Communicating Cosmopolitanism and Motivating Global Citizenship

Abstract

This article analyses strategies of communication to motivate ordinary individuals to act in accord with cosmopolitan ethics. The central argument of the article is that research on cosmopolitan motivation needs to engage much more actively with research in psychology and communications, which provide significant insights on the effectiveness of strategies that moral philosophers have proposed to motivate cosmopolitan action. The article critically analyses ‘thick cosmopolitan’ motivation strategies, which highlight the collective culpability of affluent individuals in the global North for the poverty in the global South as a means to motivate cosmopolitan action. Drawing on research in psychology, the article argues that the emphasis on culpability can have adverse impacts at odds with cosmopolitan ethics. The article then proposes alternative communication strategies for cosmopolitan motivation, drawing again on research in psychology and communications.

Keywords

cosmopolitanism moral motivation global citizenship

There is a wide gap between contemporary theories of global justice and the motivational strategies that might encourage individuals and societies to act in practical ways that reflect those principles in everyday life. ‘Cosmopolitanism’ has become the almost universal banner under which contemporary political philosophers debate the ethical norms and corresponding legal and institutional arrangements required for human thriving in the context of global integration. While the specific moral demands and institutional arrangements associated with cosmopolitanism are hotly contested, there is a widespread agreement that human well-being in the twenty-first century requires a global ethic in which all humans recognize and act on both positive and negative ethical duties towards all other humans, regardless of their nationality or other aspects of their identity. Climate change, mass flows of refugees, infectious diseases and financial crises highlight the urgent need for the cultivation of cosmopolitan ethics in which all humans recognize and act on moral duties to other humans outside the boundaries of their respective nation states (Appiah, 2006; Brown and Held, 2010: 1; Kymlicka and Walker, 2012: 2).

However, cosmopolitan theory has only just begun to seriously address the question of how to motivate individuals to act in accordance with the ethical principles of cosmopolitanism in practical ways in their real lives (Dobson, 2006; Faulkner, 2014, 2016; Lenard, 2010; Linklater, 2007). While the arguments about the depth and extent of the duties owed across state borders vary widely among cosmopolitan theorists, even the most minimalist conceptions of cosmopolitan morality require motivational strategies to expand the sphere of moral action. Cosmopolitan theorists and other moral philosophers who have engaged with the question of motivation have focused primarily on intrinsic aspects of cosmopolitan theory, addressing the question of whether ethical principles can plausibly motivate ethical action (Birnbacher, 2006; Brock and Atkinson, 2008; Lawford-Smith, 2012; Lenard, 2010; Scheffler, 1992). While questions about the motivational power of ethical principles are central to moral theory, in this article I argue that it is also crucial for cosmopolitan theorists to engage more deeply with practical strategies to communicate cosmopolitan ideas to diverse sectors of the public with the goal of motivating cosmopolitan action. Rigorous grappling with the question of cosmopolitan motivation requires that cosmopolitan research move beyond the bounds of political theory to engage with other fields of research that focus on how to motivate human behavioural change, in particular social psychology and communications studies. This approach echoes the call by Phillips and Smith (2008: 393) to extend cosmopolitan research to analyse more closely ‘individual-level cosmopolitanism among ordinary people’, Beck and Sznaider’s (2006) call for deeper engagement with cosmopolitanism across the social sciences and Weinstock’s (2009) efforts to construct a discursive ‘toolbox’ to motivate cosmopolitan values and action. Such interdisciplinary engagement may generate some uncomfortable challenges for cosmopolitan theory, but they are necessary if it is to have any impact on real world human behaviour.

The article develops this argument in three sections. The section ‘Cosmopolitan Theory and the Question of Motivation’ outlines the basic principles of cosmopolitan ethics and examines the question of motivation and the ways in which it has been addressed in cosmopolitan theory. In particular, it analyses the concept of ‘thick cosmopolitanism’ as a motivation strategy. ‘Thick cosmopolitanism’ highlights the ways in which privileged citizens and consumers in the global North are implicated in the global production of poverty and oppression. The proponents of ‘thick cosmopolitanism’ argue that it offers a more compelling motivation than ‘thin’ forms of cosmopolitanism that seek to motivate through appeals to identify with a globally common humanity. The section ‘The Problems with ‘Thick Cosmopolitanism’’ then analyses two key problems with ‘thick cosmopolitan’ strategies of motivation: (1) inattention to the ways in which cosmopolitan ethical principles are communicated in practice and (2) the reliance on inducing emotions of guilt, which research in psychology suggests is often ineffective and post-colonial analysis critiques for its tendency to dehumanize those who live in conditions of poverty. The section ‘Alternative Strategies of Motivation’ examines alternative strategies of motivation that have emerged from research in psychology and in the applied professional practices of climate change communication and public engagement with international development. The article concludes by arguing that cosmopolitan research needs to pay more attention to these practical initiatives, both as sources of potential inspiration for strategies of motivation and to ensure that real world efforts to promote ‘global citizenship’ are more closely connected to the principles of cosmopolitan ethics.

Cosmopolitan Theory and the Question of Motivation

As the challenges facing humanity become increasingly global in scope, proponents of cosmopolitan ethics assert that humankind desperately needs a moral code in which all humans recognize and act on ethical obligations towards all other humans, irrespective of their national citizenship or other markers of their identity (Appiah, 2006; Brown and Held, 2010: 1; Held, 2010: 39; Kymlicka and Walker, 2012: 2). The field of moral cosmopolitanism addresses the question of the ethical obligations that humans owe to other humans who live outside the boundaries of any particular nation-state. While the extent and implications of those obligations are hotly contested, cosmopolitan theorists agree that they entail both positive ethical duties to provide assistance to others in need and negative ethical duties to not cause harm. A growing number of cosmopolitan advocates argue that in the context of the increasingly complex ways in which global commodity chains, information flows, transportation and financial and environmental processes connect people on diverse parts of the planet, the understanding of negative ethical duties needs to include unintended, indirect harms caused by the cumulative actions or failures to act of many people (Held, 2010: 71). So, phenomena such as extreme poverty and climate change call for a global ethic of not only positive duties to provide assistance but also negative duties to not contribute to harm or benefit from harm through complicity in global processes that create injustice, such as sweatshop labour conditions, violent conflicts over resource extraction and changes in climate patterns that disproportionately affect already vulnerable populations.

Much of the debate within cosmopolitan moral theory focuses on the specific nature of positive and negative ethical duties in the context of contemporary globalization, addressing questions such as ‘who owes what to the very poor?’ (Jaggar, 2010; Pogge, 2007). Within these debates, scholars have given relatively little attention to the question of how to motivate people to actually act on like cosmopolitans. However, growing numbers of scholars have begun to recognize a motivation problem in cosmopolitan ethics. That is, cosmopolitan ethical principles appear to provide weak motivation for cosmopolitan action in the real world. For example, Nussbaum (1994: 15) conceded that the motivational power of cosmopolitanism is limited to ‘only reason and the love of humanity, which may seem at times less colorful than other sources of belonging’. In response to Nussbaum, Barber (1994: 14) highlighted the ‘thinness of cosmopolitanism’, asserting that ‘the idea of cosmopolitanism offers little or nothing for the human psyche to fasten on’. The crux of the cosmopolitan motivation problem is the ‘thinness’ of appeals to identify with ‘common humanity’ as a motivational incentive for actually engaging in cosmopolitan behaviour. As Dobson (2006: 182) emphasizes, ‘the cerebral recognition that we are all members of a common humanity seems not to be enough to get us to “do” cosmopolitanism’. Lenard (2010: 346) put the point more bluntly: ‘We are clearly not cosmopolitans, if by “cosmopolitan” we mean that we are willing to prioritize equally the needs of those near us and those far from us’.

The cosmopolitan motivation problem reflects a much broader debate about the power of ethical principles to motivate practical action. Despite heated debates about the meaning of justice and the actions that it requires (e.g. Brown and Held, 2010; Pogge and Horton, 2008; Pogge and Moellendorf, 2008), moral philosophers generally accept that it must be at least theoretically plausible that individuals could be motivated to act in the ways that a theory of justice demands (Birnbacher, 2006; Rosati, 2006; Scheffler, 1992; Thomas, 1988). For example, Goldsmith highlights the arguments of Rawls (1971: 145), Nagel (1991: 21) and Murphy (1998: 27) that any theory of justice must be ‘motivationally reasonable and capable of meeting the tests of human psychology’ (Nagel, 1991: 2, cited in Goldsmith, 2003: 1673). Meyer (2000: 637–638) similarly draws on Rawls (1971) and Barry (1989) to argue that cosmopolitan approaches to global justice must be capable of motivating humans. Some cosmopolitan skeptics have argued that cosmopolitan ethics are psychologically implausible and that human beings cannot be reasonably expected to extend their loyalties to include all of humanity.¹ For example, arguing that cosmopolitan obligations exceed the human ‘limits of emotional range’, Lenard concludes that ‘it may be that individuals, as we know them, simply cannot extend their concern far enough to motivate a robust cosmopolitan solidarity’ (2010: 370). By contrast, Brock and Atkinson (2008) draw on the psychology research used by statist critics of cosmopolitanism to argue that it is at least plausible that humans could be motivated to adopt cosmopolitan moral attachments to the rest of humanity. Similarly, Bayram (2015) cites empirical evidence from the World Values Survey to further bolster the case for the motivational plausibility of cosmopolitan ethical duties.

In response to growing questions about the motivational power of cosmopolitan morality, some theorists have proposed more gradual approaches to the construction of cosmopolitan subjects. For example, Gould (2009) suggests actually existing cross-border communities and transnational associations that do not include all of humanity as a starting point for gradually expanding the sphere of cosmopolitan caring. Similarly, Scholz (2015) looks to already established non-state institutions that reflect only partial and unintentional expressions of cosmopolitanism as starting points from which deeper expressions of cosmopolitan morality might be developed. Others look to the motivational resources at the level of the nation-state as more plausible strategies to gradually develop cosmopolitan sensibilities (Lenard, 2012; Weinstock, 2009; Ypi, 2008), including appeals to those elements of nationalist sentiment that could be fostered towards a cosmopolitan ethos (Kymlicka and Walker, 2012). By proposing graduated processes through which fallible individuals might over time be nudged through gradual institutional changes and civic education to expand their sphere of moral concern from already-existing state and supra-state organizations and identities towards a more cosmopolitan ethos, these authors significantly reduce the motivational leap from actually existing moralities and behaviour to cosmopolitan concern for the rest of humanity. However, the motivational problem does not disappear completely and practical strategies are still needed to encourage shifts in identity and behaviour towards cosmopolitan principles.

A growing number of scholars have focused attention on discursive strategies to communicate cosmopolitan ethical duties that emphasize complicity in the suffering of others and the fulfilment of negative ethical duties to not cause or benefit from such suffering. Termed ‘thick cosmopolitanism’ by Dobson (2006), this approach seeks to motivate action through justice-based arguments which highlight the ways in which affluent citizens and consumers in the global North are indirectly but collectively responsible for the poverty and human rights violations of large numbers of people in the global South (Dobson, 2006; Erskine, 2000, 2002, 2008; Linklater, 2006, 2007; Lawford-Smith, 2012). The core premise of ‘thick cosmopolitanism’ is that the motivational weakness of other variants of cosmopolitan ethics can be overcome through an emphasis on the indirect culpability of the globally privileged for global poverty through our roles as citizens and consumers. As Dobson (2006: 172) argues, ‘we will feel more strongly obliged to respond to the suffering and disadvantage of others if we are responsible for it in some degree’. Similarly, Linklater (2007: 44) asserts that ‘obligations that arise from harming others – or from failing to help them – can supply a cosmopolitan ethic with the vital emotions that are the key to “ethical motivation”’.

The principles of thick cosmopolitanism reflect a primary concern with negative ethical duties to not cause harm, which are extended from direct and intentional harms to include harms that are unintended, indirect and the result of the cumulative actions of large numbers of people (Held, 2010: 71). Pogge (2002, 2007) argues that in the context of contemporary global institutional arrangements, such as trade agreements established by the governments of wealthy countries which systematically create and reproduce extreme poverty on a global scale, the primary ethical responsibilities of affluent citizens in wealthy countries are negative duties to reform the global institutions that cause poverty (see also Ashford, 2007). Other authors make similar arguments focused on negative duties to not cause harm through carbon emissions that contribute to global climate change (Caney, 2010; Penz, 2001).

Proponents of ‘thick cosmopolitanism’ argue that the motivational power of arguments focused on negative duties is stronger than the humanitarian motivations entailed in positive duties to provide assistance. Lawford-Smith (2012) analyses the respective motivational power of negative and positive duties, using Pogge’s (2002) justice-based approach and Campbell’s (1974) humanitarian approach as prototypical examples of each set of ethical obligations. Drawing on research in psychology to support her analysis, she concludes that justice-based approaches that emphasize culpability in the suffering of others provide a stronger motivation for cosmopolitan action. As she explains:

Because people take harm caused by action to be morally more serious than harm caused by omission, and because accepting that one has done harm creates guilt which can be mobilized into remedial action, I suggested that it is better to ground cosmopolitan proposals publicly in justice arguments. Global poverty relief is more feasible using the justice argument than it is using the humanity argument (Lawford-Smith, 2012: 678).

The Problems with ‘Thick Cosmopolitanism’

Thick cosmopolitanism grounded in negative ethical duties is an intuitively compelling theoretical response to the challenges of motivating cosmopolitan action. However, it faces two particular problems which may undermine its effectiveness in the real world: (1) an over-emphasis on the intrinsic aspects of cosmopolitan theory with insufficient attention to the ways in which it is communicated in practice and (2) a reliance on guilt as the source of motivation.

The first difficulty with thick cosmopolitanism is that it locates motivational power exclusively within cosmopolitan principles, without sufficient consideration of the ways in which cosmopolitan ideas are communicated in practice by civil society actors, governments and the media. I am not suggesting that logically constructed theoretical arguments are not a crucial component of any strategy of moral motivation, but there is an important distinction between the plausible motivational power of a moral theory, on the one hand, and the actual strategies of communication and resources employed to promote behavioural changes to the public, on the other hand. Indeed, emphasis on the content of cosmopolitan ethical duties may prove to be an ineffective way to motivate cosmopolitan action. Simply shouting out information about the ways in which affluent citizens and consumers are implicated in the suffering of others is unlikely to be effective without a communication strategy that begins by trying to understand the perspectives of the particular audiences at the receiving end of the message. As Meyer reminds us, ‘we are often not moved to fulfill our obligations simply in virtue of our acknowledging that they are rational’ (Meyer, 2000: 639, emphasis added).

The experience of extensive efforts to communicate the science of climate change to the public in North America and Europe indicates that even with overwhelming scientific data, human attitudes and behaviour are highly resistant to rational arguments and scientific evidence (American Psychological Association (APA), 2009; Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, 2009). Medical professionals have encountered similar problems of ‘health science denial’ and the need for communication strategies grounded in pscychology research to motivate individuals to adopt healthy behaviours (Gorman and Gorman, 2016). Dual process theories in psychology and neuroscience explain how the human brain manages decision-making through two separate systems, one which is automatic and unconscious and the other which is conscious and self-controlled (Chaiken and Trope, 1999; LeDoux, 1998; Pessoa, 2013). Kahneman (2011) describes these two forms of thinking as System 1 and System 2. System 1 thinking is fast, instinctive, emotional, subconscious and frequent, while System 2 thinking is slow, logical, deliberative, conscious and relatively infrequent. Other authors refer to these two systems as the ‘emotional brain’ and the ‘rational brain’. (Haidt, 2010). The majority of human responses to environmental stimuli are managed by the brain’s automatic processing system (System 1), which includes emotional responses such as fear, anger and guilt. Rational thinking and reasoned deliberation are managed by System 2 but always occur in conjunction with the instinctive, emotional and subconscious responses of System 1. Recent research using magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) also indicates that interplay between System 1 and System 2 – and thus the extent to which emotion and reason influence ethical decisions – also varies among individuals (Barrett et al., 2004) and in different types of moral dilemmas (Greene et al., 2001). Applied to research on questions of motivation, dual process theories point towards the need to stimulate both the automatic processing system that deals with emotions and the conscious processing system that deals with rational thought (Petty and Wegener, 1999). Researchers at the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (2009: 18) explain simply: ‘The most effective communication targets both processing systems of the human brain’.

In other words, efforts to motivate changes in human attitudes and behaviour based solely on rational arguments are unlikely to be effective. As professional climate change communicator George Marshall (2014: 50) explains, ‘theories, graphs … and data speak almost entirely to the rational brain. That helps us to evaluate the evidence … But it does not spur us into action’.

So, the quest for cosmopolitan motivation in rational arguments, which characterizes thick cosmopolitanism, is unlikely to motivate cosmopolitan action unless coupled with efforts to stimulate appropriate emotional responses. Psychologist Paul Bloom (2016) recently argued against reliance on emotions, and empathy in particular, to motivate attitude and behaviour change, highlighting evidence that empathy and other emotions are poor guides for moral action. Instead of empathy, Bloom argues, those concerned with the promotion of moral behaviour should work to foster human capacities for reason, what he calls ‘rational compassion’. However, Bloom (2016: 51) also recognizes that emotion and reason can (and should) be used together: ‘While sentiments such as compassion motivate us to care about certain ends – to value others and care about doing good – we should draw on this process of impartial reasoning when figuring out how to achieve those ends’. In sum, the promotion of reasoned ethical deliberation should remain central to strategies of cosmopolitan motivation, but to be effective they also need to be complemented by careful efforts to kindle emotional reactions, which are often more powerful in determining human behaviour.

The second problem with thick cosmopolitanism is that it heavily depends on inducing emotions of guilt as the incentive for cosmopolitan action. Thick cosmopolitanism highlights complicity in the suffering of others as the motivational trigger for cosmopolitan action. Research in social psychology strongly suggests that guilt can be a powerful motivator for moral action and points towards its evolutionary role in fostering prosocial behaviour among early humans (Baumeister et al., 1994; Faulkner, 2014, 2016; Haidt, 2003). A first problem with guilt is that evidence indicates that its motivational power does not extend all the way from the small group contexts of early human evolution to the global scale that cosmopolitanism calls for (Faulkner, 2016). Moreover, efforts to induce guilt can trigger negative reactions, in particular, the dehumanization of those who are suffering (Faulkner, 2014: 105–107). In addition, insights from communications professionals and post-colonial scholars also challenge the efficacy of guilt in motivating cosmopolitan behaviour and similarly highlight its potential to spark unintended and harmful side-effects. Because the power of guilt lies at the core of the thick cosmopolitan strategy of motivation, it is important to examine each of these potential problems in greater detail.

First, while guilt can be a powerful motivator for socially responsible action, psychology research remains inconclusive on the behavioural impacts of guilt (Harvey and Oswald, 2000; Lickel et al., 2011), particularly towards groups as broad as ‘all of humanity’ (Faulkner, 2014, 2016). Guilt can trigger responses oriented to repairing or apologizing for harm; but, when guilt is intertwined with shame, it can also evoke ‘avoidance behaviour (e.g. wanting to hide, shrink away, disappear or conceal inadequacies)’ (Schmader and Lickel, 2006: 45). Moreover, there is little evidence that the motivational power of guilt in local settings or in contexts related to specific and commonly identified harms inflicted by one group onto another extends to the global context and totality of humanity. On the basis of a series of social psychological experiments on efforts to induce emotions of guilt among Americans for their indirect complicity in causing hunger in less developed countries, Faulkner (2014: 169) concluded that ‘attempts to motivate cosmopolitan behaviours by increasing collective guilt … were found to be ineffective’.

Second, guilt is frequently a trigger for cognitive dissonance, which can result in irrational and ethically problematic behaviour (Festinger, 1957, 1962; Harmon-Jones and Mills, 1997). Cognitive dissonance is the psychological and emotional discomfort that arises when a person holds two contradictory beliefs or when a person’s beliefs and behaviour are contradictory, as might occur to someone who believes that it is important to behave ethically but learns that his or her actions as a citizen and consumer are indirectly harming people in other parts of the world. The theory of cognitive dissonance posits that humans strive for internal consistency (consonance) and seek to resolve inconsistency (dissonance) by either changing their behaviour (the outcome that thick cosmopolitans would hope for) or their attitudes and justifications for their behaviour.

Experiments in social psychology indicate that individuals often seek to restore consonance not by changing their behaviour, but rather by ignoring or denying new information that clashes with their beliefs, by minimizing the seriousness of their actions and by seeking support from others who agree with their beliefs (Harmon-Jones, 2002: 101). In short, the cognitive dissonance associated with guilt for the suffering of others does not necessarily lead to rational changes in behaviour but can also lead to efforts to justify the guilt-inducing behaviour in order to achieve consonance. Because the behavioural responses to cognitive dissonance often fail to comply with basic ethical principles, communications experts advise social justice and environmental organizations to use extreme caution with guilt as a motivational strategy, pointing out that:

people react poorly to being told something is their fault. The usual reaction is to question (or worse) the messenger … In a few instances, if you create space for someone to discover their own role in creating a problem, you might get a positive response, but those exceptions are rare and require consummate skill (Andresen et al., 2011).

There is also significant evidence that guilt-based approaches can trigger psychological responses that dehumanize the objects of the guilt, making them out to be cognitively, morally and emotionally inferior and therefore not deserving of the same considerations and rights as those deemed to be equal (Goff et al., 2008; Haslam, 2006; Opotow, 1990). While guilt can trigger socially responsible actions, cognitive dissonance can also induce other defence mechanisms to mitigate the emotional distress that guilt generates. In particular, moral disengagement theory in the field of social psychology highlights the tendency for individuals to dehumanize the victims at the root of their guilt as a way of maintaining the self-perception that they have not behaved immorally (Bandura, 1999, 2002; Castano and Giner-Sorolla, 2006; Čehaijić et al., 2009, cited in Faulkner, 2014: 140). As Faukner (2016: 9) explains, ‘dehumanization can allow perpetrators of harmful acts to avoid self-condemnation and self-sanctions for those acts … If victims are perceived as less human, it is easier to ignore their plight’. Ironically, raising awareness of collective guilt for the suffering of people in other parts of the world can thus spark anti-cosmopolitan psychological reactions, precisely the opposite result that proponents of thick cosmopolitanism hope for. As Faulkner (2016: 12) emphasizes, ‘Unless a technique can be developed that increases individuals’ acceptance of responsibility and guilt without simultaneously increasing dehumanization, [emphasis on] causal responsibility for harm is unlikely to be an effective way to motivate cosmopolitan helping’.

Research in psychology is reinforced by post-colonial scholarship that critiques the ways in which guilt-based marketing campaigns used by international development agencies have reinforced stereotypes of people in the global South as passive victims of poverty and foster a sense of moral and intellectual superiority among charitable donors in the global North (Dogra, 2012; Escobar, 1995; Hall, 1997; Jefferess, 2002; Kapoor, 2013; Kothari and Minogue, 2002). Notably, most of the marketing material that post-colonial scholars critique aims to induce feelings of guilt for failures to provide assistance rather than complicity in causing harm. In this context, images and messaging have often portrayed the would-be beneficiaries of Northern charity as highly impoverished, sad and lacking the cognitive, social and financial resources to help themselves. Widely referred to as ‘the pornography of poverty’, guilt messaging reached a peak during the Ethiopian famine of 1984–1985. It proved an effective way to generate charitable funding but also triggered a backlash because of the negative consequences for understandings of global poverty among the public in the global North (Nathanson, 2013; Plewes and Stuart, 2006). Research by the British charity Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) found that as a result of the guilt-inducing representations of the global South to audiences in the UK, ‘80% of the British public strongly associate the developing world with doom-laden images of famine, disaster and Western aid’ and have internalized a false sense of superiority in which the victims of poverty are ‘seen as less than human’ (VSO, 2002: 4). More recently, Darnton and Kirk (2011: 6) found that the UK public remained ‘stuck’ in a poverty-and-disaster-oriented view of the developing world. In the Canadian context, Nathanson (2013: 104) cites polling data that highlight three sets of consequences from ‘guilt’ messaging: (1) ‘a public wholly unaware of the complexities and root causes of world poverty’, (2) ‘a societal attitude characterized by guilt, helplessness, charity, paternalism, and even racism’ and (3) ‘a dwindling level of political support for foreign assistance and aid’. Clearly these trends do not support an expansion of cosmopolitan values and behaviour and so cast serious questions for the efficacy of guilt-based strategies to motivate cosmopolitan action.

There is no inherent reason why efforts to highlight the responsibility of citizens and consumers in the global North for poverty and other human rights violations in the global South need to use dehumanizing messaging. However, the reliance of communications strategies aimed at provoking guilt on imagery and text that portray ‘victims’ of poverty as less than fully human and lacking agency is so strong that the connection between guilt strategies and dehumanization remains very close. There is thus a serious danger that thick cosmopolitanism, through messaging designed to highlight collective guilt for the suffering of others, may unintentionally foster dehumanization and the exclusion of distant others from the sphere of moral concern. The key message here is to use guilt as a motivational strategy only with extreme caution. Significantly, the use of images intended to provoke guilt has declined significantly among development charities since the late 1980s, not only because of their dehumanizing effects, but also because communications professionals have found positive messages, including appeals to individual and national pride (Van Leeuwen et al., 2013), to be more effective for inducing charitable responses (Andresen et al., 2011; Dogra, 2012).

Alternative Strategies of Motivation

Research in psychology and communications suggests that other strategies beyond guilt may also be needed to motivate cosmopolitan behaviour. The central argument here is that the effectiveness of strategies to motivate cosmopolitan action is likely to depend just as much on the ways in which cosmopolitan ideas are communicated as the internal logic of cosmopolitan principles. A significant example of the distinction between ethical principles and strategies of communication to motivate action based on those principles is the website for the organization created by utilitarian theorist Peter Singer, ‘The Life You Can Save’.² Singer’s (1973, 1999) theoretical arguments employ guilt as a core strategy of motivation to induce acts of charity in response to extreme poverty, but the public-facing website for ‘The Life You Can Save’ emphasizes hope, possibility, accomplishment and other positive feelings; guilt messages are nowhere to be found.

Research in social psychology and its application to communications strategies points towards an emerging set of strategies that might help to motivate cosmopolitan behaviour, particularly in the cultural contexts of the global North. The full range of communications strategies, and the psychological research that inform them, is beyond the scope of this article to review, so here I focus on the three sets of ideas that are emphasized most frequently in the literature on communicating climate science and global justice: audience segmentation, values and framing and emotional messaging (American Psychological Association, 2009; Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, 2009; Darnton and Kirk, 2011; Marshall, 2014; Stoknes, 2015). These ideas represent just a small selection of the insights for cosmopolitan motivation that could be gained by better integrating research in psychology and communications with cosmopolitan moral theory. There are no easy answers to the challenges of cosmopolitan motivation, but research in social psychology and communications offer insights that can at least help to more tightly focus the debate on cosmopolitan motivation and to ground it in empirical research rather than theoretical assumptions.

Audience Segmentation

One of the most important ideas to emerge from the field of communications studies is that messages are not simply projected from message-makers onto message receivers. Rather, the audiences of messages play central roles in making meaning out of them, based on their past experiences, social identities and values (Hall, 1997; Rose, 2007). In practical terms, this recognition of the role of audiences in making meaning out of messages highlights the impossibility of motivating all audiences with a single narrative, such as the collective guilt narrative embodied in thick cosmopolitanism. Communications professionals recognize that there is no ‘general public’ at which to target their messages, but rather a variety of segmented audiences who respond in different ways to different strategies, based primarily on their values (Maibach et al., 2011; Slater and Flora, 1991). A key tenet of all communications strategies is to ‘know your audience’ (Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, 2009: 3). Strategies to motivate cosmopolitan behaviour need to recognize that the same messages will not work for all audiences. Guilt may work to motivate some audiences to act like cosmopolitans, but it is equally unlikely to motivate others. As Michael Slater (1995: 186), a specialist in health promotion explains, ‘[s]uccess might not be assured by intelligent segmentation … [but] poor or non-existent segmentation of audiences … is likely to doom public communication or education programs’. Strategies of cosmopolitan motivation thus need to start with a recognition that audiences will respond differently to different strategies of motivation, which need to be tested to measure which messages have the greatest impacts on particular audience segments.

Values and Framing

Research in psychology suggests that human motivations are grounded primarily in values, which can be understood as ‘general beliefs about desirable ways of behaving, or desirable goals’ (Feather and McKee, 2008: 81; see also Schwartz, 1992). Values are formed by ‘culture, society, society’s institutions and personal experience’ and in turn they are determinants of ‘action, judgement, choice, attitude, evaluation, argument, exhortation, rationalization, and … attribution of causality’ (Rokeach, 2008: 2–3). Research concurs that the range of human values is small and consistent across cultures (Maio et al., 2009; Rokeach, 2008: 2). Schwartz’s (1992) ‘circumplex’ model of values identifies 9 core value types found consistently across different cultures: universalism, benevolence, conformity, security, power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction.³ The circumplex model highlights the ways in which these values are inter-connected; stimulating one set of values – such as universalism and benevolence – will simultaneously downplay the opposing values on the circumplex: power and achievement, and vice versa. As Maio et al. (2009: 713) explain, ‘priming a set of values increases behaviour that affirms those values and decreases behaviour affirming opposing values’. Different forms of cosmopolitan action – such as international charity, volunteerism and political activism – can be stimulated by quite different and even opposing sets of values. In this context, real-world efforts to motivate cosmopolitan behaviour need to be grounded in difficult strategic decisions about which values to try to stimulate. Evidence from recent climate change mitigation and global justice campaigns suggests that messages that appeal to values associated with self-interest (e.g. security, achievement) can be effective for achieving short-term goals such as fundraising and may resonate more powerfully with audiences who are guided primarily by these values; however, in the longer term, reliance on values related to self-interest reinforces anti-cosmopolitan attitudes (Kasser, 2009, cited in Darnton and Kirk, 2011: 40; Kasser, 2009). Communications experts recognize that it may be more difficult to engage and motivate people through messages that emphasize the values of universalism and benevolence but assert that messages designed to motivate cosmopolitan action need to be compatible with cosmopolitan values and that messages which appeal to self-interest and security will ultimately reinforce those values (Darnton and Kirk, 2011).

Research also indicates that the relative priority that different value types hold in our value systems can be shaped by the ways in which issues are framed through language and imagery (Lakoff, 2010). For example, climate change can be ‘framed’ through discourses of disaster and fear or of possibility and hope, or through the lenses of national security, human health or global justice – with very different impacts on the values that guide human decision-making (American Psychological Association, 2009). Action to address global poverty can similarly be framed through guilt narratives or through frames that highlight positive feelings of hope that change is possible. While the power of frames to ‘prime’ or stimulate different values is widely recognized, what remains less clear is how specific ways of framing particular issues such as climate change, global poverty and acceptance of immigrants trigger different values and in turn motivate (or not) different forms of action (American Psychological Association, 2009; Darnton and Kirk, 2011). What research in psychology and communications does make clear, however, is that certain ways of framing issues are more likely to stimulate human value systems and motivate action. In particular, framing strategies designed to stimulate emotions through stories that highlight specific individuals and emphasize the values of universalism and benevolence seem to hold more promise for motivating cosmopolitan actions, such as making charitable donations to assist victims of humanitarian disasters, applying ethical criteria to consumer decisions and taking action as citizens to address global policy issues. As with strategies of audience segmentation, the use of values and frames to motivate cosmopolitan action needs to be tested to measure much more clearly which values and frames have the strongest impacts on changes in attitudes and behaviour.

Emotional Messaging

As explained above, psychologists and neuroscientists have explained that human decision-making is influenced by two different systems in the brain, one which is conscious and rational, and another which is subconscious, instinctive and predominantly emotional (Chaiken and Trope, 1999; Kahneman, 2011; LeDoux, 1998). Heath and Heath use the analogy of an elephant and rider, borrowed from Haidt (2010), to explain the relationship between emotion and reason in human decision-making:

Perched atop the Elephant, the Rider holds the reins and seems to be the leader. But the Rider’s control is precarious because the Rider is so small relative to the Elephant. Anytime the six-ton Elephant and the Rider disagree about which direction to go, the Rider is going to lose. He’s completely overmatched (Heath and Heath, 2010: 7).

In the context of research on the central role of emotions in decision-making, psychologists and communications professionals emphasize that efforts to motivate changes in human behaviour need to focus on both emotions and reason (Andresen et al., n.d.; Dickert et al., 2011; Marshall, 2014; Stoknes, 2015). Scholars at the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (2009: 21) advise climate change communicators to ‘balance information that triggers an emotional response with more analytic information to leave a mark in more than one place in the brain’.

Storytelling, with a focus on specific individuals, appears to be a particularly effective mechanism to stimulate emotional responses as a strategy to motivate human action (Harré, 2011; Moser and Dilling, 2007). As climate change communications specialist George Marshall explains:

Stories perform a fundamental cognitive function: They are the means by which the emotional brain makes sense of the information collected in the rational brain. People may hold information in the form of data and figures, but their beliefs about it are held entirely in the form of stories (Marshall, 2014: 105).

Nussbaum (2010) makes a similar argument for the role that literature plays in fostering capacity for compassion by enabling readers to identify closely with people who are very different, which she argues is a crucial virtue for democratic society. Young (1996) goes further to argue that storytelling is an essential mode of ‘democratic communication’ that can help to overcome the exclusionary nature of deliberative democracy, which she argues relies excessively on capacities for particular forms of reasoned speech. Storytelling is thus not just more engaging but also a more socially inclusive strategy to promote cosmopolitan action.

Notably, stories focused on single identifiable individuals have the most powerful impacts on human emotions and motivations to act. ‘Identifiable victim effect’ is the widespread tendency across cultures for people to empathize more deeply and act to help specific identifiable victims over statistical victims (Jenni and Loewenstein, 1997; Västfjäll et al., 2014). Moreover, research has found that human motivations to help others are most powerful when stories focus on a single individual and that empathy and motivation to help decline when the plight of more than one victim is highlighted (Fetherstonhaugh et al., 1997; Slovic, 2010). Similarly, Faulkner (2017) showed that inducing empathy by directing individuals to take the perspective of a distant person significantly increased cosmopolitan helping behaviour. A closely-related body of research also indicates that narratives that emphasize hope and highlight the positive impacts of human action have greater motivational power than messages that emphasize suffering and tragedy, which are common components of guilt narratives (Fetherstonhaugh et al., 1997). Further experimental research is still needed to confirm the relative impact of positive, hopeful messages in relation to messages that emphasize guilt and ethical reasoning. The important lesson here is that positive, hopeful narratives focused on single identifiable people hold significant promise as discursive strategies to nudge attitudes and behaviour towards cosmopolitan values and deserve experimentation and testing.

However, psychologists and communications specialists also warn that emotional messaging needs to be used with caution because of a variety of negative reactions that it can trigger. In particular, psychology research on the ‘finite pool of worry’ (Weber, 2006), ‘psychological numbing’ (Fetherstonhaugh et al., 1997; Slovic, 2010) and ‘compassion fatigue’ (Moeller, 1998) indicates that humans have a finite capacity to worry and will block out information that exceeds that capacity. Moreover, as Bloom (2016) and others have argued, decision-making based purely on emotions can easily lead to immoral choices. Thus, while emotional messaging may prove successful at motivating initial responses to an issue, its power to sustain motivation may wane over time, which points again to the need to use emotional messaging with care and to combine it with moral reasoning and factual evidence.

Conclusion

In the context of the ever-increasing levels of global interconnectedness, the practical application of cosmopolitan ethics is more urgent than ever. However, to make cosmopolitan ethics relevant in the real world, greater attention is needed to the motivation gap between ethical principles and actual behaviour. The ‘thick cosmopolitan’ response seeks to resolve the problem of motivation by highlighting the collective culpability of privileged citizens and consumers in the global North for the poverty and suffering of people in the global South. This is a plausible strategy from a rational theoretical perspective, but research in psychology and communications casts serious doubt on the efficacy of guilt to motivate cosmopolitan behaviour. Further research on the problem of cosmopolitan motivation needs to engage much more directly with research from psychology and communications for two reasons. First, these fields of research provide practical insights for strategies to motivate cosmopolitan identity formation and action. Second, such interdisciplinary engagement is also needed to interrogate the strategies of communication that are already in use from the perspectives of cosmopolitan ethics. Strategies demonstrated to motivate humanitarian action in the short term can have complex long-term consequences that are not necessarily compatible with cosmopolitan morality and politics. For example, research in psychology that indicates that individual decision-making can be influenced by other people who are perceived as attractive and popular (Cialdini, 1993) has helped to foster the extensive use of celebrities in environmental and social justice campaigning (Brockington, 2014), a trend which critical scholarship connects to the production of narcissistic ‘spectators of other people’s suffering’ (Chouliaraki, 2013) and ultimately the reproduction of unequal global power relations (Kapoor, 2013). Alternative approaches based on both the principles of thick cosmopolitanism and the psychology of motivation might, for example, use storytelling techniques to highlight the ways in which individuals and groups in the global North have supported successful struggles in the global South against structural causes of poverty and to establish more just institutional arrangements, or emphasize the positive feeling of well-being and empowerment experienced by citizens in the global North who have taken actions that reflect the principles of thick cosmopolitanism. The development of effective strategies of cosmopolitan motivation will require more experimentation and testing, but evidence clearly indicates the need for more interdisciplinary approaches that bring together the insights of moral theory, psychology and communications.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my colleague Greg Scherkoske for the conversation on an early morning run that sparked this article as well as the anonymous reviewers of Political Studies and the students in my ‘Motivating Cosmopolitanism’ seminars at Dalhousie University and the University of Leipzig for valuable feedback.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Dr John D Cameron is Associate Professor in the Department of International Development Studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. His current research focuses on three broad areas: (1) strategies to motivate global citizenship; (2) policy advocacy and representations of poverty and global development by international development NGOs; (3) indigenous rights in the Andean region of South America.

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