By Kelly Fielding
The European Journal of Social Psychology recently had a special issue on the social psychology of climate change, edited by Kelly Fielding, Matthew Hornsey, and Janet Swim. The issue can be accessedhere.)
Why do some people believe in climate change and others not? What prevents or motivates people to take action to address climate change? How might we get people to change their mind about climate change and to take action? These are critical questions that social psychologists can help to address.
The polls and the media focus on the number of people who do or don’t believe that climate change is happening but for social psychologists, the important and interesting question is why?
One of the major challenges of climate change is that people perceive it as a distant phenomenon in terms of geography and time. We therefore need to find ways to ‘bring to life’ the experience of global warming so that it feels more immediate and less distant. Some recent findings provide potential insights. For example, people have greater belief in climate change on hot days or when they feel warm.
Having personal experience of extreme weather events could also be an important cue. Van Der Linden showed that personal experience of extreme weather events leads to greater perceived risk from climate change and greater knowledge of the causes of climate change leads to more negative emotions about climate change. Risk and negative emotions appear to mutually reinforce each other suggesting that: 1) it is important for people to interpret extreme weather experiences in terms of climate change and, 2) knowledge and feelings are both influences on climate change beliefs.
Understanding what influences climate change attitudes is important, but it’s critical to identify what might prevent the ‘believers’ from taking action. This is where social norms come in.
We like to think that we march to the beat of our drum, but the reality is that we’re influenced by what others do and what they think we should do, especially if we think of those ‘others’ as one of ‘us’. So, political conservatives are less likely to believe in climate change and vice versa for political progressives, because these attitudes align with the norms of their political groups.
But do the attitudes of political progressives always translate into action?
One important explanation for the gap between attitudes and actions is that other people’s behaviour provides us with valuable information: if no one else is reducing their air travel or car use, how important can it be? The research of Bamberg and Rees confirms this: people were more likely to want to take part in a neighbourhood climate protection initiative if they thought others in their neighbhourhood would also take part. Hence, we need to communicate that others are taking action to address climate change, especially other people like us.
What does social psychology tell us about how we can change attitudes and actions?
One key consideration is how we frame messages about climate change. According to the findings of Bertolotti and Catellani people are more likely to support policies when the messages align with the policies. For example, people support policies that promote investment in renewable energy when they are framed in terms of positive, growth-related outcomes whereas there is greater support for a policy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions when it is framed as avoiding negative, safety-related outcomes.
It may also be important to think about how to frame the role of science in addressing climate change. Meijers and Rutjens showed that portraying science as making rapid progress that can enable societies to control future environmental and human health problems reduced the likelihood that people would engage in environmentally friendly behaviour. What this type of framing does is increase our perceived control over climate change, giving us a sense that we don’t need to worry so much about taking action.
The take home message is this: it’s important not to overstate scientific progress and to think carefully about whether your message ‘fits’ with your policy.
Recent approaches to messaging about climate change have presented humans as the villains, The Age of Stupid, is a prime example. But does this type of framing work? Research by Cheung, Luke and Maio suggests that it might. They showed that people who had less altruistic and socially-minded values had stronger environmental engagement when they received negative messages about humanity than when they received positive messages.
As the recent work stemming from the “Nudge” approach has also shown, changing behaviour could be as simple as the instructions you provide to people. For example, McDonald, Newell and Denson showed that people were willing to engage in 30% more pro-environmental behaviours when they were asked to cross off the pro-environmental behaviours that they would not consider doing compared to when they were asked to consider the behaviours they would consider doing.
Social psychology can help us to understand people’s attitudes and actions and how we might change these for the better, and thereby contribute to solutions to address climate change.