolutionarily this might be the case?

[Jamie Dimon]

Well, you know, several hundred years ago, two very smart guys named Pascal and Fermat told us how we ought to think about threats. We ought to think about their likelihood and we ought to think about their magnitude. And those two things tell us whether a threat really warrants our attention. If it's really likely to happen, and it's going to be a very, very bad outcome if it does, take action. If not, then don't. That's all logical, but it's not very psychological because human beings were not evolved to compute expected utility, if you will. Rather, we were evolved to respond to a small set of threats that were really big problems for our ancestors living in the African savanna. And unfortunately, climate change has none of the features that, that trigger this threat response system in the human brain.

[Dan Gilbert]

And so let's talk about some of those four features. The first one that you've talked about is that threats have to be kind of agentive, they have to involve individuals. Why do we really care about threats that come from people?

[Jamie Dimon]

Well, we care about everything that comes from people, and for good reason. People are the most significant source of rewards and punishments for an animal like us. We're the most social animal on planet Earth. So it's no wonder, and it's for good reason that we care a lot about what other people do, what other people think, and what other people say. With that said, climate change is not an attack by a mean group of people who are running at us with sticks. And that's what we're evolved to respond to. I mean, look what happened when the Twin Towers came down. We went and invaded a country because they had murdered 3,000 people. Those 3,000 people had died from the flu. And by the way, it's 10 times that who die from the flu every year. We just kind of hum along and don't worry too much about it. So that's the tragedy of climate change, is that it doesn't have a face. It seems like a non agentic threat.

[Dan Gilbert]

It also seems to not have an intent. You made this quip in one of your articles that if climate change was trying to kill us, then we'd take it very seriously. You know, talk about the power of intent and why that matters for our psychology.

[Jamie Dimon]

Well, we all know that if somebody, you know, pushes you in the street and goes, oh, excuse me, I tripped you're not alarmed at all. But if they say, hey, take that, suddenly you rise up with full force. You call the police, you hit them back, you start yelling. So whether people intend to harm us or not is almost more important than the harm they inflict. We'll forgive almost anything that's an accident, and we will prosecute almost anything that isn't. Climate change isn't. Nobody's actually trying to make the climate warmer. Nobody's trying to melt the polar ice caps. People are doing it as a result of their activity, but it's pretty incidental to the activities that they're performing. You know, in a way that's too. We can't get too excited about it because there's nobody who's meaning ill behind it.

[Dan Gilbert]

And I love when our psychology gets really tripped up by this. I remember one study where you had neuroscientists putting people in a scanner and these people were getting. The subjects were getting shocked, and the shocks varied, whether they were just kind of random accidental shocks that were happening, or there was somebody sitting behind the thing who intended to shock you. And if you look at pain regions in the brain, we actually feel more pain when we're getting shocks that are intended when somebody's trying to give them to us. And I think that's. So when we think about climate change, because the fact that nobody's trying to do it makes it just kind of like water off a duck's back when we think about it psychologically.

[Jamie Dimon]

Yeah, it's a little less shocking, isn't it?

[Dan Gilbert]

Exactly. And so the next kind of thing you've talked about, the fact that our brains tend to respond a lot to threats that are immoral. And this one's kind of interesting because in some ways you could think that the destruction of a planet is actually causing harm, but moral harms tend to work a little bit differently. Talk a little bit about how moral harms work.

[Jamie Dimon]

This is very intertwined with the first thing we talked about with intentionality and agents, because moral harms are harms from agents, but they are by moral harms. I guess I'm talking about things that are more like insults than injuries. And we are evolved to care a lot about insults because insults to our honor, insults to our face, are in some sense reducing our. Or threats to reduce our place in a social hierarchy. And so we're very, very concerned with our reputations. What would people think of us? You know, I could probably steal your pencil or, you know, bump into your car and you wouldn't get too upset. About it. But if I called your mother a dirty name, you would rise up viciously and attack me. Why? There's really no harm done, is there? Well, the answer is yes, it's a moral harm. It violates your sense of what's fair and just and right. So we respond to moral harms with great power. And climate change isn't a moral harm, is it? I mean, it's going to ruin our air and our water, and it's going to make the world hot, but it's not insulting us, not attacking our religion.

[Dan Gilbert]

I mean, but it's incredible, right, that we're not getting freaked out about burning so much coal, but we are getting freaked out about, say, burning a single flag. When somebody does that. Now, all of a sudden, our moral emotions are kind of going nutso.

[Jamie Dimon]

Yeah, they are. And it's easy to understand why we care so much about these things. And the question is whether we can subjugate this natural response and, you know, get on board with those two French guys, Pascal and Fermat, and say, you know what? Flag burning it isn't very nice. We don't much like it, but maybe we could worry about that tomorrow after we've saved the planet.

[Dan Gilbert]

Your moral point is really important because it suggests that climate change can make us scared, but it doesn't make us outraged. And it seems like outrage is a sort of special kind of emotion when it comes to causing us to take action.

[Jamie Dimon]

It really is, isn't it? I mean, you don't have to spend too much time online to realize that it is the fundamental driver of most people's online behavior. On platforms like X, formerly known as Twitter and others, it's about moral outrage. Now, we occasionally feel moral outrage about environmental disasters. If Exxon runs their tanker into an iceberg and thousands of gallons spill and penguins are dying, we all rise up and say, how can you do this? You have to clean it up. Right? It's not like the domain of the environment is completely insulated from the moral domain. It's just that when we hear there are glaciers melting and the seas are rising and it's just getting warmer, we can't point to any particular agent who is doing this in order to harm us or insult us. And so it just doesn't get our blood pressure up in the same way that calling your mother a bad name does.

[Dan Gilbert]

And your Eglon example is great, because I think it gets to the third feature that I think that gets our minds going, which is things that happen instantaneously. You know, the Exxon disaster you described is oil pouring out right now. It's happening immediately. And these immediate threats seem to be ones that also really kind of get us going. You've described the mind as a sort of get up, out of the way mishin, like talk a little bit about what you mean by that.

[Jamie Dimon]

We're very good at getting out of the way, aren't we? If I throw something at you, you will duck before you even know it's coming. Your brain responds so quickly to threats that appear immediately and instantly in your environment. Most environmental threats are not like that. I mean, occasionally they are. There's an oil spill. One day the water was clean, the next day it's dirty. But by and large, the temperature on Earth is not going to increase by 20 degrees tomorrow. It's going to increase by 0.0000001 and then the same amount the next day. We're all familiar with the frog that never jumps out of the water because the water is being heated from room temperature to boiling very slowly. That's not a bad parable for the place we are right now with regard to the environment. These changes are going to be devastating, but not tomorrow and not instantly. Things will change at the speed at which we can adapt to them. And we are remarkable adapters.

[Dan Gilbert]

And so these instant changes are ones that we notice quickly. But it is the case that we have minds that can pay a little bit of attention to the future. But a lot of your work has shown how bad we are at doing that. Like it's this kind of cool thing that our species can do, but it's still a capacity that's a little bit in beta version.

[Jamie Dimon]

This is a remarkable. Evolutionarily speaking, it's a remarkably new capacity. We shouldn't be surprised that its reach is limited. I mean, we really should be surprised that we haven't at all. Because as far as we know, no other animal does at least nothing like our ability to look into the far future and reason about it. But with that said, every day we see people failing to use this capacity, at least as logic would have us. People don't save enough for retirement. People don't floss when they know that little act would save them a lot of dental pain down the road. People eat badly and say, I'll diet tomorrow. Why? Well, because it's kind of hard to take actions that are difficult today in the service of someone you're going to be in the far future. Climate change. I could have just been describing it, so I should go spend a lot of money changing all my light bulbs, because maybe someday that will help someone who isn't me. That's pretty hard for most people to do.

[Dan Gilbert]

Another thing that's hard for people to do is to deal with these threats when they're not instantaneous, when they're not happening really quickly, as you mentioned. And this seems to be kind of related to a different happiness bias that we've talked a lot on this podcast, right, that we kind of get used to stuff over time. Because these changes are happening so slowly. It's not the kind of thing where the temperature changes so quickly, and I tend to notice it. It tends to kind of go under the radar. And this is part and parcel of a big, bigger kind of problem for our happiness. Right. This idea of adaptation. Tell me what adaptation is and why it's so problematic.

[Jamie Dimon]

Well, people do get used to things, of course, but they get used to them much better than they themselves predict. We are world champion habituators and adapters, and that's usually really good. That means when bad things happen in our lives, you know, we lose the use of a limb or a relationship, status changes from married to divorced, or any of the normal slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that befall people every day. We get on board with the new program and we basically do just fine. But this remarkable ability to adapt can also be our enemy because it makes us not react to bad things that happen slowly enough for us to get used to them. My grandchildren don't think there's anything odd about a river or a stream that has a sign that says don't swim. When I was a kid, that would have been a science fiction story. A stream or a river in which you can't swim. What happened to the water? Well, what happened to the water in America is it got more polluted a little bit every day. I got used to it. Whole generations are now being born who've never seen anything else. If tomorrow we were all told we could never go outside our homes again, what would we do? I mean, we would riot. We would elect a new government. We would protest in every possible way. But I assure you that if the number of days you have to stay INDOORS increases from 0 to 1 next year to 2 the following year, in 365 years, people will not think it's strange that nobody ever can go outdoors.

[Dan Gilbert]

I think we even show this adaptation for things that happen even a little bit more quickly. I remember this year was the first year that I started noticing the skies were looking hazy because on the east coast Where I live, there's so many fires happening in Canada. I think the first day I remember my husband and I going outside and be like, wow, it's so hazy. But day three, day four, all of a sudden, I'm like, yeah, it's just hazy again. I've sort of stopped remarking about it. So even some of these changes that feel like they're happening a little bit faster are ones that we don't seem to notice that much.

[Jamie Dimon]

We don't seem to notice, and we, more importantly, we don't object. And one reason we don't object, of course, is because it's not just us. If you were the only person who couldn't go outside, you'd be forming an action group. You'd be writing to your senators, but it's everybody else, too, and none of them are going out. And you know, what we think is normal is what everybody is doing. That's the definition of normal for most people. So as long as most people can't drink the water, can't easily breathe the air, as long as most people can't live south of Missouri anymore. Now, the other problem, of course, is even if people thought, darn, this is really bad, I need to do something, most people don't know what they could do. They understand that climate change is far too big a threat for anything they do today. To make a bit of difference, it requires mass action.

[Dan Gilbert]

There's also lots of evidence that our actions, even though we often think of them as happening in isolation, they don't. So if I put solar panels up, that has an interesting effect on your psychology, if you live next door to me. So talk about how that effect might actually allow for collective action out of individual action.

[Jamie Dimon]

Well, you're making a great point, which is that your action has direct effects on problems. So you put solar panels on your house, and you have actually reduced the electrical usage in your city by an extremely small amount. But you've also created an example. As we mentioned earlier, human beings define normal by what they see done around them. And once solar panels are going up in the neighborhood, it suddenly seems like a thing a reasonable person could do. So there are cascading effects. There are indirect effects of doing the right thing.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

One of the things I love about human psychology is just how complicated it is. We have so many stubborn biases that prevent us from doing stuff that will directly benefit us and our planet. But there are also other biases that we can harness for good, like Dan's example of us wanting to emulate the environmental habits of our neighbors. So what other psychological hacks might help us deal more effectively with climate change? Dan will tell us more after the break.

[Ben Walter]

The Unshakables podcast is back for Season two, and it's kicking off with an episode you absolutely won't want to miss. Host of the show and CEO of Chase for Business, Ben Walter welcomes a very special guest, Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Morgan Chase, Jamie Dimon. One of the world's most respected financial thought leaders, Jamie will connect the dots between the current challenges and opportunities facing small business owners and the broader financial landscape. And of course, it wouldn't be an episode of the Unshakables if Jamie didn't share some of the, oh, moments that he overcame to forge ahead in his own career. You can find this must hear episode and the rest of the upcoming season of the Unshakables wherever you get your podcasts. Learn [e-mail] podcast chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply JP Morgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC Copyright 2025 JP Morgan Chase & Co. As.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

A busy professor and podcast host, I spend more time than I'd like to admit eating on the run. I want to make sure I stay healthy and get enough protein, but I don't always have time to prep a healthy meal, and that's when I turn to Premier Protein. With tasty flavors like chocolate, cafe latte and cookie dough, Premier Protein makes it tasty and easy to meet your health goals. Both their ready to drink protein shakes and their protein powders taste great, which means I get a creamy, quick meal that fits perfectly into my busy schedule. Visit premierprotein.com and go to where to Buy to find a retailer near you or to find where to Buy online. Premier Protein Sweeten the Journey with Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford at the Center Stanford Medicine Children's Health is ranked as one of the top children's hospitals in the nation by U.S. news & World Report. As one of the few healthcare systems in the country dedicated exclusively to pediatric and obstetric care, they have an unwavering commitment to caring for babies, kids and expectant mothers. Their exceptional care teams have developed treatments that have led to successful outcomes for many children with complex cases that could not be resolved elsewhere. Learn more at stanfordchildrens.org Tragically, climate change.

[Dan Gilbert]

Isn'T the kind of threat humans are good at dealing with.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

We swing into action if we're put in danger by something suddenly or by some cruel person out to harm us, and Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert Says we're also more likely to take action if we think our individual behaviors will have a real effect on the problem. Unfortunately, we don't always feel like that's.

[Dan Gilbert]

The case with an issue as huge as global heating.

[Jamie Dimon]

Do I pay for offsetting the carbon on my next airplane ride? Okay, I guess that would be good. But surely if I do that or don't, I can't imagine that the world will feel the effects of my tiny little action.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

But don't despair, because our minds biases can be harnessed to help solve environmental problems in the blink of an eye, provided those problems are framed in the right way.

[Jamie Dimon]

There was a wonderful study by Bob Cialdini and his group. They just tried to find out if they could put signs in hotel rooms that would make the person who checked into that room a little more likely to reuse their bath towels. Evidently, having somebody wash your towel every day just because they will and it's free, is pretty bad for the environment. So if you can get hotel guests to use their towels for a couple of days, as they probably do at home, it's a great thing for the environment. Well, Cialdini and his team tried a number of things. You can threaten people, you can cajole people, you can reward people. But the single most effective sign that they put in the room was the one that simply said, most of the guests who stay in this room reuse their towels. Human beings want to be like most people. If everyone's doing it, it's probably the right thing, so I should do it, too. And they played on this little piece of psychology to great effect. You see the same thing most of us now when we get an electric bill, it includes some little graph that shows us how much electricity we're using compared to our neighbors. Nobody did this 15 years ago, but the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, I believe, was the first to try this. And suddenly people were embarrassed. I'm using way too much electricity. Why? Because look how little other people are using. I want to be like them. So this is a lever we can push for the good of the world, whether it comes to climate change or anything else. When I lived in Texas in the 1980s, there was a massive litter problem. And studies showed that a lot of highway litter was being thrown out of the windows of pickup trucks by men between the ages of 18 and 32. And somebody somewhere deep in the bowels of government, somebody who deserves a Nobel Prize, in my opinion, had the idea of coming up with a slogan that would appeal to this particular demographic. And it was the now famous Don't Mess with Texas. 72% reduction in litter due to 4 really well placed words. Now, in some sense, the person who came up with those four words was appealing to a bias. They were appealing to the fact that the literers were young men with great pride in their state who didn't want to be messed with in any way. There was kind of a macho element, and this message was crafted so that it appealed to these people. I just think it's a masterful example of how you can do very, very small things to make a very big difference.

[Dan Gilbert]

And those small things were powerful in part because they played on this idea of our moral violations. They caused people to see litter as outrageous rather than just kind of annoying or dirty. It kind of played into our moral emot.

[Jamie Dimon]

They did indeed. So throwing something out the window of a pickup truck is not only a moral violation, but it's a moral violation by somebody. Somebody. Somebody is messing with Texas. Well, we can't let that happen, can we?

[Dan Gilbert]

And this seems to be a strategy that climate change activists are using a little bit more often. I'm not sure what's happening at Harvard, but a lot of our climate activists on campus are calling out the president, saying, because Yale is investing in fossil fuels, you, President Peter Salovey, are causing this problem. And so talk about how this is activating our psychology in a way that might get people to sort of respond more than the normal techniques.

[Jamie Dimon]

Well, I do think that if you can find a face for the problem, you have some chance of getting people more riled up about it, but I'm not sure it's worked so far. I'm not sure naming the CEO of Exxon makes people any more angry at Exxon than it just being a company they feel angry about. I understand the psychology behind the attempt. Let's blame somebody. We can get everybody upset at this particular guy, then they'll take action. Maybe there are data out there showing they have, but it sure doesn't look like it to me. It just sounds like they're chanting a name and they're holding somebody liable for the problems. My guess is most of the public thinks this person isn't the evil actor who, if only we could assassinate them, everything would go back to normal.

[Ben Walter]

The Unshakeables podcast is back for season two, and it's kicking off with an episode you absolutely won't want to miss. Host of the show and CEO of Chase for Business, Ben Walter welcomes a very special guest. Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, one of the world's most respected financial thought leaders, Jamie will connect the dots between the current challenges and opportunities facing small small business owners and the broader financial landscape. And of course, it wouldn't be an episode of the Unshakables if Jamie didn't share some of the, oh, moments that he overcame to forge ahead in his own career. You can find this must hear episode and the rest of the upcoming season of the Unshakables wherever you get your podcasts. Learn [e-mail] podcast chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Messages Data rates may apply JP Morgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC Copyright 2025 JP Morgan Chase & Co.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

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[Dan Gilbert]

Is starting to recognize that climate change is a little bit more immediate. Which, for better or for worse, since you actually started talking about this, we have started recognizing just because the problem has felt more immediate, there's more fires, there's more terrible storms, and so on. So you first started talking about this this almost 20 years ago? I don't know. What does that make you feel like with these bi. We've known about these biases for a while, but we haven't taken action.

[Jamie Dimon]

Well, yeah, 20 years ago I was telling people, you know, one of the Reasons we're not doing anything is we don't see the effects of climate change yet. Well, they're here, they've arrived. And I do think there's been an uptick in response to it, because suddenly people are going. The reason it's too hot for me to go outside, the reason planes can't land in Phoenix today, the reason we're running of water, the reason the hurricanes have gotten worse is climate change. So finally the damage is arriving and we are paying more attention. The problem is this was the kind of threat you needed to respond to before it arrived. Once it has arrived, it's too late. We need a much bigger response to get much less of an outcome today than we did 20 years ago. But it is upon us. And I think most people see it and recognize it and now accept it. Remember, 20 years ago, we had an entire wing in our democracy saying, there is no such thing as climate change. It isn't getting warmer. And if it is, it's only an act of God. It has nothing to do with our use of resources. So 20 years we've been fighting against people who didn't even want to acknowledge it was happening, much less ask the question about what should we do about it. I think those people are finally in a minority, even in the Republican Party. Most Republicans are saying, yes, the climate is changing. Yes, we probably should do something about it. And the discussion is only about what does something mean.

[Dan Gilbert]

And I think this figuring out what something means actually gets back to another part of your work that I think is so relevant for the climate discussion, which is this idea that we have these brains that can imagine different futures. A lot of times when we imagine the climate future, we imagine the doom and gloom version of it, right? You know, the seas are going to rise and lower Manhattan is going to be flooded, and all these terrible things are going to happen. But talk about the possibility of imagining positive futures and what that might do to kind of help our actions on climate change.

[Jamie Dimon]

Well, human beings respond to carrots and they respond to sticks. And we've known for a very long time that the response to sticks is more immediate and stronger. But it's not very effective if people don't know what to do to avoid getting hit with the stick. There's very old work in social psychology by a Yale professor, in fact, named Irv Janis, who showed that fear messages can be effective if they're accompanied by a clear indicator of what you do to avoid being afraid. But if you just tell people it's all bad and it's getting worse, and you can't tell them exactly what they should do to make it better. They basically tune out. So carrots are very effective in this regard, and we do need carrots, and we have them, but they're not carrots. Like, let's look on the bright side of climate change. You'll be able to sail in Vermont. Won't that be wonderful? No, no. The messages, I think, are actually economic, and they're messages that are now coming through loud and clear that we're not doing these things necessarily to solve a problem. We're doing it because it's going to create jobs, it's going to create a vibrant new economy. Look at what we're going to be able to do with electric cars. I think that's actually a very effective way to get people to do the right thing by showing them how attractive the opportunities are in this new world we're trying to create, rather than just scaring them about how bad it is if they don't do it.

[Dan Gilbert]

When we think about the kinds of actions we need to take to fix climate change, I think this is another spot where our biases mess us up. Because when I try to simulate how I'll feel, you know, making the sorts of sacrifices that might be required to kind of fix climate, I can sometimes think that those things are going to hurt me much more than they could. Right. I simulate. I don't have an EV right now. Very embarrassing, you know, from the sort of social comparison thing. But when I simulate getting an ev, I'm like, oh, that's going to be a pain to figure out where I'm going to plug it in, or kind of mapping out my drive so I can find a charger. But in practice, when I actually do that, it might not be as bad as we think. This gets back to another bias that I know you've studied in detail, this bias of affective forecasting. You know, explain what affective forecasting is and why changing our behavior to be a little bit more sustainable might not be as bad as we think.

[Jamie Dimon]

Well, affective forecasting is just a mouthful of words. That means looking into the future and figuring out what'll make you happy, if it'll make you happy, how long that happiness will last. It's just a prediction about what will be good and what will be bad for you. And you're right that people make errors when they try to do that kind of work. And you're imagining that getting an EV will be very difficult at plugging in and will be Hard. And you're probably right about some of those things. But you're also failing to imagine a number of things. You're failing to imagine how good you're going to feel every time you get in it. Drive down the street and show all those other drivers that you mean business when it comes to climate change. On and on and on. You'll imagine some of the things about this, but you'll fail to imagine others. So your imagination turns out not to be a great guide as to how good you will feel. Well, what should you do instead if your imagination is going to not serve you well? Well, one easy way to find out how you'll feel if you buy an EV is to see how people who have already done it do feel. And what you'll find is that Tesla owners are among the most satisfied humans on Earth. They love their cars and they love having bought them. Is there any reason you don't think you would join their ranks?

[Dan Gilbert]

It's funny, I just had a conversation at a dinner party yesterday with an EV owner who is evangelical about their ev. And they're like, oh, my gosh, it's so easy and it's so fun and it's so much faster than you think. And it really was one of these cases of getting testimony. That person's testimony as an owner of an EV is so much better than my simulation is ever going to be about what it's like.

[Jamie Dimon]

There's no doubt it's better in helping you make an accurate forecast, but we also know people don't trust it as much. People place undue stock in their own imaginations and they don't properly value the experiences of others because they say, yeah, but that's Fred. I'm not Fred. Fred is different than I am. Actually, in most ways, Fred isn't different than you are. Human beings are much more alike than they expect. They have an illusion of uniqueness that makes them think that there's no way anybody else can tell me about my future. Yes, actually, if everybody who's a lawyer is miserable, you're almost surely going to be a miserable lawyer, too.

[Dan Gilbert]

So the last thing we can do to try to promote better climate behaviors is to recognize what helps us get that sort of future planning going a little bit. Because, as you've mentioned, like, we can simulate the future, but it's kind of hard. We can save for retirement, but it's hard. Talk about the things that help us get our future planning going and how we might be able to harness those same kinds of things to help with.

[Jamie Dimon]

Climate change, you know, I think there are two paths that we can take. One is the path that most psychologists, like you and me, are tempted to take, which is to think about the things we could do to get everyday people to take different actions in their everyday lives. But the fact is that all of that is not going to add up to a lot, and most people aren't going to do it. And I think it was Al Gore who said, if you really care about the climate, instead of changing your light bulbs or worrying about carbon offsets, you should vote. I mean, if you really want to make change, you make change to the system in which people function. Rather than asking individuals to please defy their own nature, act a little bit differently. Retirement savings is a great example. If we were to just cajole people, convince them, tempt them, amuse them into saving for retirement, no one in America would be doing it right. Just like they don't floss, we wouldn't do those things. But we've managed to institutionalize retirement savings. So now your employer says to you, I will be withholding some of your salary. I will be putting it away for you for retirement, because I know you are just too flawed to do it on your own. And as a result, a lot of Americans now have retirement savings. One of your colleagues, Kelly Brownell, once told me, he said, you know, if you want to get people to eat better, you can try a million different things. Almost none of them work. But the best thing you do is make sure there's a grocery store that has produce within one mile of their home. I think the same thing is true for climate change. We have to stop saying to people, it's on you to change your light bulb. That's going to fix the problem. No, we have to stop using fossil fuels. There are a lot of people who are deeply economically invested in making sure we keep using fossil fuels. You have to vote for a government that will tell them no. Until we do that, everything else is just working around the margins. So I'm sorry to say, as a psychologist, that I think there's a lot less psychology to fixing this problem than there is just politics.

[Dan Gilbert]

But I think it actually comes from understanding our psychology. There's things we can do with our own psychology that might not require as much government intervention. Like, you know, somebody burns a flag. We don't need a politician to tell us, like, yeah, you get upset about that. But with these things that don't activate our evolutionary biases, we do need the system. And that that is coming from psychology. That's understanding our psychology, to know when we need help and when we don't.

[Jamie Dimon]

Well, I like the fact that you have given us credit for something, even if we don't deserve it. I'll take it. You're right. It's all psychology.

[Dan Gilbert]

I'll take it.

[Jamie Dimon]

With that said, I don't want to seem like I'm saying there's no room for changing the behavior of individuals so that they contribute less to the problem and more to the solution. There is. I think there's a large role, maybe even the largest role, is for government to change the behavior of nations. But with that said, I'm all for anything that gets human beings to do what is better for the climate. And I think psychologists are there to help you with a whole host of tricks that can get at least some percentage of individuals to do better in their everyday lives. I mean, here's the good news about climate change. There aren't many people who are going, no, I don't want to fix this problem. I really think it's great. I'm so glad there are more wildfires in California and that Arizonans won't have water to drink. Right. We're kind of all, almost all of us, at least, almost all of us are on the same side of this problem and we're only talking about how do we solve it. If you think of most of the problems that face us, we're arguing about whether there is a problem and what the problem is. We all agree about all of this now, and we just have to get on board with what we're going to do to solve, solve it. I think that gives us at least a good head start.

[Dr. Laurie Santos]

That was a second chance to hear my conversation with Dan Gilbert this Earth Month. I hope you have time to think about the small ways you can contribute to taking on the big problems facing our planet. Every little step leads us in the right direction. We'll be back for a special show on March 20 celebrating world happiness Day. I've even been given early access to the World Happiness Report. So I'll be announcing, announcing which country has been declared the happiest on Earth. And I'll tell you about a really simple change you can make to your life that will make you, your family and your friends so much happier. All that next time on the Happiness lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. As a busy professor and podcast host, I spend more time than I'd like to admit eating on the run. I want to make sure I stay healthy and get enough protein. Protein. But I don't always have time to prep a healthy meal, and that's when I turn to Premier Protein. With tasty flavors like chocolate, cafe latte and cookie dough, Premier Protein makes it tasty and easy to meet your health goals. Both their ready to drink protein shakes and their protein powders taste great, which means I get a creamy quick meal that fits perfectly into my busy schedule. Visit premierprotein.com and go to where to Buy to find a retailer near you or to find where to Buy online. Premier Protein Sweeten the journey with Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford at the Center Stanford Medicine Children's Health is ranked as one of the top children's hospitals in the nation by U.S. news & World Report. As one of the few healthcare systems in the country dedicated exclusively to pediatric and obstetric care, they have an unwavering commitment to caring for babies, kids and expectant mothers. Their exceptional care teams have developed treatments that have led to successful outcomes for many children with complex cases that could not be resolved elsewhere. Learn [e-mail] when it comes to your health and well being, the right care can change everything. That's why Cleveland Clinic has been elevating world class patient care for over a century. From the latest in heart, neurology and cancer care to advanced diagnostics and beyond, Cleveland Clinic is here for every care in the world. Explore a wide variety of health and wellness info by visiting clevelandclinic.org today.