LE3 .A278 2020

2020

Hayes, Joseph

Acadia University

Bachelor of Science

Honours

Psychology

Psychology

Climate change messaging can be inherently threatening, which may precipitate counterproductive responses to the climate problem. The present study sought to apply a terror management perspective to investigate how climate change messaging promotes fatalism towards the climate crisis and subsequently reduces environmental behavioural intentions. Individual differences in investment in an environmental worldview and trait self-esteem were examined as potential moderators of these reactions. Participants were randomly assigned to a climate change or a control messaging condition and then completed self-report measures of fatalism and intentions to engage in pro-environmental behaviour. Although not fully anticipated, results indicated that people high in self-esteem but low in environmental worldview presented an increase in fatalism and a decrease in behavioural intentions following the climate change messaging condition. These results may suggest that people who obtain high self-esteem from sources that are unrelated to the environment become strategically fatalistic towards the climate crisis, and maintain very little intension to engage in pro-environmental behaviours because they are firmly buffered against death-related anxiety. Discussion focuses on implications for understanding individual differences in response to climate change messaging, and the persistent problem of non-action in the face of a growing problem for humanity.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:3678