Last week I attended a really interesting presentation by Professor Blalock about an unusual topic: cook stoves in Africa. Professor Blalock began the presentation by getting to audience to agree that electric cars are good for the environment; however, only two people in the room actually owned a Prius. He then went through a laundry list of reasons why someone wouldn’t own a Prius, and provided solutions for most of them. Despite this, only a small fraction of the population actually owns an electric car, despite clear evidence that gas-powered cars are very bad for the environment. Professor Blalock then turned his attention to three stone cook stoves that are very popular in African villages, but also very bad for the environment as well as human health. He told us about how he and his colleagues clearly explained these health risks to the African villagers and offered a cheap new cook stove alternative; however, almost none of the villagers agreed to buy one. Some of the same barriers to buying a Prius were the same as the barriers to buying one of these new, environmentally-friendly cook stoves; particularly cost and not knowing if a new stove would meet their needs. Professor Blalock solved these problems by offering financing options and a free trial period, and ended up selling quite a few stoves.

Professor Blalock’s talk made me think about the psychology behind humans resisting change, even when it’s good for them. It’s understandable why someone wouldn’t get a Prius even if it’s good for the environment due to other factors like cost, style, and already owning a car. However, in follow up studies, most of the African villagers in Professor Blalock’s endeavor were not using their cook stoves, even though they had already paid for them! The reason for this was clearly not ignorance on the health issues of their three stone stoves. This had been drilled into their heads. Was it style? Were they worried about their fellow villagers’ opinions of them for using a “Western” device? Or was it simply a desire for familiarity? Old habits die hard, and it’s very easy to just put three stones together and get their old stove back. Perhaps they rebuilt the stove with intentions to use it only once to cook something that was hard to cook on the new stove, but they just continued using it after that one time. Because that was the easy and familiar thing to do. Change is scary, and history has shown time and time again that humans do their best to resist it.