Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-669899f699-vbsjw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-28T09:46:04.386Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - More bad news: the risk of neglecting emotional responses to climate change information

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2009

By
Susanne C. Moser
Edited by
Susanne C. Moser  and
Lisa Dilling
Susanne C. Moser
Affiliation:
National Center for Atmospheric Research
Susanne C. Moser
Affiliation:
National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder
Lisa Dilling
Affiliation:
University of Colorado, Boulder
Get access

Summary

If one does not look into the abyss, one is being wishful by simply not confronting the truth about our time. … On the other hand, it is imperative that one not get stuck in the abyss.

Robert Jay Lifton (1986)

Introduction

Listening to climate change communicators, advocates, and scientists, there is a growing frustration that politicians and the public don't pay more attention to the issue. In their attempts to ring the alarm bells more fiercely, many are tempted either to make the issue scarier or to inundate people with more information, believing that if people only understood the urgency of global warming, they would act or demand more action. When the desired response then fails to materialize, they get disappointed, yet plow ahead undeterred. Surely, if people aren't getting the message, we must give it more loudly! Yet is “not getting the message” really the problem? And is scarier and more information the answer?

Almost every new story about global warming brings more bad news. In 2005 alone, people opened the morning papers to stories that warming could be far worse than previously projected, that our emissions are committing us to warming and sea-level rise for decades to centuries even if we could stop all of them point-blank, today. Increasingly urgent is the news about the rapidly accelerating melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice shields.

Type
Chapter
Information
Creating a Climate for Change
Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change
 , pp. 64 - 80
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision, 50, 179–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldassar, M. and Katz, C. (1992). The personal threat of environmental problems as predictor of environmental practices. Environment and Behavior, 24, 5, 602–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: Freeman.Google Scholar
Bator, R. J. and Cialdini, R. B. (2000). The application of persuasion theory to the development of effective proenvironmental public service announcements. Journal of Social Issues, 56, 527–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Betsill, M. M. (2001). Acting locally, does it matter globally? The contribution of US cities to global climate change mitigation. Paper presented at the Fourth Open Meeting of the Human Dimensions of Global Change Research Community, Rio de Janeiro, October 6–8, 2001.
Blix, H. (2004). Global warming as big a threat as WMD. New Perspectives Quarterly, 21, 32–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Block, L. G. and Keller, P. A. (1998). Beyond protection motivation: An integrative theory of health appeals. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 28, 17, 1584–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cafaro, P. J. (2005). Gluttony, arrogance, greed, and apathy: An exploration of environmental vice. In Environmental Virtue Ethics, eds. Sandler, R. and Cafaro, P.Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 135–58.Google Scholar
Clayton, S. and Brook, A. (2005). Can psychology help save the world? A model for conservation psychology. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 5, 1, 87–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, S. (2001). States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering. Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press and Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Courville, S. and Piper, N. (2004). Harnessing hope through NGO activism. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 592, 1, 39–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Das, E., Wit, J., and Stroebe, W. (2003). Fear appeals motivate acceptance of action recommendations: Evidence for a positive bias in the processing of persuasive messages. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 650–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Davidson, R. J. (2000). Cognitive neuroscience needs affective neuroscience (and vice versa). Brain and Cognition, 42, 89–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eagly, A. H. and Kulesa, P. (1997). Attitudes, attitude structure and resistance to change. In Environment, Ethics, and Behavior: The Psychology of Environmental Valuation and Degradation, eds. Bazerman, M. H., Messick, D. M., Tenbrunsel, A. E., and Wade-Benzoni, K. A.San Francisco, CA: The New Lexington Press, pp. 122–53.Google Scholar
Floyd, D. L., Prentice-Dunn, S., and Rogers, R. W. (2000). A meta-analysis of research on protection motivation theory. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 30, 2, 407–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
FrameWorks Institute (2001). Talking Global Warming (Summary of Research Findings). Washington, DC: FrameWorks Institute.
Gidley, J. (2005). Giving hope back to our young people: Creating a new spiritual mythology for western culture. Journal of Futures Studies, 9, 3, 17–30.Google Scholar
Goldbeck, R. (1997). Denial in physical illness. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 43, 6, 575–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gorbachev, M. (2004). Pre-empt global warming. New Perspectives Quarterly, 21, 17–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, G. M. and Ropeik, D. P. (2002). Dealing with the dangers of fear: The role of risk communication. Health Affairs, 21, 106–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., and Pyszczynski, T. (1997). Terror management theory of self-esteem and cultural worldviews: Empirical assessments and conceptual refinements. In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 29, ed. Zanna, M. P.New York: Academic Press, pp. 61–139.Google Scholar
Greer, S. (1992). The management of denial in cancer patients. Oncology, 6, 12, 33–36.Google ScholarPubMed
Groopman, J. (2004). The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Grothmann, T. and Patt, A. (2005). Adaptive capacity and human cognition: The process of individual adaptation to climate change. Global Environmental Change, 15, 3, 199–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, B. A. (1994). Ways of maintaining hope in HIV disease. Research in Nursing & Health, 17, 4, 283–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hine, D. W. and Gifford, R. (1991). Fear appeals, individual differences, and environmental concern. Journal of Environmental Education, 23, 36–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Immerwahr, J. (1999). Waiting for a signal: Public attitudes toward global warming, the environment and geophysical research. AGU. Available at http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/attitude_study.pdf; accessed February 10, 2006.
Johnson, B. B. (2005). Testing and expanding a model of cognitive processing of risk information. Risk Analysis, 25, 3, 631–50.CrossRef
Kennedy, D. (2004). Climate change and climate science. Science, 304, 1565.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
King, D. A. (2004). Climate change science: Adapt, mitigate, or ignore?Science, 303, 176–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lane, M. (2000). Environmentally responsible behavior: Does it really matter what we believe?Planning Forum, 6, 33–9.Google Scholar
Leopold, A. (1993). Round River. New York: Oxford University Press (1953).Google Scholar
Leventhal, H., Safer, M. A., and Panagis, D. M. (1983). The impact of communications on the self-regulation of health beliefs, decisions, and behavior. Health Education Quarterly, 10, 3–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levine, P. A. with Frederick, A. (1997). Waking the Tiger – Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.Google Scholar
Lifton, R. J. (1967). Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Lifton, R. J. with Markusen, E. (1986). The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat. New York.Google Scholar
Loeb, P. R. (ed.) (2004a). The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Loeb, P. R. (2004b). Introduction to Part Four. In The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lynn, J. R. (1974). Effects of persuasive appeals in public service advertising. Journalism Quarterly, 51, 622–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macy, J. and Brown, M. Y. (1998). Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers.Google Scholar
Marshall, G. and Lynas, M. (2003). Why we don't give a damn. New Statesman, 132, 4666, 445–7.Google Scholar
Maslach, C. and Leiter, M. P. (2005). Reversing burnout: How to rekindle your passion for your work. Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2005, Winter, 42–9; available at: http://www.ssireview.com/pdf/2005WI_Feature_Maslach_Leiter.pdf; accessed January 2, 2006.
Meadows, D. (1996). How environmentalists ought to talk. Global Citizen, Donella Meadows Archive. Available at http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive/search.php?display_article=vn635environmentalistsed; last accessed May 26, 2004.
Milne, S., Sheeran, P., and Orbell, S. (2000). Prediction and intervention in health-related behavior: A meta-analytic review of protection motivation theory. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 3, 106–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morse, J. M. and Doberneck, B. (1995). Delineating the concept of hope. Image – Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 27, 4, 277–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moser, S. C. and Dilling, L. (2004). Making climate hot: Communicating the urgency and challenge of global climate change. Environment, 46, 10, 32–46.Google Scholar
Moyer, B., McAllister, J., Finley, M. L., et al. (2001). Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers.Google Scholar
Nabi, R. L. (2002). Discrete emotions and persuasion. In The Persuasion Handbook: Developments in Theory and Practice, eds. Dillard, J. P. and Pfau, M.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 289–308.Google Scholar
Nicholsen, S. W. (2002). The Love of Nature and the End of the World. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
O'Keefe, D. J. (2002a). Guilt as a mechanism of persuasion. In The Persuasion Handbook: Developments in Theory and Practice, eds. Dillard, J. P. and Pfau, M.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 329–44.Google Scholar
O'Keefe, D. J. (2002b). Guilt and social influence. In Communication Yearbook 23, ed. Roloff, M. E.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 67–101.Google Scholar
Olson, R. L. (1995). Sustainability as a social vision. Journal of Social Issues, 51, 15–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Opotow, S. and Weiss, L. (2000). Denial and the process of moral exclusion in environmental conflict. Journal of Social Issues, 56, 3, 475–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osbaldiston, R. and Sheldon, K. M. (2002). Social dilemmas and sustainability: Promoting people's motivation to ‘cooperate with the future’. In Psychology of Sustainable Development, eds. Schmuck, P. and Schultz, W. P.Amsterdam: Kluwer, pp. 37–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plotkin, S. (2004). Is bigger better? Moving toward a dispassionate view of SUVs. Environment, 10, 8–21.Google Scholar
Ramachandran, V. S. and Rogers-Ramachandran, D. (1996). Denial of disabilities in anosognosia. Nature, 382, 501.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Revkin, A. (2005). Glacial gains in global talks on cleaner air. The New York Times, December 11.
Ruiter, R. A. C., Abraham, C., and Kok, G. (2001). Scary warnings and rational precautions: A review of the psychology of fear appeals. Psychology and Health, 16, 613–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruiter, R. A. C., Verplanken, B., Kok, G., et al. (2003). The role of coping appraisal in reactions to fear appeals: Do we need threat information?Journal of Health Psychology, 8, 465–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ruiter, R. A. C., Verplanken, B., Cremer, D., et al. (2004). Danger and fear control in response to fear appeals: The role of need for cognition. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 26, 13–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schussler, G. (1992). Coping strategies and individual meanings of illness. Social Science & Medicine, 34, 4, 427–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searles, H. F. (1972). Unconscious processes in relation to the environmental crisis. Psychoanalytical Review, 59, 3, 361–74.Google ScholarPubMed
Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Can happiness be taught?Daedalus, 133, 2, 80–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shellenberger, M. and Nordhaus, T. (2004). The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World. Available at http://www.thebreakthrough.org; accessed February 10, 2006.
Shorey, H. S., Rand, K. L., and Snyder, C. R. (2005). The ethics of hope: A guide to social responsibility in contemporary business. In Positive Psychology in Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility, eds. Giacalone, R., Dunn, C., and Jurkiewicz, C. L.Greenwich, CT: Information Age, pp. 249–64.Google Scholar
Slovic, P. (1993). Perceived risk, trust and democracy: A systems perspective. Risk Analysis, 13, 675–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slovic, P., Finucane, M. L., Peters, E., et al. (2004). Risk as analysis and risk as feelings: Some thoughts about affect, reason, risk and rationality. Risk Analysis, 24, 2, 311–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Snyder, C. R., Ilardi, S. S., Cheavens, J., et al. (2000). The role of hope in cognitive-behavioral therapies. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 24, 6, 747–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snyder, C. R., Harris, C., Anderson, J. R., et al. (1991). The will and the ways: Development and validation of an individual-differences measure of hope. Journal of Personal and Social Psychology, 60, 4, 570–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stoll-Kleemann, S., O'Riordan, T., and Jaeger, C. C. (2001). The psychology of denial concerning climate mitigation measures: Evidence from Swiss focus groups. Global Environmental Change, 11, 107–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tickell, C. (2002). Communicating climate change. Science, 297, 737.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vasi, I. B. and Macy, M. (2003). The mobilizer's dilemma: Crisis, empowerment, and collective action. Social Forces, 81, 3, 983–1002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vergano, D. (2005). Wolves teach experts about global warming. USA Today, May 31.
Victor, D. G., House, J. C., and Joy, S. (2005). A Madisonian approach to climate policy. Science, 309, 1820–1.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wallenius, C. (2001). Why do people sometimes fail when adapting to danger? A theoretical discussion from a psychological perspective. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, 19, 2, 145–80.Google Scholar
Weber, E. (2006). Experience-based and description-based perceptions of long-term risk: Why global warming does not scare us (yet). Climatic Change, 77, 103–120
Wilson, K. (2004). Global warming – Facing our fears. truthout, May 6, http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/9/4388; accessed February 10, 2006.
Witte, K. (1998). Fear as motivator, fear as inhibitor: Using the extended parallel process model to explain fear appeal successes and failures. In Handbook of Communication and Emotion: Research, Theory, Application, and Contexts, eds. Andersen, P. A. and Guerrero, L. K.San Diego, CA: Academic Press, pp. 423–51.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×