Teens' Personality Not a Major Influence on their Environmental Worldview

In evaluating the effectiveness of EE programs, many researchers turn to the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale. This validated scale measures a person's environmental worldview, largely by juxtaposing a person's anthropocentric (people exist separate from and over nature) and ecocentric (people are part of nature) beliefs to gauge their overall worldview. The scale has been revised for use with children; it is a well-accepted and often-used tool in the literature.

But when using the NEP, it's important to control for outside factors that can also explain differences in worldview. Socio-demographic factors, such as a person's income, age, education, or others, can influence the results, for example. In this study, the authors question whether personality is another variable for which researchers should control in studying adolescents' ecological worldviews. After all, they note, previous research indicates that people whose personality reflects an internal locus of control are more likely to take pro-environmental action. (People with an internal locus of control believe that they are responsible for their own success or failure.) Other research indicates that people who are self controlled, organized, and goal oriented are more likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviors. Maybe personality is an important aspect that should be considered in evaluating education programs for their ability to shift a person's world view. The authors explain, “Such a relationship could make some respondents either more or less susceptible to environmental education, meaning that changes observed in their environmental worldview could represent personality traits rather than a real shift in the subject's ecological worldview.”

The authors used a small-scale, exploratory study to investigate this relationship. The researchers compared the personalities of 959 Flemish teens between the ages of 14 and 19 to their ecological worldviews. They used what they believe is a more holistic approach to studying personality than the more discreet personality aspects studied in other research (such as locus of control). The researchers assessed the students' personalities using the Big Five approach, which is a widely used approach that has been modified for use with children and divides personalities into five domains: extraversion, benevolence, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and imagination.

Their results confirmed earlier research that girls tend to hold a more pro-environmental worldview than boys. Controlling for gender is common practice because of this known relationship. But the researchers did not find any need to control for personality traits. Although they did find some correlations (adolescents who are well-organized and goal-oriented were more likely to be ecocentric, while teens who are selfish, quickly irritated, and dominant hold a less ecocentric view), the correlations were small and the patterns were not deterministic.

This finding is important for two reasons: first, it indicates that evaluators using the NEP to assess the impact of EE programs on adolescents' environmental worldview need not control for personality traits. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the authors explain, “these results indicate that worldviews are not stable or innate characteristics within individuals, but can be influenced by interactions between the individual and his or her context.” In other words, a teen's worldview is not predetermined by his or her personality; EE programs could help shift a teen's worldview.