Flexibility mindsets enhance pro-environmental behavioral intentions among those with a low pro-environmental default tendency

Environmental psychology provides several promising approaches to enhance pro-environmental behavior. However, these are usually only effective within a specific content domain and less so among people who are not yet committed to environmental protection. The current research introduces so-called flexibility mindsets as a content-neutral cognitive strategy that initiates a reconsideration of one’s default cognitive and behavioral tendencies. Across three studies (total N = 1,005), we induced a flexibility mindset via subtractive counterfactual thinking (“If only I had not…”) both within and outside the environmental domain. In line with our hypothesis, these flexibility mindset inductions enhanced pro-environmental behavioral intentions (e.g., to reduce consumption of animal-based food), especially among those with a lower pro-environmental default tendency. These effects held across different behavioral domains, thereby highlighting the potential of flexibility mindsets to induce the general “mindshift” necessary to foster a sustainable lifestyle. • Inducing a flexibility mindset enhanced pro-environmental behavioral intentions • Flexibility mindsets more strongly affected those with lower pro-environmental default tendencies • Flexibility mindsets had similar effects (on environmental intentions) when induced within or outside the environmental domain • The effects of flexibility mindsets carried over to different behavioral domains