Chicago Booth Review Podcast How Will Climate Change Affect Culture?

Thomas Talhelm: You could have, if you really wanted to, and if you had the resources and the time, you could put a million dollars of gold in your bedroom and live off the rest of that for your life. Try to store enough water in your bedroom for the rest of your life. That's just not going to happen, right? So it seems to me that there's something fundamentally different about something that you can condense down into a small amount that's really valuable and really hoard in a way that just doesn't work that way with water.

Hal Weitzman: What shapes a society's culture? We might think of big ideas, values, or ideologies, but could it be something as basic as access to water? Welcome to the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, where we bring you groundbreaking academic research in a clear and straightforward way. I'm Hal Weitzman, and today I'm talking with Chicago Booth's Thomas Talhelm, a behavioral scientist who's interested in how cultures develop and are maintained. Talhelm's research links the abundance of water in a region to its attitude to the future. He finds that people who live in areas where water is plentiful tend to live more in the moment, whereas those who live where water is scarce tend to plan more for the longer term. In the coming decades, climate change will have big effects on water access. So how will that change our culture?

Thomas Talhelm, welcome back to the Chicago Booth Review Podcast.

Thomas Talhelm: Thanks for having me.

Hal Weitzman: Now, we had such fun with you last time that we had to have you back to talk about more of your fascinating research that draws these counterintuitive, I'd say, connections. Last time we talked about rice farming and how it sheds light on social media and teens' behavior, or everybody's behavior. And now we're talking about water and the scarcity of water and how it affects culture and long-term thinking. And last time you were in China, this time you were in Iran. Your research is certainly global. Tell us about how this came about.

Thomas Talhelm: Yeah, so I was working with a grad student who's from Iran, and he's aware of these two places. There's sort of a popular conception of these two places in Iran that are fairly close to each other, but seem culturally very different. One is called Yazd. And Yazd people are known for being sort of religiously strict. They plan a lot, they think about the future, and it's also a place with water scarcity. It's very dry. Near Yazd is a place called Shiraz. If you're familiar with the wine, that name is no accident. Shiraz has more water, more agriculture, more wine, and people are known for enjoying life, poetry, drinking, things like that, focusing on the present.

And so what the grad student I was working with, Hamid, he said, "Well, let's test this idea. Number one, are these two places culturally different? And number two, is it really because of this idea of water scarcity versus water abundance?" The basic idea being if we don't have a lot of water here, we need to be careful, we need to plan, we need to think for the future. Whereas if we have a lot of water, we can maybe relax and enjoy life a little bit more.

Hal Weitzman: And so had anyone else made the connection between this cultural difference in water?

Thomas Talhelm: I don't think that people had really looked at this before. I mean, people had looked at other things, like more educated... so education tends to reinforce long-term thinking. There's even a neat study that if your language has a future tense, then people tend to think of the future as different from the present. And so that affects things like how much people save for the future. But I wasn't aware of any research that looks specifically.

Hal Weitzman: These are both presumably Persian-speaking places, so that doesn't really work.

Thomas Talhelm: That's right, they're not [inaudible 00:04:00].

Hal Weitzman: But it's a theme of your work, isn't it? That there's a sort of popular conception of a difference and you are looking at something material that's affecting that. Last time we spoke to you, it was farming. This time it's water scarcity. So I guess my question is the less water, the more long-term thinking. Is that the way it works?

Thomas Talhelm: That's right.

Hal Weitzman: So the drier the place, even more long-term thinking?

Thomas Talhelm: Yeah. Well, I mean I guess we didn't really find any limit to it. So yeah, that's what we found. So less water, more thinking about the long-term. And also more denial of what researchers call indulgence. So it's bad to live in the moment and really enjoy things. You got to scrimp, you got to save think for the long-term.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. And just, I know as part of your research, you also placed some job ads and saw what kind of applicants you got. So tell us about that.

Thomas Talhelm: Yeah, so the first step we did is we gave people surveys, questionnaires about how much they think about the long-term versus how much they like to indulge. But one problem with surveys is maybe people are already aware of these stereotypes of these different regions in Iran, so maybe they're just telling us sort of the right answer rather than-

Hal Weitzman: But, I mean, did the surveys confirm the stereotype?

Thomas Talhelm: They did, they did. But we were concerned that, again, maybe the stereotypes is sort of contaminating people's responses. So we wanted to run a study where people wouldn't be aware that we were studying them so there's no right answer, wrong answer. And so we posted two job ads in these two places in Iran. And one job ad was for an established company, secure employment, not very interesting or exciting, but it's stable and reliable. And then we posted another job ad for an exciting startup with, it's a flexible, it's fun, but not as reliable. And then we set up email addresses and looked at how many resumes we got from each city. And they perfectly flipped each other. So in the dry city, we got more resumes for the stable long-term job. And in Shiraz where there's more water, we got more resumes for the exciting, fun startup.

Hal Weitzman: Okay, so it works.?

Thomas Talhelm: It does seem to work. So even if people are not aware, they're a part of a study, their revealed preferences seem to match the larger idea.

Hal Weitzman: And presumably, I mean the populations are native. It's not as if people move to Yazd because they're more long-term thinkers and people move to Shiraz because they like to drink and have fun.

Thomas Talhelm: Presumably. I mean, theoretically, there could have historically been some sorting.

Hal Weitzman: Some self-sorting? Yeah.

Thomas Talhelm: It be, could be. It's hard to rule that out.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. And do we know anything about their economic behavior? Investing behavior? Do they invest more for long-term, or are they more profligate in Shiraz?

Thomas Talhelm: Yeah, so we did look at, there are statistics on the savings rates. So that was one thing that we could look at. And again, it matched the larger idea. So people in Shiraz had lower savings rates than people in Yazd.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. And so how long do you think it takes for a culture to be shaped by water? This is presumably an ancient thing. So they've always had water scarcity in Yazd, is that right?

Thomas Talhelm: Right. It's not like a 10 or 20 year thing. I mean this is long-term. It's historical.

Hal Weitzman: Over what time period does that shape the culture?

Thomas Talhelm: Yeah, we have some evidence that this can happen really quickly. So in the study, we went back to Iran, we had students in the lab and we gave them sort of manipulated science stories. One of them talked about climate change and how it was going to make water scarcity worse in where they live in the future. And for other participants, we gave them an article saying that climate change would actually make water more available where they are. And then we asked them values about long-term orientation, living in the moment. And what we found is that even just thinking about it for a few minutes was enough to change how people answered these surveys. So thinking about water scarcity just for a few minutes made people value the long-term more, at least in that moment.

We also had another study, this wasn't in the paper, but we had another study where we looked at the effect of a drought in the United States. So in the 1980s, there was a pretty severe drought in the Southeast, so think Georgia. And we took advantage of the fact that there were surveys that were done in the United States before and after the drought, and they had some questions that tapped into long-term thinking. And what we found is that, so just for the people who were in the drought area, and again, this is a drought of, I don't know how, six months a year or something like that, long-term thinking went up in the drought areas, but actually down in other parts of the United States.

So it suggests that people can start adjusting to this fairly quickly, but it's another question of how much time does it take to really imprint this on the culture? I mean, how much time do we need for children to start learning this or institutions or the stories that we tell each other, the cultural products, the books, and the myths that we have? That's probably a longer term process.

Hal Weitzman: Yeah, I mean it's fascinating. What do you think is the actual mechanism? What actually gets us from lack of water to long-term thinking?

Thomas Talhelm: Yeah, I think it builds up from this very quick individual response. So that's what we're seeing in the lab study. So we ask people to think about water scarcity in the future, and then they're responding immediately to that. "Oh, okay, well I should emphasize saving and thinking for the long-term." And I think the more people are experiencing that, it starts at that quick level, but then it probably over time gets encoded into habits and values that people have. And then eventually maybe it gets encoded into institutions or the laws that we have or the punishments that we give to people. And over time, perhaps people are abstracting those out and applying them even to situations that don't involve water.

Hal Weitzman: Okay. Now, you looked around the world as well, didn't you, at this relationship between water and planning? Did you get a perfect match between water scarcity and long-term thinking all around the world?

Thomas Talhelm: Yeah. So we looked at, so how much water scarcity cultures had historically around the world. We looked historically because again, the idea is that this is a a long run thing. And we found that historical water scarcity was a better predictor of differences than current water scarcity, which suggests that there's some element of an ongoing history that's important. So we found that cultures around the world with less water historically tend to be more oriented towards the long-term.

Now, it doesn't explain everything. Obviously there are differences that are related to long-term orientation that are not water scarcity. One of the things you might look at are different religious traditions. So some religious traditions are more live in the moment and some are more aesthetic, thinking about denial. So I think about Islam is a religion that is very prevalent in dry parts of the world and it might not be a mistake, it might not be an accident that cultures that have a higher percentage of the population that is Muslim tend to focus more on the long-term. So religion could be another one of those factors.

Hal Weitzman: So you think that Islam sort of shaped itself because of the climate?

Thomas Talhelm: Getting out of my depth.

Hal Weitzman: Now we're getting into theology. Yeah, it's fascinating.

Thomas Talhelm: Yeah. I do think that things like religion are shaped by the ecologies that they, A, were formed in, and B, are persistent. So I am very much open to the idea that the ecology of where religions are formed helps inform the structure of those religions.

Hal Weitzman: Yeah. Well, I grew up in Wales, which is very wet and people certainly know how to enjoy themselves.

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Okay, Thomas, in the first half we talked about water scarcity and the fascinating connection you made between water scarcity and long-term planning. And I'm wondering what about other natural resources like oil or gold? Do you see the same kind of pattern?

Thomas Talhelm: So we haven't tested that yet, but I would suspect that if we looked at something like gold, I think it could work quite differently from something like water. One of the big differences between water and something like gold is that you can hoard and save gold in a way that it really doesn't work like that with water. I mean, yes, it's true, with enough government power, you can build reservoirs and really store water for the long-term, but it's not something that you can store in the same way that you can store money or gold. You could have. If you really wanted to and if you had the resources and the time, you could put a million dollars of gold in your bedroom and live off the rest of that for your life. Try to store enough water in your bedroom for the rest of your life. That's just not going to happen. So there seems to me that there's something fundamentally different about something that you can condense down into a small amount that's really valuable and really hoard in a way that it just doesn't work that way with water

Hal Weitzman: And oil, also, you don't think it would wouldn't be the same?

Thomas Talhelm: Yeah, oil seems-

Hal Weitzman: I mean if you think of that's the Dutch disease, isn't it? The curse of having natural resources is you tend to screw everything up in countries.

Thomas Talhelm: I think that's right.

Hal Weitzman: So you would think that suggests a lack of long-term planning.

Thomas Talhelm: It's also oil is one of those things where, almost like use it or lose it, right? Is it really that beneficial to slow down with oil? It doesn't seem to me the same as something like water. So yeah, I think thinking about water, when we were writing up the study, we kept running into this question, is water just wealth? Is this just money? And when we would put wealth into the model, it would often go in a different direction from water. So water, in a way it's wealth, in a way, it's a resource. But I think these features of things like can I store a bunch of it? Does it increase in value? Can I use that water to get more water in a way that I can use money to get more money? Water doesn't work like that. So I think water is sort of fundamentally different as a resource. Different thing.

Hal Weitzman: Right, and similarly, water scarcity is not the same as poverty, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I'm thinking while you're talking about all of this about climate change, and you referred to it a little bit yourself, there are regions that are going to experience a lot less water and there are definitely regions they're going to experience a lot more water. Too much water. And so are we going to see a massive cultural shift along with climate change?

Thomas Talhelm: This might be glib of me to say, but I hope so. I think one way you can read the results of this study is to perhaps have a glimmer of hope. I mean, when we told people... And the correct answer by the way is that in most places in the world... water scarcity is going to get worse over time in most places in the world. And so when we told people that in the study, and one of the conditions in our study, they thought more about the long-term. And so hopefully as humans are experiencing more of the disruptions of climate change, it's going to lead to a psychological reaction that would hopefully increase support for trying to fix it or at least make it less bad. I think climate change can be really depressing to think about. Seems kind of hopeless. But if humans are hardwired to respond to scarcity by trying to think more about the long-term, then that could at least give us a little bit of a glimmer of hope or reason to be optimistic that we can start to change things.

Hal Weitzman: Okay, but we might be, well with... all the problems might have already been delivered by that point, by the time we actually change our culture and change our thinking.

Thomas Talhelm: Might just be mitigation.

Hal Weitzman: We should have had that long-term thinking 50 years ago.

Thomas Talhelm: I wish.

Hal Weitzman: But we didn't quite get to that. So when we were talking about the relationship between water and money, we've had some research in Chicago Booth Review about poverty and poverty definitely changes your thinking in some of the same ways that you are talking about with water. So a lack of money can actually make you make better decisions, plan better. Is there a parallel there?

Thomas Talhelm: So the research that I'm aware of actually has found the opposite. So when they have people... Well, there's two ways you can do this. You can sort of make people less wealthy in the lab by having them play games or researchers have also looked at natural cycles of wealth and lack of wealth. What they find is that when people are experiencing poverty, they tend to neglect the future more and actually makes them worse off in the long run. And so it was neat to compare our research to that research to say, huh, okay, so money seems to have an effect where people are neglecting the long-term, thinking about it less, and yet lacking water seems to have the opposite effect.

That suggests that we think about water and money differently. I'm tempted to think that one reason that could be is because perhaps we're hardwired to think about water in a particular way because humans have had to think about water for, I don't know how many generations, just always. Money is a new thing. How long have humans really had to think about money on a daily basis? And from an evolutionary standpoint, that's pretty recent. So it seems like our brains are responding to money and water differently, and one explanation could just be the timeline through which humans have been exposed to those two different things.

Hal Weitzman: And like you said earlier when we were talking about gold, I mean water stays where it falls or where it comes up from the ground or whatever. Whereas gold and other things can be moved around much more easily. So I guess that partly explains that. I mean, did you look at that? Do you think there's a difference between where water comes from? If you were expecting rain rather than the Nile flooding and using that, do you think there's a difference there?

Thomas Talhelm: Yeah, we didn't look at that, but it does seem, like beyond just the availability of water, something that would make a lot of sense to look at would be how stable is that water? We're close to Lake Michigan, that seems like a pretty stable water supply, but there are lots of parts of the world where it's really seasonally dependent and it could be a lot better this year than next year. So looking at not just how much water there is on average, but how stable it is across years seems like it would also have an effect on people's psychology.

Hal Weitzman: Well, think about Chicago. So Chicago is not known as a city for its long-term planning. Usually it's no more for kicking the can down the road and not paying its bills. Do you think that's because we're located next to this giant lake?

Thomas Talhelm: I think that could play a role here. Yeah, it'd be neat to rewind history and then add in some water scarcity and see if it'd be different. I think at least some things would be different if we did it that way.

Hal Weitzman: I mean, in the United States, it does seem that we generally... think about places like Arizona. They don't necessarily have this long-term... I mean maybe, I'm sure they're thinking about water long-term, but they've certainly been using it like it's not a scarce resource, and yet it is. So to what extent do you see that regionality in the US do you think?

Thomas Talhelm: Yeah, so we didn't test differences within the United States, but it raises a really interesting question of getting back to this question of how quickly do these differences appear? I mean, if you're in Las Vegas, I don't know, you can turn on your tap and get water whenever you want. So it's not entirely clear to me that on a daily basis people are thinking about this. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there are subtle ways in which this is still influencing people in Phoenix or Las Vegas. Yeah, we don't know the answer to that yet.

Hal Weitzman: Thomas Talhelm, thanks again for coming on for another fascinating conversation about, in this time, how water shapes culture. Thanks for coming on the Chicago Booth Review Podcast.

Thomas Talhelm: Yeah, happy to do it.

Hal Weitzman: That's it for this episode of the Chicago Booth Review Podcast, part of the University of Chicago Podcast Network. For more research, analysis, and insights, visit our website at ChicagoBooth.edu/Review. When you're there, sign up for our weekly newsletter so you never miss the latest in business-focused academic research. This episode was produced by Josh Stunkel. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe, and please do leave us a five-star review. Until next time, I'm Hal Weitzman. Thanks for listening.