Attributed causes of environmental problems—Cross-cultural studies of coping strategies

 

 

 

Josef Nerb, Andrea Bender & Hans Spada

University of Freiburg

Niemensstr. 10

79085 Freiburg

Germany

 

0. Introduction

In June 1991, after the largest eruption of the Philippine volcano Pinatubo of the 20th century, the Aeta (Ayta) explained the catastrophe as having been caused by human misbehaviour that disturbed the environment as well as the sacred places of the spirits and the Supreme Being. The Aeta belong to the oldest indigenous population of the Philippines and supplement their subsistence with hunting and gathering. Most Aeta held the drilling of the Philippine Oil Company responsible for the disaster, a claim that was confirmed by manganitos, the mediums of the spirits. Some manganitos suggested further causes for the catastrophe. They blamed the government for having cleared a forest in order to build a large road and the US air force for performing military exercises near the volcano. They were convinced that the Pinatubo was "taking revenge'' for this human interference and demanded (among other measures) that the government and the US air force should provide animal sacrifices in order to stop the eruption (Seitz 1998).

In August 1998, a consultant of the World Bank visited Tongan villages to survey existing coastal resource management. His task was to derive efficient measures for the protection of local fish stocks, which were declining dramatically due to overfishing (e.g., TSFR 1998). However, contrary to the consultant's expectations, a considerable number of the fishermen claimed that there were no declines at all or that declines in certain fish stocks were not primarily caused by the exploitation itself. According to these Tongan fishermen, the fish were deliberately hiding in the deep sea, because they were afraid of the fishermen. Several men stated that God is responsible for the well being of the of human and fish populations and that praying might increase the catches. Most others concluded that leaving them undisturbed for a while would be sufficient to make them return and added that with better equipment, even such protection measures may not be necessary (Bender, in press).

The Maltese-registered tanker Erika broke in two near the coast of Brittany, France, in December 1999. The 26-person Indian crew was evacuated. According to some experts, the sinking of the tanker Erika has constituted Europe's worst ever oil disaster for wildlife. More than 300 000 birds were affected by the 12 000 tons of heavy oil that leaked when the tanker broke. The tanker was run by the world's fourth largest oil company, Total Fina. Greenpeace and other environmental organisations blamed the company for its failure to take responsibility for cleaning up the environmental pollution. In Brest and elsewhere, thousands of people joined protests against Total Fina and accused the company of negligence in using this risky ship that did not have the security guarantees necessary for transport.

Although the reactions of the Aeta, the Tongan fishermen, and the people in Brittany were very different, there is nevertheless an important similarity in how people from such different cultures respond to environmental threats. For people in all these cultures it is crucial to know the cause of the catastrophe. In all cases, the causal attribution and the subsequent ascription of responsibility for the disaster are significant determinants of what people consider appropriate measures for coping with the situation.

This chapter is about how people from different cultures (Germany and Tonga/Polynesia) try to cope with environmental threats by causal attribution. In particular, an important first step of individual coping strategies is discussed, namely the cognitive appraisal of the threatening situation. From an applied standpoint, detecting cross-cultural differences in appraisal and coping processes is crucial in order to provide culturally tailored risk-communication and crisis-response strategies.

In the first section of the chapter different coping strategies are outlined. The focus is on strategies such as wishful thinking and blaming, which are very common ways of reducing stress but mostly do not allow a solution to the environmental problems. Dispositionalist and situationalist attributions and coping are defined and put in the context of cross-cultural studies. The Tongan cultural background is outlined in Section 2, before a description of experiments on the types of appraisal and coping under environmental threats in Germany and Tonga in Section 3. A discussion of the results of the experimental studies concludes this chapter.

1. Appraisal of Environmental Problems

It is the central tenet of so-called appraisal theories of emotions (Scherer, Schorr & Johnson, 2001; Ellsworth & Scherer, in press) that emotions are not simply reactions to situational stimuli, but the result of the cognitive appraisal of a situation. Appraisal of a situation reflects the personal implications of the situation by taking into account the person's individual beliefs and desires. Within this approach, appraisal of an environmental problem plays a central role in coping with the threatening situation.

Means for repairing environmental damages and for preventing further threats are usually beyond the scope of individuals or even community actions. This feeling of loss of control causes discomfort, even distress. People are eager to avoid this feeling, either by appraising the situation as less stressful and threatening, or by taking action to overcome the perceived loss of control. According to Lazarus and Folkman (1984), the former is a “wishful thinking” strategy and pertains to what they call emotion-focused coping. The latter belongs to the category of problem-focused coping strategies. Problem-focused coping includes efforts that are directed at the sources of the stress (e.g. by repairing or preventing the negative outcome or by controlling the sources of the stress). Emotion-focused coping strategies are attempts to manage emotional responses towards the threatening event (e.g. by wishful thinking or by seeking emotional support). These coping strategies are related and may be used simultaneously. In addition, people may change their coping strategies in response to changing demands. Which kinds of coping strategy individuals primarily employ, is determined by whether they view the situation as alterable. A problem-focused strategy may only be effective if people feel they can change the situation; when people feel powerless to do so, an emotion-focused strategy may be the most effective.

1.1. Wishful Thinking

The Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus (c.55–c.135 CE.) stated that humans are disturbed by their views of things rather than by the things themselves. This “philosophy” is widely accepted in modern psychotherapy (e.g. in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) where it is acknowledged that emotions such as anger, sadness, guilt, or anxiety are created by our perceptions and evaluations of events rather than by the events themselves (Ellis & Dryden, 1987). More generally, this view implies that while many situations are potentially stressful, the degree of stress that we experience will depend on the way we appraise a situation. This relativistic notion of stress and adversity should also be applicable to environmental problems. First, impending negative outcomes may be appraised as less likely; second, already existing problems may be considered less threatening. Both classes of strategies are what Taylor (1989) has identified as positive illusions.

The first class of strategies corresponds with the so-called optimism bias in risk perception. Several investigations have demonstrated this kind of bias; people typically see themselves as less likely than others to experience negative life events. Generally, this optimism bias is a tendency to perceive positive events as more likely to happen to oneself than to others and negative events as more likely to happen to others than to oneself. Such an unrealistic optimism may help to protect self-esteem, to project a positive social image, or to reduce anxiety (Weinstein & Klein 1996). For instance, a positive illusion in the form of an unrealistic optimism is given when people believe they will be personally immune against a disaster such as an impending earthquake. Burger and Palmer (1992) found that people who had actually experienced the California earthquake of 1989 had had their unrealistic optimism shattered. However, over the course of three months the optimism returned.

The second class of strategies involves trying to underestimate or ignore the threats of a situation. This may be accomplished by avoiding disturbing thoughts about the stressor, by denying the problem, or by creating a new view of the situation that makes it less threatening and alarming. Evidence for such strategies was found in Tonga, South Pacific. During a field research conducted there by one of the authors, fishermen in the Island group of Ha'apai were asked whether they saw a need to regulate their activities in threatened fishing grounds. Up to 28 species of fish and five other marine species were listed by the 81 interviewed fishermen. 31 fishermen (38 %) stated that there was no decline at all and 20 (25 %) expressed concern about declining stocks. However, a still considerable number of 30 fishermen (37 %) recognised that there were declines in fish stocks, but did not consider regulations necessary. Instead, they evaluated this decline as a natural fluctuation and opted for better equipment and fishing techniques in order to increase their yields (Bender, in press). This downplaying and ignoring of the problem, however, does not seem to be a motivationally driven excuse to continue over-harvesting. Even the majority of the fishermen from the small village of Lofanga, who themselves still employ a traditional resource adapted fishing strategy, did not consider their fishing grounds endangered and did not call for a regulation. This is astonishing, since regulations would deter people from neighbouring villages from depleting the openly accessible fishing grounds (Bender, same vol.).

Of course these two wishful thinking strategies may be used simultaneously. For instance, Lehman and Taylor (1988) explored reactions to an impending earthquake whose occurrence was likely but whose timing was unknown. They found that people denied the seriousness of the situation and doubted the experts' predictions. Consequently, they showed ignorance of basic earthquake safety information and had taken no measures to prepare for an earthquake. Even worse, these wishful thinking strategies were most pronounced among people who lived in buildings that were rated unsafe with regard to seismic disturbances.

It should be noted here that unrealistic optimism and the downplaying of problems are adaptive only to the extent that they help to reduce anxiety and stress. The other result of these illusions may be that people fail to take adequate precautions and actions to avoid negative events in the future or to solve existing problems.

1.2. Blaming

 

Since preventing or repairing environmental damages is often beyond the scope of individuals or even community actions, problem-focused coping becomes difficult. One possible way to overcome this situation consists of assigning responsibility for the outcome to an agent who can be blamed and controlled. Incidental and situational effects can affect anyone, whereas effects of intentional human actions can be avoided if brought under control. Thus, blaming the responsible agents can prevent them from further transgressions. This explains why the feeling of lack of control after an event leads to increasing efforts in attributing causality (Hewstone 1999). If people experience a continuous lack of control and expect that negative outcomes are not only unpredictable but also independent of what they are doing, a feeling of helplessness (Abramson, Seligman & Teasdale 1978) and a general negative affective state may result (Burger 1992).

Walster (1966) found that as the effects of an accident become more serious, people become even more eager to assign responsibility and blame. Assigning responsibility for a negative event could be seen as a control-oriented coping strategy. Collins, Baum, and Singer (1983) suggest that coping strategies that create or preserve actual or illusory control can be effective in reducing psychological distress resulting from technological disaster. Similarly, research on communities located near a hazardous waste landfill found that the more people blamed the operator of the landfill for the problems, the less psychological distress they experienced (Hallman, 1989, cited in Hallman & Wandersman, 1992). However, this positive influence of blaming on distress should not be generalised. For example, Bulman and Wortman (1977) report that victims of accidents who blamed others for their accidents coped less well with spinal cord injuries than those victims who engaged in self-blame. Similar results are also reported for coping with some health problems (for an overview see Shaver & Drown 1986).

Assigning responsibility for a particular situation and blaming the responsible agent are important not only to understand what has happened, but also to develop a sense of control over what might happen in the future. This is in accordance with findings from the field of counterfactual thinking:

 

After the fact, individuals continue to focus on the avoidance of unpleasant things, imagining steps that might have been taken that would have enabled the avoidance of that past unpleasant event (Roese 1997, p. 135).

 

As people tend to overestimate the predictability of events in retrospect (Fischhoff 1975), the assignment of blame towards the responsible agent may even be increased.

Assigning responsibility does not only involve attributing the cause of an event. Causal analysis is however a necessary step in the process of ascribing responsibility, because people infer different degrees of responsibility for a negative event from information about its causation. Appraising an event as naturally caused does not require an assignment of responsibility at all. If the event is attributable to human agency, the agent is judged as more responsible the more controllable the cause. While controllability increases responsibility, mitigating circumstances alleviate, or even totally eliminate assigned responsibility. Mitigating circumstances are given if (a) an act serves a higher goal, or if (b) the agent is lacking insight or knowledge and thus is not able to comprehend the “wrongfulness” of the action (Shaver 1985; Weiner 1995). Applied to environmental problems, a higher goal may be assigned if an action is intended to create an overall benefit for a society, or to attain a highly valued societal objective. Knowledge or insight reflects, for example, whether agents knew in advance that there was a possible contingency between their action and threats to the environment. More generally, attributing an event to internal and dispositional forces of a person is a prerequisite for ascribing responsibility to that person, whereas attributions to external, situational forces decrease or even eliminate the ascription of responsibility.

Assigning different levels of responsibility for negative events subsequently elicits distinct emotional reactions and behavioural intentions (e.g., Weiner, 1995; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). Recent findings about the evaluation of environmental accidents in Germany show that the ascription to others of responsibility for a negative event corresponds to strong feelings of anger and the intention to boycott the responsible agent (Nerb, 2000; Nerb & Spada, 2001; Nerb, Spada & Lay, in press; Nerb, Spada & Wahl, 1998). As Nerb and colleagues suggest, boycotting the responsible agent can be interpreted as trying to prevent the agent from further transgressions.

1.3. Dispositionalist vs. Situationalist Attributions and Coping

According to attribution theory, people’s behaviour is jointly determined by their dispositions and the situations in which they find themselves. Dispositional influences are internal and examples of such influences are personality characteristics, motives and abilities. In contrast, situational influences are anything that is external to the person. There is considerable evidence in psychological literature for a stable tendency towards internal, dispositional rather than towards external, situational attributions for the explanation of behaviour of others. Since many studies have pointed to this consequential “tendency to underestimate the impact of situational factors and to overestimate the role of dispositional factors in controlling behavior”, Ross designated this attribution pattern the fundamental attribution error (Ross 1977, p. 183). The tendency towards dispositional attribution was called an error or even a stable bias because it leads people away from the actual situational causes of an event. To speak of an error or a bias is undoubtedly most justified in cases where participants attribute the cause of an event to individuals and their dispositions even when informed that situational causes were present (Jones & Harris 1967).

Initially, this bias was assumed to be domain-independent and culturally universal, perhaps even innate. Yet studies of lay people in non-Western cultures have found an opposite tendency towards external (situational) attributions for certain kinds of events. Evidence for this situationalist attribution style came for instance from studies with Chinese, Native American, or Hindu Indian participants (Morris, Nisbett & Peng 1995, for an overview). These findings from anthropologists (e.g., Hsu 1953; Selby 1975) and cross-cultural psychologists (e.g., Miller 1984; Shweder & Bourne 1984) seriously challenge both the domain-generality and the cultural-generality of the dispositionalist tendency.

In the context of coping with threatening situations, dispositionalist and situationalist attributions correspond to different coping styles. The tendency to attribute situations to internal and dispositional forces may be seen as a problem-focused, control-oriented coping strategy, because the effects of human actions can be avoided if brought under control. Such a strategy is quite typical for our Western industrialized societies (Hallman & Wandersman 1992; Nerb 2000).

As Morris and colleagues (1995) show, situationalist attributions are more common in non-Western cultures (cf. also Choi & Nisbett, 1998). An inappropriate attribution to natural (situational) forces per se need not necessarily be considered a wishful thinking strategy. If, however, this situationalist attribution is coupled with the belief that natural forces have not only caused but will also solve the problem, then a positive illusory coping strategy is at work. In this case, a situationalist attribution may be a first step in using a wishful thinking strategy. The findings of Bender (2000) suggest that many fishermen from Ha'apai in Tonga employ such a strategy; they consider the depletion of their fishing grounds as being naturally caused, despite the human cause for it. Appraising the negative development as inevitable and beyond their control, they hope and believe that God will solve the problem.

2. Tongan Cultural Background

The Polynesian Kingdom of Tonga consists of 170 islands, situated in the subtropical Southwest of the Pacific. A fifth of the islands are inhabited by descendants of the Austronesian speaking seafarers and planters who reached the island group 3500 years ago (Campbell 1992). Until today, most of them have based their subsistence on planting root crops, bananas and fruit trees as well as exploiting marine species such as fish, shellfish, lobster, or octopus. While men do most of this work, women are engaged in household activities, reef gleaning, and weaving mats for ceremonial purposes.

In most households, at least three generations are present, and the nuclear family is usually extended by adopted children, unmarried siblings or other relatives. Kinship is fostered in various ways and has a tremendous impact on each household's activities through the requirement for natural assistance or the obligations toward higher-ranking relatives. According to the fahu-system, older siblings rank higher than younger ones and sisters are higher than brothers (Bott 1981). The same system also sets up the social classes that constitute the Tongan society. Within this social system, a nobility has evolved which still controls large parts of the land and was itself ruled for more than a thousand years by the Tu'i-Tonga-dynasty. During a civil war at the beginning of the 19th century, the now reigning house of Tupou established itself, while at the same time the European influence grew considerably stronger (Campbell 1992). The biggest changes with regard to social life came with the missionaries. The Wesleyans in particular succeeded in converting the islanders into fervent adherents. Most other Christian denominations and the Mormon Church are also represented.

For the members of this Polynesian culture, abandoning their former religion, which was based on natural deities, on the power concept of mana, and on the related taboos, was primarily meant to get rid of a complicated system of restrictions (Rutherford 1977). Of course new rules, such as principles of conduct were introduced and other rules were adapted to the new religion, among them those concerning the management and control of emotions (fakama'uma'u). Combining traditional values with the new Christian ones, these standards particularly stress the importance of restraining negatively valued emotions such as anger ('ita) or envy (meheka) (Kavaliku 1977; Morton 1996). In addition, the notion of having influence and some sort of control on environmental events through offerings was also rejected after adopting the new religion that instead required faith in an almighty and unfathomable God.

Today, the churches are firmly embedded into society. Their demands for contributions in fund-raising are high and engaging in their activities is connected to a rise in social status. In addition, the churches provide education in their high schools, which are in many cases the only option after the compulsory primary schools usually run by the government. The four colleges in the central island-group of Ha'apai, for example, are under the jurisdiction of different denominations (i.e. the Wesleyan Church, the Church of Tonga, the Catholics, and the Mormons); the Catholic St. Joseph's College, where our empirical investigation took place, is the second largest.

Within the partly Western-oriented curriculum, ecology has meanwhile become one of the topics. It remains, however, an unfamiliar concept to most of the inhabitants (including college students), much to the regret of the members of the Ha'apai Conservation Area Project established in 1996 (S. Faka’osi, personal communication). Although for instance, the younger generation may be developing a stronger awareness for anthropogenic environmental threats than the older fishermen, they still share most of their convictions.

The majority of these fishermen still make use of their basic resources according to traditional goals and do not regard environmental threats as anthropogenic. Instead, they hold the fish themselves responsible for apparent declines because they hide in the deep sea. Having faith in God as the provider of their needs, these fishermen do not consider regulations necessary. Most of them also object to restricting the access to the fishing grounds since this would imply a denial of people’s access to resources given to all by God. Those fishermen who perceive a decline in yields favour either a reduction of pressure on certain species—consistent with the concept of fish as autonomous actors—in order “to let them come back”, or improved equipment in order to catch fish even in deeper waters (Bender, in press).

3. Experimental Studies

Tongan adults seem to appraise environmental threats differently from people belonging to an industrialised Western society, such as the aforementioned fisheries consultant (Bender, in press). To scrutinise whether young people from Tonga employ similar coping strategies to their parents’ generation or whether they have meanwhile adopted appraisals that are common in Western societies, we conducted a cross-cultural experimental study. Students from Tonga and from Germany were confronted with a newspaper report about a threatening environmental problem and completed a questionnaire after they had read the report. The questionnaire assessed cognitive and emotional reactions and behavioural intentions of participants from both cultures towards the reported environmental problems. In the context of this paper, we will focus particularly on the causal attributions that were made by the participants.

In the experiments, the causation of a reported negative environmental event was varied at three levels, holding the damage constant. In one condition (a) the damage was said to have been caused by human agency; in another condition (b) the damage was said to have been caused by natural circumstances  and in a third condition (c) nothing was mentioned about the cause of the damage. For the experiments, we chose separate problems that were deemed to be equally alarming for the participants in both cultures. For the German sample (Freiburg, South Germany), the problem was about  birds dying  on the estuary of the river Elbe (North Germany); in the Tongan sample (Pangai, Ha'apai), the problem was about dead fish in the well known, but distant Fanga'uta-lagoon (Tongatapu).

Varying the causation of an event should yield interesting insights about how participants from both cultures appraise a problem. 

3.1. Method

After a brief introduction from the experimenter, all participants read one newspaper report and then completed a questionnaire that requested ratings concerning the causal attributions (human-made vs. natural), the intensity of anger felt, and the intention to boycott the responsible agent. The newspaper report and the questionnaire were in Tongan and in German, respectively. In the Tongan version, all questions had a binary response format (“yes” vs. “no'”). In the German version, only the question concerning agency had a binary response format; the other two questions were assessed by nine-point rating scales. In both samples, the boycott questions had only to be answered if the cause was appraised as human-made.

3.1.1. Participants

The German sample consisted of 80 paid volunteers (35 female, 45 male), mainly students from the University of Freiburg. Psychology students were not allowed to participate. The median age was 23 (range 20 to 46). Participants were randomly assigned to the three experimental conditions in a between-subjects design. Data collection took place in groups of 10-15 participants. Participants completed the questionnaire as part of a larger series of judgement studies.

The Tongan sample consisted of 45 older pupils from St.Joseph's College/Pangai, Ha'apai (24 female, 21 male). The median age was 17 (range 16 to 23). Participants were randomly assigned to the three experimental conditions in a between-subjects design. Data collection took place in the classrooms. Pupils received a small gift for their voluntary participation.

3.1.2. Material

 In the German experiment the material consisted of fictitious but realistic newspaper reports about an environmental problem: the dying of birds at the estuary of the river Elbe. The material was construed according to the principle that besides reporting the damage and the cause of the accident, the circumstances of the cause (manipulation) were described. Three experimental conditions were created: (a) a human cause of the problem was given; (b) a natural cause of the problem was given; and (c) in a neutral condition no information about the causation was given (ambiguous cause). Table 1 shows all three versions of the newspaper report.

 

 

Dead birds at the estuary of the river Elbe

Hamburg – The dying of birds at the Elbe estuary is worrying bird conservationists. According to the latest findings, the birds – among them some highly endangered species – are falling victim to botulism bacteria. “Due to the low water level, the animals come into contact with the shore mud where the bacterium lives. On metabolism, it produces a lethal toxin“, says a spokesperson for the Nature Conservation Association Jordsand. ½½ Picking at the banks for food, aquatic birds and waders absorb the toxin produced by the bacteria. At the moment, a forecast of the epidemic’s development is not possible.

 

(a) The bacteria, named Clostridium botulinum, breed especially in shallow waters, where in fair-weather periods anoxia occurs. This is due to overfertilization, e.g. with phosphates, by large agriculture concerns.

(b) The bacteria, named Clostridium botulinum breed especially in shallow waters where in fair-weather periods anoxia occurs. This is a matter of natural process with precarious consequences.

Note: The neutral or ambiguous version does not provide information about the causation. Substituting the marker ½½ with Part a (left column) yields the conditioning “human cause given“; substituting the marker with Part b (right column) yields the condition “natural cause given“.

 

In the Tongan experiment, the material also consisted of fictitious but realistic newspaper reports about an environmental problem: fish dying in the Fanga'uta-lagoon (Tongatapu). The material was created according to the same principle as in the German experiment. Table 2 shows all three versions of the newspaper report.

 

 

Dead fish in the Fanga'uta-lagoon

Nuku`alofa – In the Fanga'uta-lagoon a major part of the fish stock is threatened. According to initial findings of the fisheries department, the animals (among them some very rare and threatened species) are falling victim to bacteria which are spreading rapidly in this area.½½ At the moment, a forecast of the epidemic development is not possible.

 

(a) The exceptional multiplication of these bacteria is due to a cargo-steamer which dumped large quantities of organic waste into the ocean

(b) The exceptional multiplication of these bacteria is due to this summer's very hot weather, combined with only gentle breezes. These two factors led to a low intermix of the highly warmed-up water surface and therefore constituted optimal conditions for the bacteria.

Note. The neutral or ambiguous version does not provide information about the causation. Substituting the marker ½½ with Part a (left column) yields the condition “human cause given”; substituting the marker with Part b (right column) yields the condition “natural cause given”.

3.2. Results

Analysing the data aggregated across all experimental conditions produced no significant gender differences for any variable, either in the German or in the Tongan Experiment.

3.2.1. Germany

In the condition where nothing about the causation was mentioned, 50 percent of the participants appraised the problem as human-made. Even more astonishing, 43 percent of the participants attributed the cause as anthropogenic even when informed that situational causes were present (see Figure 1). The results of the studies show that participants from Germany have a strong tendency to attribute the causation of the environmental damage to human agency, even if it was explicitly mentioned that the event was caused by purely natural forces.

Figure 1: Human cause (Germany). Percentage of participants that rated the cause as anthropogenic for all three conditions of the experiment: a natural cause of the problem was given (left); no information about the causation was given (middle); and a human cause of the problem was given (right).

In accordance with prior findings about the relationship between agency and anger (Nerb & Spada 2001), participants showed higher anger ratings when they appraised the problem as anthropogenic (Mean = 5.9; n = 52) than when they considered the problem as naturally caused (Mean = 4.1; n = 28), t(78) = 4.15, p < 0.001. Participants also expressed intentions to boycott the responsible agent (Mean = 5.4; n = 52).

3.2.2. Tonga

The results from the Tongan sample were quite similar to the pattern of results obtained from the German sample. Tongan participants also showed a strong tendency to attribute the causation of the environmental damage to human agency. This tendency was even more pronounced than in the German experiment. Here, in the condition where nothing about the causation was mentioned, 67 percent of the participants appraised the problem as human-made. When it was explicitly mentioned that the event was caused by purely natural forces, 53 percent of the participants attributed the cause as anthropogenic (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Human cause (Tonga). Percentage of participants that rated the cause as anthropogenic for all three conditions of the experiment: a natural cause of the problem was given (left); no information about the causation was given (middle); and a human cause of the problem was given (right).

 

As in the German experiment, results showed an association between human agency and anger ratings: 97 percent of the participants who rated the problem as anthropogenic also expressed anger about it (32 out of 33), whereas only 75 percent of the participants who rated the cause as natural expressed anger (9 out of 12). This association, however, only shows marginal significance, c²(1) = 2.88, p < .09. Almost all participants who appraised the problem as human-made expressed their willingness to boycott the responsible agent (97 %).

To sum up, participants from both cultures showed a similar pattern of results for causal analysis, emotional reactions, and behavioural intentions. Thus, the data of the experiments do not support the hypothesis that young people from Tonga employ different coping strategies from people from a Western industrialized society. However, the data suggest that young Tongan pupils make causal attributions that are different from the older Tongan fishermen. Whereas most of the fishermen do not consider human action responsible for the declines in fish stocks, the pupils do show a bias towards appraising the problem as anthropogenic.

4. Discussion

Assigning responsibility for a threatening situation and blaming the responsible agent allows the development of a sense of control over what might happen in the future. In this sense, “blaming” is a coping strategy. Another strategy to cope with a threatening event is wishful thinking. Here, the likelihood of an impending negative outcome is appraised as less probable, or an already existing problem is considered less threatening or alarming.

The appraisal of a situation and in particular the causal analysis of the problem plays a key role in choosing and implementing a coping strategy. Attributing the causation to human agency is necessary for blaming the responsible agent. Conversely, appraising a problem as naturally caused and simultaneously hoping that natural forces will also solve the problem may be a wishful thinking strategy—at least when there actually is a human cause for the problem.

In a cross-cultural experiment, we found that young people from both Germany and Tonga show a tendency to appraise an environmental problem as anthropogenic. Such a tendency is quite typical for participants from Western industrialized societies (Nerb 2000). It is more surprising that young Tongan participants show this appraisal pattern, since earlier related results from members of the older generation had suggested that the opposite tendency prevails in Tonga, namely to appraise environmental problems as naturally caused (see Bender, same volume).

The prevalence of anthropogenic attributions in the Tongan sample may be explained by the conjecture that the students felt that they were in a situation of achievement. At school, Tongan students are educated according to a Western curriculum. This curriculum tries to impart ecological knowledge and, in particular, emphasises the prominent role of humans in the destruction of environmental resources.

Participants from Germany and Tonga not only made similar attributions; they also showed a similar pattern in the ratings for anger and for the intentions to boycott. This is particularly noteworthy, given that in Tonga it is negatively sanctioned to express negative emotions such as anger. Moreover, the intention to boycott someone is definitely at odds with the Polynesian value system that is based upon the idea of 'ofa. 'Ofa means “concern, kindness, care, help, generosity, sharing and love” and characterises the ideal emotional relationship between all people (Morton 1996; p. 80; see also Kavaliku 1977).

However, it would be unwarranted to conclude from our data that schoolchildren in Tonga start to abandon their traditional value system and generally drift towards Western norms. We are rather suggesting that the situation elicited in the experiment is not “typical” for their daily life and that cultural patterns for dealing with this situation may not be available. The lack of cultural regulations for this novel situation may have allowed the expression of emotions and behavioural intentions that are otherwise negatively sanctioned.

Finally, methodological problems in cross-cultural research designs need to be addressed. First, a general problem exists in translating and employing materials and questionnaires across cultural borders. Second, the familiarity with data collection methods such as rating scales differs substantially between Tongan and German participants. This was a major problem in a pilot study we conducted in Tonga. The results of this prior study could not be interpreted, because we found that Tongan participants were not experienced in dealing with nine-point rating scales. To circumvent this problem, we used a binary response format in the study presented in this chapter.

These methodological problems certainly restrict the conclusions that can be drawn from our investigation. Nevertheless, we consider such cross-cultural laboratory studies an important supplement to field research. Indeed, for a detailed theory-driven comparative analysis of coping behaviour such a research design is indispensable.

 

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Acknowledgement

This research was supported by grant no. Sp 251/10-x from the Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) to the third author and by a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to the first author. We thank Moana and Sione Faka'osi for translating the material used in the experiment into Tongan. We are grateful to Susanne Frings, Fabian Hermann, Miriam Tonne, and Stefan Wahl for their assistance. We thank Stefan Seitz for his valuable comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Josef Nerb, University of Freiburg, Psychology, Niemensstrasse 10, 79085 Freiburg, Germany. Electronic mail may be sent to nerb@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de