Against the odds: Hope as an antecedent of support for climate change action

Development and validation of the Emotional Climate Change Stories (ECCS) stimuli set

Climate change is widely recognised as an urgent issue, and the number of people concerned about it is increasing. While emotions are among the strongest predictors of behaviour change in the face of climate change, researchers have only recently begun to investigate this topic experimentally. This may be due to the lack of standardised, validated stimuli that would make studying such a topic in experimental settings possible. Here, we introduce a novel Emotional Climate Change Stories (ECCS) stimuli set. ECCS consists of 180 realistic short stories about climate change, designed to evoke five distinct emotions-anger, anxiety, compassion, guilt and hope-in addition to neutral stories. The stories were created based on qualitative data collected in two independent studies: one conducted among individuals highly concerned about climate change, and another one conducted in the general population. The stories were rated on the scales of valence, arousal, anger, anxiety, compassion, guilt and hope in the course of three independent studies. First, we explored the underlying structure of ratings (Study 1; n = 601). Then we investigated the replicability (Study 2; n = 307) and cross-cultural validity (Study 3; n = 346) of ECCS. The collected ratings were highly consistent across the studies. Furthermore, we found that the level of climate change concern explained the intensity of elicited emotions. The ECCS dataset is available in Polish, Norwegian and English and can be employed for experimental research on climate communication, environmental attitudes, climate action-taking, or mental health and wellbeing.

Awareness, worry, and hope regarding climate change among nurses: A cross-sectional study

PURPOSE

The aim of this study is to determine nurses' awareness, worry and hope levels about climate change.

DESIGN AND METHODS

This cross-sectional study was conducted with 511 nurses. Data were collected using a Personal Information Form, the Global Climate Change Awareness Scale, the Climate Change Worry Scale, and the Climate Change Hope Scale.

FINDINGS

The mean scores of the participating nurses obtained from the Climate Change Awareness Scale (71.72 ± 18.11) and Climate Change Worry Scale (35.36 ± 10.51) and Climate Change Hope Scale (38.67 ± 8.80) were moderate, and there was a significant positive correlation between them.

CONCLUSIONS

The nurses who participated in this study had moderate levels of climate change-related awareness, worry, and hope. As their climate change awareness scores increased, their worry and hope scores also increased. Interventions that will raise climate change awareness in nurses such as education programs and awareness campaigns may increase their levels of worry and hope that will mobilize them for the solution to the climate change problem.

Hopium or empowering hope? A meta-analysis of hope and climate engagement

Researchers are increasingly examining whether hope can motivate action on climate change, or conversely, whether it might demotivate such action. We present a meta-analysis (k = 46) of quantitative studies examining the relationships between measures and manipulations of hope with climate engagement. On average, measured hope was associated with greater climate engagement (r = 0.18); however, this effect differed based on the target of hope. Hope regarding the possibility of respondents taking action was particularly strongly associated with greater engagement (r = 0.40), while in contrast, hope grounded in climate change not being a problem was associated with less engagement (r = -0.40). Hope in response to climate change generally, and domain-general hope, were only weakly associated with greater engagement (rs = 0.13, 0.20). On average, hope manipulations fostered increased engagement, though the increase was small (Cohen's d = 0.08). Subgroup analyses suggested two promising types of hope manipulations warranting future research: personal efficacy (k = 2, d = 0.18) and in-depth (k = 2, d = 0.49). In contrast, messages suggesting societal efficacy (i.e., providing a sense of possibility that climate change could be addressed) did not significantly or substantially boost (nor discourage) engagement (d = 0.05), and status quo-framed messages (i.e., messages highlighting that environmental conditions could stay the same if climate action is taken) had a marginally significant negative effect on engagement (d = -0.18). After excluding a single outlier, the extent to which manipulations increased hope were not correlated with increases in climate engagement, suggesting the possibility that hope might be incidental to the success of some manipulations rather than a necessary component for promoting engagement. Overall, our meta-analysis does not suggest that increasing hope decreases climate engagement, with the possible exceptions of denial hope and status quo framed messages. Conversely, however, results provide partial yet inconclusive evidence for the hypothesis that increasing hope increases climate engagement. Given the existing published literature, we argue that future researchers should consider study designs that align with theoretical perspectives on how hope promotes climate engagement (e.g., longitudinal designs) and also consider directly assessing populations of interest (e.g., climate activists).

Hope and climate-change engagement from a psychological perspective

This article reviews recent research about climate-change hope and engagement. Cognitive climate-change hope is consistently positively related to engagement, while the results are less consistent regarding hope as an emotion. It is argued that when conducting research about hope as an emotion sources of hope need to be considered, since they can be both constructive and less constructive seen from a climate-change engagement perspective. Additionally, collective climate-change action can lead to constructive hope. The conclusion is that in future research there is a need to go beyond the dichotomy between cognition and emotion and in interventions to go beyond optimistic messages and take into account preconditions for constructive hope.

Emotional and spiritual hope: Back to the future

A cognitive approach to hope has dominated psychology for five decades. Representing the farthest reaches of human intentionality, hope, thus rendered, can be viewed as both a product and promoter of the cognitive revolution and larger Western ideals. A different understanding of hope appears in medicine, the arts and humanities, as well as early psychological accounts. In this article, I review evidence for understanding hope as an emotion with extra-rational elements. I focus on recent research but also incorporate classic insights, highlighting grounded studies (e.g., lay beliefs and clinical data) as well as empirical data that distinguishes an emotional and spiritual hope from the cognitive construct. A motivational account of hope is offered, highlighting the needs for attachment, survival, mastery, and spirituality.

Dimensions of uncertainty communication: What is conveyed by verbal terms and numeric ranges

The paper reviews two strands of research on communication of uncertainty that usually have been investigated separately: (1) Probabilities attached to specific outcomes, and (2) Range judgments. Probabilities are sometimes expressed by verbal phrases ("rain is likely") and at other times in a numeric format ("70% chance of rain"), whereas range judgments describe the potential amounts expected ("1-4 mm of rain"). Examination of previous research shows that both descriptions convey, in addition to the strength of expectations, pragmatic information about the communicative situation. For instance, so-called verbal probability expressions (VPE), as likely, unlikely, a chance, or not certain give some, albeit vague, probabilistic information, but carry in addition an implicit message about the sources of uncertainty, the outcome's valence and severity, along with information about the speakers' attitudes and their communicative intentions. VPEs are directional by drawing attention either to an outcome's occurrence ("it is possible") or to its non-occurrence ("it is doubtful"). In this sense they may be more informative than numbers. Uncertainties about outcomes in a distribution (continuous quantities) are alternatively expressed as interval estimates. The width of such intervals can function as a cue to credibility and expertise. Incomplete, one-sided intervals, where only one boundary is stated, imply directionality. "More than 100 people" suggests a crowd, while "less than 200" implies a shortfall. As with VPEs, directionally positive intervals are more frequent, and perhaps more neutral than negative ones. To convey expectancies and uncertainty in a balanced way, communicators may have to alternate between complementary frames.

Toward Culturally Sensitive Development Paradigms: New Shifts, Limitations, and the Role of (Cross-) Cultural Psychology

In this paper, we tackle three central questions: (1) How is cultural sensitivity currently shaping development agendas? (2) How can collaborations between development agencies and (cross-) cultural psychologists ensure that development priorities are culturally sensitive and bottom-up, rather than culturally universal and top-down? And finally, (3) How can utopian thinking be used as a bottom-up research device to tap into the content of the social imaginary of people across cultures and contexts in a way that can inform and guide development paradigms? We review relevant literatures and research from development agencies, cultural, and cross-cultural psychology, highlight advancements in devising culturally sensitive development goals, and advocate for a bottom-up approach to prioritizing needs and goals of citizens across different cultures. To that end, we propose that utopian thinking could be leveraged as a culturally sensitive research tool that could illuminate culturally specific development needs and goals that have been left untapped by contemporary development approaches. We conclude by reiterating the importance of leveraging knowledge, research methods, and expertise from cultural and cross-cultural psychology to reach the ultimate development goal—the improvement of the human condition in a sustainable, equitable manner.

The Relationship between Social Norms, Avoidance, Future Orientation, and Willingness to Engage in Climate Change Advocacy Communications

This study examined factors associated with willingness to engage in communication behaviors related to climate change advocacy. Data were collected as part of an online, longitudinal US study beginning in March 2020. Outcomes included willingness to post materials online, contact state legislators, and talk with peers about climate change. Covariates included climate change-related social norms, avoidance of climate change information, and perceptions of the future impact of climate change. A minority of the 586 respondents (23%) reported regular conversations about climate change, while approximately half of the respondents reported willingness to discuss climate change with peers (58%), post materials online (47%), and contact state legislators (46%). Strong predictors of willingness to engage in each climate change communications behaviors included climate change social norms, not avoiding climate change information, and believing that climate change will have a negative impact on the future. Findings indicate the importance of designing programs to foster increased climate change communications in order to promote community-level climate change advocacy norms.

Challenging the Idea That Humans Are Not Designed to Solve Climate Change

In the face of a slow and inadequate global response to anthropogenic climate change, scholars and journalists frequently claim that human psychology is not designed or evolved to solve the problem, and they highlight a range of "psychological barriers" to climate action. Here, we critically examine this claim and the evidence on which it is based. We identify four key problems with attributing climate inaction to "human nature" or evolved psychological barriers: (a) It minimizes variability within and between populations; (b) it oversimplifies psychological research and its implications for policy; (c) it frames responsibility for climate change in terms of the individual at the expense of the role of other aspects of culture, including institutional actors; and (d) it rationalizes inaction. For these reasons, the message from social scientists must be clear-humans' current collective failure to tackle climate change on the scale required cannot be explained as a product of a universal and fixed human nature because it is a fundamentally cultural phenomenon, reflecting culturally evolved values, norms, institutions, and technologies that can and must change rapidly.

It's About Time! Identifying and Explaining Unique Trajectories of Solidarity-Based Collective Action to Support People in Developing Countries

Social change occurs over years and decades, yet we know little about how people sustain, increase or diminish their actions over time, and why they do so. This article examines diverging trajectories of solidarity-based collective action to support people in developing nations more than 5 years. We suggest that sustained, diminished, and/or increased action over time will be predicted by identification as a supporter, group efficacy beliefs, and discrete emotions about disadvantage. Latent Growth Mixture Models (N = 483) revealed two trajectories with unique signatures: an activist supporter trajectory with a higher intercept and weakly declining action; and a benevolent supporter trajectory with a lower intercept but weakly increasing action. The activist trajectory was predicted by social identification, outrage, and hope, whereas the benevolent supporter trajectory was predicted by sympathy. The results highlight the role of combinations of emotions and the need for person-centered longitudinal methods in collective action research.

Affect, (group-based) emotions, and climate change action

While there is little scientific doubt that the climate is actually changing, people are relatively averse to taking action. To better understand climate change (in-)action, I will summarize the recent literature that examines the affective and emotional processes associated with climate change. Currently, mainly two routes are discussed: first, the study of affective responses to risk perception and second, conceptualizing climate action as a collective phenomenon. Studies show that personal relevance and perceived importance of environmental issues increase risk perception and that collective environmental actions are driven by group-based emotions. However, instead of focusing mainly on negative affect and (group-based) emotions, such as 'eco guilt' or fear related to climate change, I conclude by suggesting a more optimistic and positive approach to establish new norms of climate-friendly lifestyles and policies.

Investigating similarities and differences in individual reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis

How can individuals' responses to the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic be used to inform constructive responses for climate action? We present an exploratory, mixed-methods investigation (N = 1784 US adults) into similarities and differences in individuals' reactions to COVID-19 and climate change in June 2020. Participants identified many similarities between the issues, indicating that both are harmful to public health, politically polarizing, have global impacts, and have solutions. Participants also perceived many differences between the two threats: many perceived COVID-19 as medical, natural, and on a shorter timescale, while many perceived climate change as environmental, human caused, and on a longer timescale. Emotional reactions to each topic predict topic-relevant behaviors, but more strongly, and with a broader range of emotional reactions, for climate change than COVID-19. Open-ended responses show that hope was elicited for both issues in response to contemplating taking collective and individual actions, and despair was elicited for both issues in response to perceiving that others do not take the issues seriously. Finally, participants perceived that they were engaging in relatively more COVID-19 mitigation behaviors and some climate change mitigation behaviors than others (i.e., the "better-than-average" effect). Many participants believed others were relatively unconcerned about both threats because of the invisibility of the threats, ignorance, and elite cues (e.g., then-President Trump downplaying the threat).

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10584-021-03143-8.

Collective climate action: When do people turn into collective environmental agents?

Effectively protecting the climate requires the action of groups. In the present review article, we aim to understand when individuals turn into collective climate actors. We first discuss pertinent models of group-based action and their relevance for explaining climate action. Then, we review recent research on how collective climate action is driven by ingroup identification, social norms, group-based emotions, and collective efficacy. Finally, we focus on when and why people feel a sense of collective agency aiming at inspiring a novel research agenda on collective climate action.