1. Identification of Myths and
Misinformation in Sustainable
Office Practices
Green Office Program Final Research Project
Independent Study 396
Jennifer Raichel

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The Green Office Program is self-described as having the intention to reduce waste and
increase efficiency in campus offices as described in the Climate Action Plan. Created by
Sustainable UMass, it “aims to alter daily office practices” by an office’s voluntary participation
in a walkthrough and checklist process. This checklist has 4 categories in which offices can earn
credits that determine their level from Bronze up to Evergreen. The program is maintained
through student fellowships; each fellow is responsible for walking through a certain number of
offices each semester, filling out the checklist with the aide of the Eco-leader of the participating
office, and subsequently creating a plan to improve their ranking through more sustainable
practices. Eco-leaders are the main point of contact between the Green Office Fellows and the
participating office, and are responsible for scheduling semesterly walkthroughs and for
implementing the plan developed by fellows for their office.
Early on in my fellowship I noticed a large disconnect between the two types of
requirements on the checklist. While the checklist is divided into 4 categories of sustainable
practices, I view the accomplishment of those practices as either physical and tangible, or
behavioral. The checklist itself is just a ranking system, and in order to move up in ranking and
gain more credits, an office needs to make changes. The program makes it simple to make
changes in the physical, tangible type for both fellows and Eco-Leaders. Fellows can make
recommendations for the purchasing of different products or changes to an office’s minor
infrastructure (central turnoff points, addition of timers, task lighting), however the behavioral
aspects are specific to each office and even each person within an office. In the offices and
walkthroughs that I was responsible for I noticed that the physical recommendations were well
received, if not implemented, however behavioral recommendations were often met with
resistance and hesitancy from Eco-leaders.

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As an Eco-leader can be any person in any office on campus, fellows see many different
types. There are leaders in offices who emphasize sustainability in course content or deal with
the topic in a capacity that would make them familiar with it; the College of Natural Sciences or
the department of Environmental Conservation for example have (predictably) the highest
rankings of participating offices. Some leaders have a personal vested interest in sustainability
and employ practices of the Green Office Program in their own lives, making it easier for them
to employ those strategies in the office. Other leaders have little to no knowledge of
sustainability but are interested enough to lead their office in the program, and there are of
course Eco-leaders who are tasked with the responsibility by a superior (either interested or
uninterested). The same contexts can be applied to individual people in each office. In addition
to the different mindsets of Eco-Leaders, they may hold different positions within each office;
most often they are the office manager, or secretary, but can also be faculty members or agents
of the department. This difference can be important for understanding the breadth and depth of
knowledge they may have about their office, and what kind of power and influence they hold in
advancing their office’s sustainability practices.
Taking these things into account, I saw over time, improvements in offices that were
willing to change the physical aspects of the checklist but experienced frustration with the
behavioral aspects. Setting out to identify ways of employing behavior change strategies for the
Green Office Program I realized that each office would require a kind of attention and
specialization that as fellows, we are not able to complete. Fellows are not able to monitor each
person in the office and their daily practices, and have to rely on the Eco-leader to be
knowledgeable and honest. Our interactions are limited to a few emails and about 30 minutes of
face-to-face time each semester; therefore any suggestion to improve behavior practices in an

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office must focus on that interaction. I focused on recurring events in my interactions with Eco-
leaders; which problems were transient amongst offices, and what experiences were recurring.
One such problem was the use of common myths to explain bad practices or resist change in the
office. There are many myths about sustainability as it is young, and still changing. Myths are
tricky as they stem from many sources of misinformation or misinterpretation, however the
propagation of a myth - if you know the truth - is easy to identify in the moment. Since it is the
responsibility of the Green Office Fellow to be knowledgeable of sustainable office practices, I
identified the refutation or ‘debunking’ of myths as a way for fellows to address a source of
resistance quickly and effectively.
The identification of myths may be simple, but actually correcting misinformation and
changing the thought process of an individual is not limited to telling them that they are wrong
and providing the correct information. In fact, there are ways of addressing myths that can
effectively reinforce a person’s belief in false information. Research behind the debunking of
myths is focused on cognitive processes and the way that people think, rather than the
information itself. Once misinformation heard or read it becomes influential, and that influence
is very difficult to change.
It is often assumed that misconception is due to a lack of information, otherwise called
the “Information Deficit Model”. Providing correct or new information is an intuitive solution,
however providing too much information can lead to ‘backfire’ effects that strengthen the
influence of a myth in a person’s mind. These backfire effects are observed when making a myth
more familiar, giving too many or confusing arguments, or threatening a person’s worldview. It
would be difficult to address misinformation without technically stating the myth itself, but
familiarity increases the chances of the person accepting information as true. This is particularly

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strong among adults, and is the most common backfire effect. In order to decrease this effect, it
is important to focus on the facts and mention the myth as little as possible, and to ‘tuck’ it
between mention of the facts. If possible do not begin with common phrases like, “you may think
that myth” or “myth is a common misconception”. These phrases emphasize the myth and
highlight it in the conversation.
While it is important to emphasize the facts that contradict the misinformation we try to
address, we must be cognizant of overkill. Processing many or difficult-to-comprehend
arguments takes more effort than myths that tend to be simple and easy to digest. Also, people
can feel alienated by jargon or long, drawn out paragraphs of explanation. To reduce this,
debunking arguments and information should be easy to read and process, and should employ
succinct language. The worldview backfire effect is a bit harder to avoid as some myths simply
either fit or do not fit with one’s morals, values, and sense of cultural identity. In this context we
must be cognizant of biases and how those biases can lead a person to seek to confirm their
views, or argue, that which contradicts them. If the true information goes against their views in a
way, our efforts are better spent on those that are less fixed in their beliefs.
Even when given the correct information in ways that avoid possible backfire effects, it is
possible that people will continue to be influenced by misinformation. This phenomenon called
“The Continued Influence Effect” has been extensively studied in the context of all myths, not
just in sustainability or environmentalism. When presented with a contradiction or a correction,
our mind fails to correct any inferences made as a result of the misinformation and it also fails to
‘dump’ or forget the misinformation. This failure to edit however is minimal in effect compared
to the negative effects of a causal gap. A causal gap occurs when a correction is made to
information that was identified as, or used to create and inference to explain, a cause and effect

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relationship without convincingly replacing that causal explanation. People will default to an
incorrect explanation over an incomplete explanation.
The dangers of debunking a myth are clear, however there are ways to avoid those
backfire effects. Compiled into one strategy, the elements of an effective correction involve four
major components; core facts, explicit warnings, an alternative explanation, and clear
presentation. The refutation of misinformation should emphasize clear and simple key facts,
which should be the focus at the beginning, middle, and end. Anytime the myth is mentioned,
note before presenting it, that it is misinformation. The key facts should give an alternative,
plausible and complete explanation for causation. Explanation of why the myth is wrong, or
explaining the use of rhetorical techniques that influenced the myth such as cherry picking or
fake experts can also be employed. Finally, any information presented should be, if possible,
shown in aesthetically pleasing and digestible methods such as graphs or other visuals.
The outcome of this research is what I have titled The Green Office Debunking Guide.
This guide is for Green Office Fellows to use as an introduction to the cognitive processes that
lead misinformation to be turned into myths. It contains a distillation of the research that I did on
myth debunking beginning with the influence of misinformation itself. Sections of the guide
include possible backfire effects, strategies to debunk myths, and common myths heard at
UMass along with examples of how those can be addressed. Looking at other Green Office
Programs, this topic is unaddressed. For the most part, no comparable school programs published
direct methods of dealing with misinformation. Many schools had visual materials the addressed
myths or misinformation in a passive way. For example Harvard University’s sustainability
program had over 25 visual resources in their ‘Green Tip of the Month’ initiative. While this can

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be an effective strategy, only some of them were directed at addressing misinformation, and did
not relate to my research.
I hope that the guide will be a great resource to future fellows in how they handle myths
in the context of their walkthroughs. Though I did not get to put the guide itself into practice, I
tried out a few of the strategies over the last few weeks of my fellowship and found that my
research was relevant and helpful. While writing the guide I used the opportunity in weekly
meetings to ask other fellows for common myths that they heard and what they would like to see
from it. For the future I think the guide could be used not only for fellows addressing myths
during interactions with Eco-leaders, but also in general. Some myths are so prevalent that
everyone on the UMass campus could use the debunking. A way to address a larger audience
would be through a “Myth of the Month” that could be posted on the Sustainable UMass website
or sent out in a newsletter to Eco-leaders. The guide would be useful in creating these, and could
be expanded as more myths are identified through the program.

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Works Cited
Cook, Lewandowsky. “the Debunking handbook”
"Green Office Program." Sustainable UMass. University of Massachusetts Amherst, n.d. Web.
16 Dec. 2015.
Seifert C. M. (2002). The continued influence of misinformation in memory: What makes a
correction effective? Psychology of Learning and Motivation: Advances in Research and Theory,
41, 265-292.