Context Does More Than We Think
In 2020, two researchers, Roope Kaaronen and Nikita Strelkovskii, published a study in the scientific journal One Earth. They wanted to understand one specific thing: how a behaviour spreads through a group of people.
Their method is easy to explain. They programmed a small artificial society on a computer. A few hundred individuals, linked to one another by a network of friends and acquaintances, moving through an environment. That environment contains opportunities to act. The researchers call them action opportunities. A bike lane is an action opportunity: it makes cycling possible. A parking space is another: it makes driving possible.
The rules given to these individuals fit in a few lines.
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When an individual comes across an opportunity, they either take it or not, depending on their current disposition.
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If they take it, they build up a little habit. They will be more likely to do it again.
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If they take it, the people around them are slightly influenced. They will be more likely to do the same.
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If they take it, they may slightly modify the environment around them, in the direction of what they have just done.
Nothing more. No rule about beliefs, values or willpower. The researchers then ran the machine thousands of times, changing one single setting each time: the proportion of favourable opportunities present in the environment at the start.
What the machine showed
The result does not look like a steady slope.
When favourable opportunities make up less than half of the environment, the behaviour dies out in the population. When they exceed half, it spreads until it becomes the majority. In between, there is a tipping point.
The concrete figure is worth remembering. Going from 50% to 60% favourable opportunities — a gap of ten points — flips the behaviour of the entire population. At exactly 50%, nothing moves, even when the model runs for a very long time.
In other words: a small change in the environment can produce a very large effect on the behaviour of a group. The link between the two is not proportional.
The researchers checked how solid this result was. They ran the model again, letting all the other settings vary at random. The tipping point still appears. It does not depend on any one particular setting.
The second result
The researchers then tested the other possibility. What happens if you start with individuals who are very well disposed — motivated, convinced — but change nothing in their environment?
The effect exists, but it is far less reliable. Many cases appear in which individuals who started out well disposed end up behaving the opposite way. Either because they did not come across enough opportunities, or because other dispositions took over.
Psychology has a name for this: the attitude-action gap. Knowing and wanting are not enough to make us act.
Copenhagen
A computer model is still a model. So the researchers wanted to check that it produced curves resembling reality. They chose the case of cycling in Copenhagen.
In 1970, there were roughly four drivers for every cyclist in the city centre. By 2018, the two curves had almost crossed.
In between, the city built. Bike lanes, bridges, bicycle parking, a public bicycle scheme from 1995 onwards. The kilometres of cycle track increased steadily, almost in a straight line, year after year.
The number of cyclists did not follow that straight line. It stalled, then began to climb faster and faster. A steady cause, an accelerating effect. Exactly what the model predicted.
What this says about context
Environment has long been treated as scenery. The place where things happen, but not what makes them happen. In many representations, it sits right at the bottom, as the least influential element.
The study shows the opposite. Environment is not scenery. It determines what is possible, what is easy, what is valued. It also determines what is difficult, rare, or unthinkable.
There is a second point, and it matters even more. In the model, influence does not travel in one direction only. The environment makes a behaviour possible. The behaviour creates a habit and spreads to those around us. And the behaviour modifies the environment in return. It is a closed circuit, in which each element acts on the others and is acted upon by them.
So this is not a hierarchy, with levels running from most to least important. It is a system, one you can enter at any point, and where whatever goes in comes back around.
This is precisely what the Matrix of Experience represents: Context does not occupy a level, it surrounds the whole, and the spaces it surrounds influence one another instead of commanding one another. The study reinforces the relevance of that organisation.
An example
Marc wants to get back into sport. He has been talking about it for six years. He is motivated, he buys the gear, he keeps it up for three weeks, then he stops.
His environment offers no opportunity. No venue on his route, no protected time slot, nobody around him who practises.
One thing changes: he joins a group that runs on Tuesdays at 7 p.m., three hundred metres from his home. A concrete opportunity, recurring every week.
What follows plays out in the order the model describes. Marc runs, because the opportunity is there. He builds the habit. The group expects him, shows him how to handle a hill, asks whether he will do the April race: he becomes one of the Tuesday runners, and eventually he recognises himself as one. Then he modifies his environment in turn. He changes his route home, he protects his Tuesday evening, he suggests a Sunday outing, he brings along two colleagues.
The circuit is closed. The opportunity produced the behaviour, the behaviour produced the belonging, and the belonging produced new opportunities.
A useful note
The researchers make a recommendation aimed at cities: keep shaping the environment even when the effects are not yet visible. Because the acceleration only comes after a certain threshold.
The same applies to a person. When someone changes their context and sees nothing for several weeks, it does not mean the method is wrong. Most often it means the threshold has not been reached. That is the moment when people give up, and it is the moment to hold on.
Key points
A small change in context can produce a large change in behaviour, provided a threshold is crossed.
Motivation on its own is a fragile lever. It does not survive an environment that offers nothing.
Influence flows both ways: context shapes what we do, and what we do shapes context.
Source
Kaaronen, R. O., & Strelkovskii, N. (2020). Cultural Evolution of Sustainable Behaviors: Pro-environmental Tipping Points in an Agent-Based Model. One Earth, 2(1), 85–97. Open access.