Psychological responses to the proximity of climate change

Brügger, Adrian, Dessai, Suraje, Devine-Wright, Patrick, Morton, Thomas A. and Pidgeon, Nicholas F. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8991-0398 2015. Psychological responses to the proximity of climate change. Nature Climate Change 5 (12) , pp. 1031-1037. 10.1038/nclimate2760

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Abstract

A frequent suggestion to increase individuals' willingness to take action on climate change and to support relevant policies is to highlight its proximal consequences, that is, those that are close in space and time. But previous studies that have tested this proximizing approach have not revealed the expected positive effects on individual action and support for addressing climate change. We present three lines of psychological reasoning that provide compelling arguments as to why highlighting proximal impacts of climate change might not be as effective a way to increase individual mitigation and adaptation efforts as is often assumed. Our contextualization of the proximizing approach within established psychological research suggests that, depending on the particular theoretical perspective one takes on this issue, and on specific individual characteristics suggested by these perspectives, proximizing can bring about the intended positive effects, can have no (visible) effect or can even backfire. Thus, the effects of proximizing are much more complex than is commonly assumed. Revealing this complexity contributes to a refined theoretical understanding of the role that psychological distance plays in the context of climate change and opens up further avenues for future research and for interventions.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology
Publisher:	Nature
ISSN:	1758-678X
Date of Acceptance:	15 July 2015
Last Modified:	02 Nov 2022 11:53
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/103476

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