CRED at Association for Psychological Science Meeting, May 24

CRED will present a symposium titled “Psychological Responses to Climate Change” at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Psychological Science on May 24th in New York. The symposium will take place from 8:30 AM ­– 9:50 AM EST. For more information and to register please visit http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/announcements/2015-aps-annual-convention.html.

Description

Climate change is one of the most important issues of the 21st century‚ a global problem that affects all aspects of our life. However‚ the public does not seem to be very concerned by the problem‚ nor engaged in its solutions. The research presented in this symposium illustrates the role that psychologists can play in addressing these issues. Fox-Glassman and Weber argue that when studying responses to natural hazards and climate change‚ it is important to understand how environmental hazards are perceived. They show that although hazards show great range on the dimension of dread risk‚ they cluster together on the known-unknown dimension. But climate change and sea-level rise are outliers: they are perceived as much more unknown than any of the natural hazards‚ but are much less dreaded than natural or even many technological hazards. These findings explain the lack of engagement on the issue of climate change mitigation and adaptation‚ and point to the need for different communication strategies for climate hazards than for meteorological or geophysical events. Benjamin‚ Por and Budescu focus on the difference between the terms “global warming” and “climate change” with special emphasis on the ideological leanings. They find significant framing effects only for political independents and for those who are disengaged from climate change issues‚ and they document the strongest effects for people whose beliefs are inconsistent with their political identity. The results indicate that polarization overrides attribute framing. Broomell‚ Budescu and Por present results of an international survey (24 countries) measuring general intentions to act and willingness to engage in specific actions. Endorsement of specific actions is lower than general endorsement of mitigation‚ accompanied by higher intra-individual variance‚ and more strongly related to personal experiences with global warming. They provide recommendations on how these findings can be used to encourage mitigation actions. Long time horizons and social distance are often viewed as key barriers to pro-environmental action due to intertemporal and interpersonal discounting‚ particularly in the case of climate change. Zaval‚ Markowitz and Weber report results of two experiments that demonstrate how individuals’ latent motivation to leave a positive legacy can be leveraged to increase engagement with climate change and other long-term environmental problems.

Chair: David Budescu

Chair: Elke Weber

Discussant: Thomas Wallsten