Emotions predict policy support: Why it matters how people feel about climate change

Current research shows that emotions can motivate climate engagement and action, but precisely how has received scant attention. We propose that strong emotional responses to climate change result from perceiving one\u27s “objects of care” as threatened by climate change, which motivates caring about climate change itself, and in turn predicts behaviour. In two studies, we find that climate scientists (N = 44) experience greater emotional intensity about climate change than do students (N = 94) and the general population (N = 205), and that patterns of emotional responses explain differences in support for climate change policy. Scientists tied their emotional responses to concern about consequences of climate change to future generations and the planet, as well as personal identities associated with responsibility to act. Our findings suggest that “objects of care” that link people to climate change may be crucial to understanding why some people feel more strongly about the issue than others, and how emotions can prompt actio

Anwendung des Modells der kollektiven Wirksamkeit beim Verständnis des pro-ökologischen Verhaltens von Verbrauchern und Bürgern

Collective efficacy has been shown to be a significant predictor of people’s ability to intervene effectively on social issues. We examine people’s belief in their collective efficacy and ask if it is useful in understanding pro-environmental behaviour. A survey of 5030 Australians was undertaken in 2011 to understand how Australians across metropolitan, regional and rural Australia think about collective efficacy in relation to climate change and pro-environmental behaviour. Based on previous research, we hypothesised that a sense of collective efficacy on climate change would mediate the relationship between a set of independent variables and pro-environmental consumer and civic actions as follows: education and income might influence individual agency, political persuasion might influence individual inclination, trust in institutions and community involvement relate to social capital and hence scope for collective action. The final models predicted 31% of the variance in consumer actions and 28% of the variance in civic actions. In particular, trust in environmental organisations was found to have the most significant role in predicting both collective efficacy and pro-environmental behaviours.Kolektivna učinkovitost pokazala se značajnim prediktorom učinkovitog uključenja ljudi u različita društvena pitanja. U ovom radu istražujemo koliko ljudi vjeruju u vlastitu kolektivnu učinkovitost te koliko je ona korisna za razumijevanje pro-ekološkog ponašanja. Provedeno je istraživanje 2011. na 5030 građana i građanki Australije, u metropolitanskom području, s obzirom na regionalne razlike te u ruralnoj Australiji, kojim su ispitana njihova mišljenja o kolektivnoj učinkovitosti u vezi s pitanjem klimatskih promjena i pro-ekološkim ponašanjem. Na temelju prethodnih istraživanja, postavljena je glavna hipoteza da će razvijenost osjećaja za kolektivnu učinkovitost vezano za pitanje klimatskih promjena utjecati na odnos između odabranog skupa nezavisnih varijabli te potrošačkog i građanskog pro-ekološkog ponašanja, i to na sljedeći način: obrazovanje i imovinski status bit će povezani s ponašanjem pojedinaca, politička orijentacija bit će povezana sa spremnošću pojedinaca na pro-ekološko ponašanje, dok će povjerenje u institucije i razina uključenosti zajednice biti povezani s društvenim kapitalom, odnosno imati utjecaja na kolektivno djelovanje. U konačnici, model je predvidio 31% varijance potrošačkog i 28% varijance građanskog ponašanja. Specifičnije, povjerenje u ekološke organizacije pokazalo se najznačajnijim u predviđanju i kolektivne učinkovitosti i pro-ekološkog ponašanja.Die kollektive Wirksamkeit hat sich als ein bedeutsamer Prädiktor für eine effiziente Teilnahme von Menschen an verschiedenen Gesellschaftsfragen erwiesen. In dieser Arbeit untersuchen wir, in welchem Ausmaß Menschen an die eigene kollektive Wirksamkeit glauben und wie nützlich sie für das Verständnis des pro-ökologischen Verhaltens ist. Im Jahr 2011 wurde eine Forschung an 5030 Bürgern und Bürgerinnen aus Australien durchgeführt, im Bereich der Hauptstadt und im ländlichen Teil Australiens, hinsichtlich der regionalen Unterschiede, es wurden die Meinungen über die kollektive Wirksamkeit erfragt in puncto des Klimawandels und des pro-ökologischen Verhaltens. Auf Grund der vorherigen Forschung wurde die Haupthypothese gestellt, dass ein entwickeltes Gefühl für die kollektive Wirksamkeit im Bezug auf den Klimawandel die Beziehung zwischen einer gewählten Menge der unabhängigen Variablen und des pro-ökologischen Verhaltens von Verbrauchern und Bürgern beeinflussen wird, und zwar auf folgende Art und Weise: Bildung und Vermögensstand werden das Verhalten beeinflussen, politische Orientierung wird die Bereitschaft zum pro-ökologisches Verhalten beeinflussen, das Vertrauen in Institutionen und die Beteiligung daran werden mit dem Gesellschaftskapital verbunden sein, bzw. sie werden die kollektive Wirksamkeit beeinflussen. Schließlich hat das Modell 31% der Varianz des Verbraucher- und 28% der Varianz des Bürgerverhaltens vorgesehen. Genauer gesagt hat sich das Vertrauen in Umweltorganisationen als das bedeutendste Faktor bei Vorhersagen sowohl für die kollektive Wirksamkeit als auch für das pro-ökologische Verhalten gezeigt

The social and psychological functions of responses to climate change

Climate change is the most pressing environmental threat faced by humans, yet responses – individually, collectively, and politically – have frequently lacked urgency. Why a threat of such magnitude should meet with inaction is a topic of growing conjecture among social science researchers. Social psychologists in particular have increasingly focused on the possible psychological mechanisms underlying denial and scepticism of anthropogenic climate change. I argue that all responses to climate change can be considered rational and adaptive, because these responses (be they opinions, emotions, or behaviour) afford the individual functional value.In this thesis, I examine what underlies the discordance between climate change threat and response by applying a functional analysis to responses associated with climate change. This analysis is theoretically guided by a motivated social cognition approach. I use the term to refer to theories and perspectives that assume that people’s values, attitudes, and beliefs have motivational underpinnings, and satisfy certain psychological and social needs. These motivations affect reasoning and belief and attitude formation by biasing how information is processed. The approach incorporates accounts such as motivated reasoning, interpersonal and social identity theories, social and system-level legitimacy theories, moral disengagement, and Terror Management Theory. Drawing upon these accounts, I construct a framework detailing the various goals and needs that responses to climate change might function to fulfil.Five main functional areas are identified: the reduction of internal psychological discomfort, self-image and self-esteem maintenance, the maximisation of positive affect, social-system justification, and effort reduction. To test aspects of the framework, I conducted two online national surveys: one in July-August 2010 (N = 5036), the other in July-August 2011 (N = 5030). A total of 1355 respondents completed both surveys. Respondents were asked about their beliefs, opinions, attitudes, and behaviours relevant to climate change, as well as individual difference measures, their levels of support for climate change policy, their emotional responses, and personal and image associations with climate change. In addition, four workshops (total N = 52) were undertaken in December 2010 and March 2011. These workshops were designed to elicit implicit associations and attendant emotions associated with climate change imagery drawn from the national surveys.Analyses of national survey data revealed several key findings: * The scientific consensus that climate change is happening, and is mostly caused by human activity, is not reflected in the opinions of the broader community; * While opinions about the causes of climate change are important in understanding pro-environmental behaviour, considerable variation in behaviour exists within opinion-types; * Negative high-arousal emotions are linked to climate change acceptance and pro-environmental behaviour; * Levels of moral engagement are central to action on climate change, and mediate the link between opinions and behaviour; * Those sceptical of climate change still consider big-polluting countries and multi-national corporations as partly responsible for both causing and responding to it; * Estimates about what the Australian community thinks about climate change differ markedly from actual opinions, and nearly everybody overestimates the levels of ‘climate change denial’ in the Australian community; * Underlying ideological values associated with system justification explain relationships with climate change responses above and beyond political preferences.Analyses of both the survey and workshop data revealed that politicians dominate who we associate with climate change, while scientists and people close to us are less commonly associated with climate change. Images commonly associated with climate change were broad and remote, although national-level impacts of climate change were salient for many people.Together, the results support the idea that responses function to fulfil different needs and goals for individuals, such as a need for social support, the negation of guilt and existential anxiety, maintaining a coherent self-identity, feeling morally adequate, and seeing prevailing social and economic systems as just. I conclude the thesis by modelling the psychological processes involved in fulfilling these needs and goals, and the expressions through which they might be observed with respect to responses to climate change. In particular, the model articulates how the implicit associations of individuals are shaped by societal, group, and intra-individual forces, and by the biased searching of sets of rules and beliefs. A series of recommendations for climate communicators is provided, including framing climate change in such a way as to appeal to competing needs and goals concurrently, alongside an overview of future research directions, and an explanation of why I probably won’t ride my bicycle to work tomorrow

Overestimating one’s “green” behavior: Better-than-average bias may function to reduce perceived personal threat from climate change

The actions of others, and what others approve of, can be a powerful tool for promoting proenvironmental behavior. A potential barrier to the utility of social norms, however, are cognitive biases in how people perceive themselves and others, including the better‐than‐average effect. This effect describes the tendency for people to think they are exceptional, especially when compared with their peers. To investigate the role of the better‐than‐average effect in proenvironmental behavior, we administered questions as part of a larger online survey of 5,219 nationally representative Australians. Participants were asked to report whether they engaged in a list of 21 proenvironmental behaviors, and then asked to estimate how their engagement compared with that of the average Australian. Over half of our participants self‐enhanced; they overestimated their engagement in proenvironmental behaviors relative to others. Self‐enhancement was related to reduced perceptions of personal harm from climate change, more favorable assessments of coping ability, less guilt, and lower moral and ethical duty to take action to prevent climate change. These relationships held when participants skeptical about anthropogenic climate change were removed from analyses. We discuss the implications of the findings for the use of social norms in promoting proenvironmental behavior

\u27They\u27re discriminated against, but so are we’: White Australian-born perceptions of ingroup and immigrant discrimination over time are not zero sum

We examined whether zero‐sum thinking explains White Australian‐born people\u27s majority‐culture perceptions of discrimination towards their ingroup and an outgroup (immigrants), and the relationships among perceived discrimination and support for multiculturalism and immigration. Two correlational cross‐sectional studies were conducted among self‐identified White Australians (Study 1, N = 517), and White Americans (Study 2, N = 273), as well as an experiment among White Australians (Study 3, N = 121) in which we manipulated discrimination towards immigrants over time. Our findings did not support a zero‐sum account but revealed that perceptions of group discrimination were positively correlated: a case of ‘they\u27re discriminated against, but so are we’ rather than ‘if they gain, we lose’. Moreover, concerns about future discrimination of the ingroup were most predictive of opposition to multicultural policy and immigration. We argue our findings are more consistent with a competitive victimhood account of intergroup relations than a zero‐sum thinking account

Australians underestimate social compliance with coronavirus restrictions: Findings from a national survey

Objective: We assessed differences between Australians’ perceptions of their own compliance with coronavirus restrictions and their perceptions of community compliance. Methods: We surveyed a national quota sample of 1,691 Australians in August and September 2020. Participants reported their level of compliance with coronavirus restrictions and estimated compliance from others in their state/territory. Results: Overwhelmingly, most people reported complying with restrictions. They believed their fellow community members were much less compliant. Age and other demographics were only weakly associated with self-reported compliance and perceptions of others’ compliance. Conclusions: The results are consistent with prevalent cognitive biases, including the tendency to believe one is better-than-average, and to more easily recall instances of deviances from social norms. Implications for public health: We recommend public health messaging avoids amplifying instances of social transgressions of coronavirus restrictions. Instead, the widespread nature of social compliance with restrictions across the country should be emphasised

The role of relative deprivation in majority-culture support for multiculturalism

In this paper, we investigate majority-culture attitudes to multicultural policy in Australia. Drawing on relative deprivation (RD) theory, we explore whether resistance to multicultural policies and initiatives is related to individual and/or group-based grievance claims of discrimination. To assess RD, we asked 517 Australian-born people who identified as White Australians to rate (a) levels of discrimination toward their own group, toward themselves personally as a consequence of their group membership, and toward immigrants to Australia, and (b) feelings of injustice and anger associated with such discrimination. Our findings show that, while perceptions of discrimination toward majority-culture Australians are commonplace, perceptions of discrimination toward immigrants are more so. We also found that higher ratings of group-based RD of Australians relative to immigrants, but not individual deprivation relative to immigrants, predicted opposition to multicultural policies and initiatives. Moreover, perceived group-based RD mediated the link between national identification and opposition to multicultural policies. The findings highlight, for the first time, the importance of group-based grievance claims by majority-culture members in opposing or supporting multicultural policy. © 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Support for climate-driven migration in Australia : testing an ideology-based threat model

We examine Australians’ preferences for resettling people displaced by climate change from overseas (‘climate refugees’), from within Australia (‘internal climate refugees’), and people displaced by war. Across three studies (Study 1N = 467, Study 2N = 1679, Study 3N = 492), our findings reveal greater support for resettling refugee groups already residing in the nation: internal climate refugees and refugees of war. Although support for all three groups was reasonably high, participants were consistently and significantly less supportive of resettling international climate refugees. Both groups of international refugees (relocating due to war or climate changes) were viewed as posing greater threat than internally displaced Australians. Endorsement of right-wing ideological attitudes predicted lower support for climate refugees, which was mediated by symbolic and realistic threat perceptions. These findings highlight the potential of ideology, economic and cultural concerns to undermine support for resettling those displaced by climate change

Linkages between ecosystem services and human wellbeing: A Nexus Webs approach

Ecosystems provide benefits to people, and, in turn, people individually and collectively affect the functioning and wellbeing of ecosystems. Interdependencies between ecosystem services and human wellbeing are critical for the sustainable future of ecosystems and human systems alike, but they are not well understood. We offer an account of these interdependencies from the perspective of social psychology. Using the Nexus Webs framework (Overton et al., 2013), we explore how a fuller knowledge of coupled social-ecological systems will benefit resource management and decision-making in contested spaces. We challenge the tacit notion that ecosystem health and human wellbeing are linearly related, and suggest human wellbeing may affect ecosystem health. We outline the multiple construals of the construct ‘wellbeing’, and identify additional psychological constructs of importance. We examine how the benefits of ecosystems for human wellbeing may accrue differently across regions and across people. Four areas for future research are identified

Host-member misperceptions about what others expect of immigrants: The role of personal attitudes, voting behaviour, and right-wing authoritarianism

Concordant acculturation expectations and preferences between a host society and its immigrants are important for social cohesion. But perceptions of others' attitudes are often distorted, and may extend to intracultural misperceptions about what others in one's own society expect for immigrants. We test whether attitudinal misperceptions operate in the context of host-members' acculturation expectations of immigrants -preferences about whether newcomers should embrace the majority culture, or maintain their own cultural heritage. Further, we test whether the conservative dimension of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA-C) drives both personal acculturation expectations and distortions about what others expect. We surveyed a representative sample of 2,013 Australian citizens about their own acculturation expectations for immigrants and their perceptions of the expectations of the host society in general. People significantly overestimated the extent to which fellow host society members expect immigrants to embrace the host culture, and underestimated expectations that immigrants retain their own culture. Voting behaviour and RWA-C were related to personal acculturation expectations and to perceptions of host society consensus with their own views (self-other discrepancy). Moreover, personal acculturation expectations mediated the link between RWA-C and perceived self-other discrepancy. The psychological bases of these misperceptions, and their potential ramifications for immigrants, are discussed.This research was supported by Edith Cowan University (G1003405)