Climate Change Appeals May Be More Effective When They ’re Pessimistic

By Emily Reynolds There’s no getting around the fact that climate change is an existential crisis of the highest order — but how best to communicate that threat is unclear. Too much pessimism and people become paralysed with anxiety, pushing thoughts about the crisis away altogether. Too much optimism, on the other hand, can lead to complacency — if things are going to be okay, why would we feel the need to engage with what’s going on? It’s this tension that Brandi S. Morris and colleagues from Aarhus University explore in a new study, published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. They suggest that climate change appeals with pessimistic endings could trigger higher engagement with the issue than those that end on an optimistic note. In the first study, 200 participants were presented with a transcript of a video about bees and climate change that had either an optimistic or pessimistic ending: in the optimistic condition, participants read that younger beekeepers were learning about and taking action on climate change, while in the pessimistic condition they read that bees were dying “at an alarming rate”. After this, they answered questions about their emotional response (e.g. how emotionally intense it had been to read the article), their beliefs in climate change (how much of a risk they feel it poses to human health), and their political ideology. Participants in the pessimistic condition felt that climate change was more of a...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: environmental Language Source Type: blogs