Climate scientist and renowned science communicator Katherine Hayhoe recently posted on Threads about why people may be less likely to discuss scientific findings about climate change: because it “invokes feelings of helplessness, fear, and guilt”, and it’s an understandable instinct to avoid those emotions.

 

Post by @katharinehayhoe

View on Threads

 

The post was prompted by a widely-shared graph from the Climate Reanalyzer (from the University of Maine) showing how extremely warm global ocean temperatures have been in recent months. A jagged black line at the top of the graph is alarming: it shows record-high water temperatures that have exceeded 21 degrees Celsius for over a year.

“Piling on the fear isn’t going to get the climate action we need, if people can’t connect all the worry (in our heads) to why we care (our hearts) and what we can do about it (our hands)”, Hayhoe continued. “Psychological distance and lack of efficacy are our two biggest barriers to action. We can overcome them by helping people make the head-heart-hands connection.”

Psychological distance

Psychological distance is “a cognitive separation between the self and other instances such as persons, events, or times.” Efficacy means people’s perceptions of whether they are able to engage in a particular behaviour (e.g., is it possible/feasible to eat a vegan diet), and perceptions of whether this behaviour will be effective in reducing the impacts of climate change (will eating a vegan diet reduce my carbon footprint?).

Research published in One Earth by our colleagues Anne van Valkengoed, Linda Steg and Goda Perlaviciute has found that psychological distance as a barrier to climate action is actually often overestimated:

“One widely assumed reason for why people across the globe do not take enough climate action is because they perceive climate change as psychologically distant, namely as happening far away and/or in the far future”, the study reads. “Opinion polls show that most people actually perceive climate change as occurring now and close by. Seeing climate change as more distant does not necessarily result in less climate action, and reducing psychological distance does not reliably increase climate action.”

In their review paper “The psychological distance of climate change is overestimated”, Van Valkengoed, Steg and Perlaviciute examined whether people think climate change is psychologically distant based on four different indicators:

• temporal distance (is it happening now, or in the future?)
• spatial distance (is it affecting my location, or locations far away?)
• perceived personal risk (will I/my family be affected?)
• personal experiences (have I already experienced the consequences of climate change?)

In doing so, a distinction was made between believing in climate change and believing that it will have (or is already having) a negative impact on their lives.

Personal harm

To that end, they cited a study by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication that polled people around the globe about how concerned they are about climate change impacting them and future generations.

In the Yale study, people could respond to the question ‘how much do you think climate change will harm you personally’ with the answers ‘a great deal’, ‘a moderate amount’, ‘only a little’ or ‘not at all’. Regional graphics (such as the one from Europe featured below) included all of these responses, but a graphic with a global overview only visualized how many people think it will harm them ‘a great deal’.

Including the full range of responses makes clear that a majority of respondents in most regions feel that climate change will personally harm them either a moderate or great amount.

In most countries, a minority of people said climate change would harm them ‘only a little’. In nearly all cases, ‘a great deal’, ‘a moderate amount’ and ‘only a little’ were much likelier responses than ‘not at all’. It is also worth noting that there was a relatively large group of people that indicated they don’t know how much they will be personally harmed.

Efficacy

Other research by Valkengoed, Perlaviciute and Steg also has implications for how big a role one of the other barriers cited by Hayhoe – efficacy – plays in acting on climate change beliefs.

There are a few different kinds of efficacy, with two in particular being examined in research from our department: self-efficacy, and outcome efficacy. Perceived self-efficacy is a “belief in one’s own competences in the face of impediments”, and perceived outcome efficacy is “a person’s estimate that a given behavior will lead to certain outcomes.”

In their 2023 paper, “From believing in climate change to adapting to climate change: The role of risk perception and efficacy beliefs”, the researchers found that high levels of self-efficacy and outcome efficacy were “directly related to stronger intentions to take adaptive measures”, and whether people actually took those actions within a year.

Adaptation and mitigation

Adaptative measures are steps taken to reduce the impacts of climate change risks including exacerbated weather extremes like heatwaves and drought. Nine such adaptation measures in Dutch households were considered in the study: removing paving stones from back gardens, “greening” front gardens (i.e. replacing sidewalk tiles with plants), green roofing, rain barrels, installing a pond, sun blinds, home insulation, setting up a shade sail, and decoupling the rain pipe from the municipal sewer system. It usually took participants more than a year to make these changes, likely due to their long-term nature

Their findings suggested that a sequence of steps can result in adaptation intentions. “Climate change perceptions lead to higher levels of perceptions of specific climate-related risks, which in turn lead to stronger self-efficacy and outcome efficacy, ultimately increasing adaptation intentions.”

“Efficacy does play a role, and it often turns out to be important. Especially when fear is high, efficacy is crucial, because when fear is high and efficacy is low, one cannot act to reduce the fear, which may have negative mental consequences. So it is precisely when fear is high that efficacy is important,” says professor Linda Steg.

The intention to take protective adaptive measures is linked to heightened perceptions of climate change risks, and there is increasing consensus on the need for both adaptation (preparing for current conditions) and mitigation (preventing the worst case scenarios of global warming).

Even when individuals are able to take adaptive or mitigative action, infrastructure and systemic changes on a massive scale are still needed to encourage and empower even more of us follow through and take action to reduce risks.

“Outcome efficacy can also be increased by making it clear that one’s own contribution will have an impact,” Steg says.

Removing barriers

Policy makers could therefore consider removing behavioural barriers to increase self-efficacy, in other words making it easier for people to act on their intentions and perceptions of climate change. Our research suggests that believing in the immediacy of climate change has a positive relationship to climate intentions and adaptation and mitigation actions.

Psychological distance remains a barrier for some, but the scope of the problem and how much it connects to people’s ultimate environmental behaviour seem to be less prominent than commonly assumed: reducing psychological closeness is not directly associated with behaviour change.

Photo by Sippakorn Yamkasikorn