There is broad theoretical consensus that one way to promote climate-friendly behavior is to increase people's belief that their actions can make a difference (individual response efficacy). However, attempts to increase individual efficacy beliefs about climate change through explicit instruction have generally failed. In the current paper, two experiments tested an intervention designed to convince people that their individual actions spread and multiply, causing larger changes in interconnected systems (also known as ripple or butterfly effects). Participants were presented with four principles which explain how individual actions can have aggregate effects at the collective level: social norms, consumer pressure, political pressure, and snowball effects. Although Study 1 (N = 491) revealed promising effects of the intervention in terms of individual efficacy and pro-environmental intentions, the intervention did not influence actual behavior (i.e., donations to an environmental campaign). Further, when changes were made to the design to reduce social desirability processes, the interventions had no significant effects (Study 2; N = 801). We draw on these data – as well as previous failed attempts to promote individual efficacy – to extract theoretical implications for our understanding of how people internalize individual control over broad collective threats such as climate change.

广泛的理论共识是，促进气候友好行为的一种方法是增加人们的信念，即他们的行为可以产生影响（个人反应效力）。然而，通过明确的指导来增加个人对气候变化的效能信念的尝试通常都失败了。在当前的论文中，两个实验测试了一种干预措施，旨在说服人们他们的个人行为会传播和繁殖，从而导致相互关联的系统发生更大的变化（也称为涟漪或蝴蝶效应）。向参与者介绍了四项原则，这些原则解释了个人行为如何在集体层面产生综合影响：社会规范、消费者压力、政治压力和滚雪球效应。尽管研究 1 ( N = 491) 揭示了干预在个人功效和环保意图方面的有希望的效果，但干预并未影响实际行为（即，对环保运动的捐赠）。此外，当对设计进行更改以减少社会期望过程时，干预措施没有显着影响（研究 2；N  = 801）。我们利用这些数据——以及之前未能成功提升个人效能的尝试——来提取理论意义，以帮助我们理解人们如何将个人控制内化为对气候变化等广泛集体威胁的内在控制。