Personal experience with Covid-19 is associated with increased environmental concern and pro-environmental behavioral intentions

Climate change attributable to human activities has created a global threat to humanity and the natural world. However, there is a tendency for people to view climate change as a threat primarily affecting those in far-away places and there is reluctance to engage in pro-environmental action, which is often costly. It is therefore crucial to understand the factors that shape willingness to engage in pro-environmental behavior. Existing research suggests that personal experience with the consequences of climate change may increase pro-environmental action, however it is unknown whether personal experiences in other non-environmental domains may have similar effects. The circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic allowed us to conduct a quasi-natural experiment to examine the effects of personal experience with a different global threat, namely Covid-19, on environmental responses. Across two studies conducted among UK and US participants, we found that personal experience of Covid-19 was associated with pro-environmental behavioral intentions, and that this relationship was mediated by increased environmental concern. We found that personal experience with Covid-19 was associated with stronger self-transcendence values of universalism and benevolence, which played a further mediating role between personal experience with the virus and environmental concern. These findings suggest that personal experience with at least some global threats, even when not directly related to climate change, may increase concern for distant others and also sensitize people to environmental issues and motivate pro-environmental action

The cost of attributing moral blame: Defensiveness and resistance to change when raising awareness to animal suffering in factory farming‏

Social change campaigns often entail raising awareness of harm caused by people’s behavior. For example, campaigns to reduce meat eating frequently highlight the suffering endured by animals. Such messages may simultaneously attribute moral blame to individuals for causing the harm described. Given people’s motivation to protect their moral self-image, we expected that information about the suffering of animals in the meat industry presented with a blaming (versus absolving) frame would generate greater defensiveness and correspondingly resistance to change in support of veg*nism (veganism/vegetarianism). We ran three studies to test this expectation. In two studies, we found that raising awareness of animal suffering using a blaming frame increased defensiveness, leading to lower veg*n-supporting attitudes and behavioral intentions. In one study, our hypothesis was not supported, however, a mini-meta analysis across the three studies suggests the overall pattern is robust. This work expands our understanding of the role of moral self-image preservation in defensiveness and resistance to change, and has applied relevance for the development of effective communication strategies in social and moral campaigns

Why Disagreement Obstructs Constructive Dialogue: The Role of Biased Attribution of Moral Motives

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. September 2014. Major: Psychology. Advisors: Eugene Borgida, Christopher Federico. 1 computer file (PDF); viii, 207 pages.Diversity of opinions is often celebrated as an opportunity to learn from one another and to improve decision-making by widening the scope of considerations informing decisions, and, on the societal level, is lauded as the foundation of liberal democracy. Yet, constructive dialogue across lines of disagreement is often lacking, especially around the more charged and contentious issues of disagreement. The goal of the current research project was to examine the proposition that biased attribution of moral motives plays an adverse role in the relation between disagreement and tolerance of ideational opponents. In particular, it was expected that people impugn the moral motives of those with dissimilar opinions, especially when the issue of contention is held as a moral conviction, and that this biased perception in turn leads to greater intolerance of such opponents. The pattern of results accrued across four studies supports this expectation. Across diverse issues of disagreement, to the extent that participants held their positions with high moral conviction, they were more likely to see their ideational opponents as less morally motivated than themselves, and this biased attribution, in turn, led to more negative attitudes and emotions toward the other, to greater distrust and desire for social distance, and less willingness to work together; all this occurring above and beyond the simultaneous mediating role of biased attribution of ability. These negative outcomes effectively obstruct the likelihood of engagement and constructive dialogue that could advance shared understanding, and ultimately individual and societal progress and well-being. As such, the pattern of results that emerged from the current research suggests that biased attribution of moral motives in the context of moral disagreement deserves greater attention in future studies of interpersonal, organizational, and intergroup relations, as well as democratic processes.Reifen Tagar, Michal. (2014). Why Disagreement Obstructs Constructive Dialogue: The Role of Biased Attribution of Moral Motives. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/183337

The Gender-Binary Cycle

Gender inequality is one of the most pressing issues of our time. A core factor that feeds gender inequality is people’s gender ideology - a set of beliefs about the proper order of society in terms of the roles women and men should fill. We argue that gender ideology is shaped, in large parts, by the way people make sense of gender differences. Specifically, people often think of gender differences as expressions of a predetermined biology, and of men and women as different "kinds". We describe work suggesting that thinking of gender differences in this biological-essentialist way perpetuates a non-egalitarian gender ideology. We then review research that refutes the hypothesis that men and women are different "kinds" in terms of brain function, hormone levels, and personality characteristics. Next, we describe how the organization of the environment in a gender-binary manner, together with cognitive processes of categorization drive a biological-essentialist view of gender differences. We then describe the self-perpetuating relations, which we term the gender-binary cycle, between a biological-essentialist view of gender differences, a non-egalitarian gender ideology, and a binary organization of the environment along gender lines. Finally, we consider means of intervention at different points in this cycle

The gender-binary cycle: the perpetual relations between a biological-essentialist view of gender, gender ideology, and gender-labelling and sorting

Gender inequality is one of the most pressing issues of our time. A core factor that feeds gender inequality is people's gender ideology—a set of beliefs about the proper order of society in terms of the roles women and men should fill. We argue that gender ideology is shaped, in large parts, by the way people make sense of gender differences. Specifically, people often think of gender differences as expressions of a predetermined biology, and of men and women as different ‘kinds’. We describe work suggesting that thinking of gender differences in this biological-essentialist way perpetuates a non-egalitarian gender ideology. We then review research that refutes the hypothesis that men and women are different ‘kinds’ in terms of brain function, hormone levels and personality characteristics. Next, we describe how the organization of the environment in a gender-binary manner, together with cognitive processes of categorization drive a biological-essentialist view of gender differences. We then describe the self-perpetuating relations, which we term the gender-binary cycle , between a biological-essentialist view of gender differences, a non-egalitarian gender ideology and a binary organization of the environment along gender lines. Finally, we consider means of intervention at different points in this cycle. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms’.</jats:p