But before we congratulate the Californians for being so civic-minded, consider this: the only survey question that predicted a person’s actual energy conservation was how much they thought their neighbours tried to conserve. The other beliefs and motivations – saving money, saving the planet for their grandkids – had zero relationship to what people did. People thought they acted for noble reasons, but the only belief that mattered was a far less altruistic “Everyone else is doing it.
