It may seem counterintuitive, but it’s harder to lead people to change to stop violating their values, though you might think they’d want to.
Leading someone to change to start living by their values and stop violating them forces them to face that they’ve been violating them. Many act like they didn’t know, but they almost always did. The just suppressed their awareness.
To influence someone into a non-value-changing change, like to wear red instead of blue (assuming color doesn’t matter to them), doesn’t require them to reflect and face that they’ve violated their values.
Even when someone wants to change to live more by their values, they’ll feel emotions to suppress and avoid facing their actions. The emotions will be more intense the greater the violation, making change harder.
Thus, to lead someone to stop polluting and depleting is harder than to lead them to pollute and deplete more. People often respond with emotional intensity to prompts to live by their values when they’ve been violating them.
