The Psychology of Climate Change

“Thanks to our evolutionary history, we’re programmed to deal with the lion coming from the woods, not to strategize how to save our civilization over the next hundred years.”

JEFF GOODELL

Action on climate change starts and ends with understanding how we perceive this global challenge, and its significance for our own lives. Psychologist and climate communication expert Per Espen Stoknes’ seminal work What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming examines the psychological dimensions underpinning collective inaction on climate change. Stoknes identified five core barriers to engagement with the climate crisis:¹

Distance: Many people perceive climate change as an abstract issue in the future, affecting faraway places and future generations. This temporal and spatial gap reduces the perceived relevance and urgency of the issue for many individuals.
Dissonance: Cognitive dissonance arises when one’s actions – such as flying or consuming meat – don’t align with one’s beliefs on sustainability. To manage this internal conflict, people might downplay the severity of climate change or detach themselves from the issue.
Denial: When confronted with the enormity and complexity of climate change, some may opt for outright denial — a defense mechanism to ward off the looming threat and maintain a semblance of normality.
Doom: The apocalyptic narratives often dominating climate headlines and discussions can lead to paralysis and a sense of helplessness. Continuous exposure to alarming information without a clear action path can cause denial or apathy.‍
Identity: People’s beliefs around climate change are often deeply tied to their cultural, political or social identities. Challenging those beliefs can be perceived as a personal attack, leading to existing views being further entrenched.

Case Study

Which factors influence how we perceive risk?‍

The Social Amplification of Risk Model illustrates how public responses can intensify or minimize the perceived risk of hazards such as climate change. Risk communication and perception are not solely based on facts and data, and our understanding and response to risks is heavily influenced by human behaviors, beliefs, values, and social structures — making our response to climate change highly dependent on communications.

Regardless of expert analysis, some hazards assessed as low-risk can receive significant attention, leading to risk amplification. Conversely, hazards deemed higher in risk may receive less societal focus, a phenomenon termed risk attenuation.

‘Amplification stations’ such as scientists, media outlets, and social networks have pivotal roles in this process. They transmit and interpret risk information, causing “ripples” of public responses that can lead to impacts such as economic downturns, trust erosion in institutions, political activism, and altered perception of other associated issues. For example, the controversy over fracking for gas in the UK negatively impacted people’s perceptions of CO2 removal technologies — here, the ‘ripple effect’ across technologies was fueled by public distrust in experts and policymakers.

In today’s digital age, social media plays an instrumental role in the global dissemination of these ripples. It serves as an amplifier — merging the roles of information provider and consumer — which can significantly influence risk perception.

Our responses to risks are heavily dependent on human psychology, social networks, media ecosystems, and trust levels in authority figures. Therefore, effective communication about climate change requires careful management and understanding of these nuanced aspects.²

^‍According to Stoknes, the abstract nature of climate change communication can often be a barrier to engagement. Therefore, we must make climate concerns tangible, relatable, and embedded in our daily routines. By integrating sustainable choices into everyday activities, we can make sustainability the norm rather than the exception — reinforcing positive behaviors and making climate action a habitual part of our lives. However, Stoknes also emphasizes the importance of systemic solutions — while individual actions play a role, structural changes in policy, industry and institutions are crucial for large-scale impact.¹

Case Study

Global Warming Six America’s

‍The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC) identified six distinct climate opinion audiences in the American public – the Alarmed, Concerned, Cautious, Disengaged, Doubtful, and Dismissive. The Alarmed are most engaged with climate issues, worry about climate change and support climate action. The Concerned also believe the science, but are less concerned and less likely to take action. The Cautious are uncertain about whether climate change is happening or human-caused, and are therefore less likely to worry or take action. The Disengaged are largely unaware of the issue. The Doubtful question the science on climate change and perceive it as a low risk. The Dismissives reject the idea that climate change is happening and strongly oppose climate policies.³

Based on a nationally representative survey conducted in April-May 2023, Yale found that the majority of Americans recognize the reality and significance of climate change. Specifically, 74% believe global warming is happening, and 61% attribute it primarily to human actions. While 58% understand that most scientists agree on this issue, only 20% are aware of the extent of scientific consensus. Two-thirds of respondents express concern about climate change, but 66% rarely discuss the topic with peers. Over half feel personally responsible for mitigating the effects of climate change, yet only 28% actively seek out information about potential solutions.⁴

In 2022, YPCCC teamed up with Data for Good at Meta, surveying Facebook users in nearly 200 countries to assess public perspectives on climate change. Results indicated that the Alarmed category was the majority in about 75% of the 110 countries surveyed — particularly prevalent in Chile, Mexico, and Malawi. In the US, a major carbon emitter, only 34% of people are Alarmed, with 22% being in the Doubtful or Dismissive categories.⁵

The US and Germany have the fourth-smallest percentage of Alarmed (34%), after the United Kingdom (31%), Saudi Arabia (29%), and Indonesia (27%). On the other end of the Six Audiences spectrum, the countries with the largest percentages of Doubtful or Dismissive respondents are the United States (22%), Saudi Arabia (17%), and Australia (16%).⁵

Research by firstlight shows that climate deniers make up a small minority of the UK population (5%), but together with delayers – those who think we shouldn’t be too concerned about climate change – they make up a quarter of the public. Some delayers are skeptical and believe that climate change is not a serious problem, will not affect them, or that climate action comes with hidden agendas. Many remain disengaged because of a feeling of helplessness – climate change is a massive topic most people don’t know how to tackle.⁶ Many UK adults experience climate change fatigue, meaning that they are exhausted from hearing about climate change all the time, whilst not understanding the issue and what they can do about it sufficiently.

Ann-Christine Duhaime, neurosurgeon and author of Minding the Climate, argues that rather than focusing solely on technological fixes, we need to examine human behavior, as individual and collective behaviors have been slow to change in response to this urgent crisis with critical time limits. The COVID-19 pandemic and energy price crisis have forced governments to demand radical lifestyle shifts, proving that such changes are possible in theory. However, behavioral change is complex, and policies can often be contradictory, reinforcing existing resistance to change.⁷

“To understand the paradox of our inactivity in this outward-facing, global-scale problem of climate change we need to look inward, at how our brains work. Within these insights (...) lies potential for change, and some cause for hope.”

JEFF GOODELL

‍The human brain possesses plasticity — making it highly adaptable in response to environmental demands. But our reward mechanisms, which have been shaped throughout millions of years of evolution, haven’t kept pace with the rapid cultural and technological changes of modern times — particularly the overwhelming amount of marketing directed towards young people. This has consequences for consumption habits and choices, which often prioritize short-term rewards over abstract long-term factors such as sustainability.⁸

Another barrier to climate action is uncertainty, which has been exploited by industry interests to undermine ambitious climate policy. ClimateXChange recommends that scientists should highlight broad areas of agreement and consensus, followed by positive framings of probabilities, which have been found to lead to stronger pro-environmental intentions.⁹ For example, instead of saying, “If we fail to act, the chance of destructive winter floods occurring is 80%”, we can say, “If we act now, the chance of destructive winter floods occurring is 20%”.

Why Our Brains Struggle to Process Climate Change

Decisions leading to changes in behavior are mediated by the equipment we use to make them – the human brain. To understand why addressing climate change and promoting a just energy transition has proven to be a difficult problem for contemporary humans, it may be helpful to take into account the tasks for which our decision-making apparatus evolved to address, and to compare these to the current changes in priority and action we need to make to avert the worst of the ongoing and accelerating environmental crisis.

While it should be kept in mind that the brain is flexible and is less hard-wired than predisposed, evolutionary selection pressures for short-term survival equipped humans with systems for evaluating decisions that use sensory information and memory, weighted by innumerable small genetic and experiential factors at any given moment, to evaluate choices. While humans do have the capacity to think ahead, our nervous systems generally weigh decisions and help us learn which behaviors are ‘best’ and most rewarding by favoring near-term, immediate survival-based consequences.

Climate change, in contrast, is an extraordinarily recent problem when stacked against the eons of time during which our nervous systems evolved, based on the design underpinnings of ancient organisms. As one example, we never had a survival need to develop mechanisms to directly perceive CO2, never mind learn to weigh a largely invisible threat when evaluating minute-to-minute decisions.

While storms, floods, fires, and droughts are happening with increasing frequency and severity, there is nothing in our evolutionary or long-standing cultural history that has equipped us to readily and smoothly link the behavioral choices causing climate change to those consequences; in fact, they are much more easily linked mentally to normal variations we learn about or experience ourselves. Linking these events to climate change requires trust in authority figures, most of whom are not known personally, who provide information about which the recipient has little first-hand knowledge or expertise. Even if the information is accepted as true, making decisions to change behaviors in order to mitigate climate change requires an even greater leap of faith. This is because such choices usually lack another characteristic for which our brains are well-designed – evaluating our own decisions by their immediate effects.

While making a purchasing decision or business decision typically leads to consequences that are apparent in relatively short order, many of the consequences of individual pro-environmental decisions occur at such a scope and magnitude, that they remain largely invisible to the decision-maker. Together, these factors are a recipe for difficult behavior change. This is true whether the decision occurs at the level of an individual’s personal life, or at the level of a decision affecting many people, such as those made by a business executive, a policymaker, educator, legislator, or government leader.

Throughout history, humans have managed to overcome significant challenges that required major social and behavioral overhauls. However, addressing climate change poses unique obstacles, as the required behaviors often lack immediate rewards. People are more likely to feel effective and positive by providing immediate assistance — like sending money to flood victims — than by engaging in long-term behavioral changes that address the root causes of flooding.⁷

Cognitive biases, such as mental shortcuts or heuristics, can serve as barriers to action when it comes to long-term challenges like climate change. The psychological distance and slow pace of climate change impacts contribute to a spatial and temporal dissonance,⁹ making people believe that climate change is a distant problem that won’t directly affect them. This dissonance can be exacerbated by dominant climate narratives that focus on remote regions and non-human actors (see Greenwashing), further alienating people from the all-encompassing effects of climate change.

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COGNITIVE BIASES

Cognitive Biases	Description	Effect on climate action
Confirmation bias	The tendency to seek out and remember information that confirms one’s pre-existing beliefs	Only pay attention to or trust sources that support existing beliefs about climate change, and whether they believe it is a threat or not
Availability heuristic	Mental shortcut of judging the probability of an event based on how easily examples come to mind	Overestimating the significance of a single weather event, such as a usually cold winter, and use it as evidence against climate change – disregarding the overall trend of increasing global temperatures
Anchoring bias	Relying too heavily on an initial piece of information (the “anchor”) when making decisions	Anchoring beliefs on an outdated piece of information, such as a specific study, and resistance to updating views based on new evidence
Sunk Cost Fallacy	Tendency to continue investing in a decision based on the amount of resources already invested, rather than evaluating the current and future value of the decision	People, governments and industries may continue to support fossil fuel industries due to the significant investments made in the past, even though transitioning to renewable energy sources would be more beneficial in the long run
Groupthink	People in a group striving for consensus, sometimes at the cost of making irrational decisions	Conforming to the opinions of one’s social circle or political group, even if those opinions contradict scientific evidence
Optimism bias	The belief that one is less likely to experience negative events than others	People may underestimate the impacts of climate change on their own lives, believing that they will not be personally affected by extreme weather events, rising sea levels, or other consequences
In-group bias	Favoring one’s own group over others	Individuals may be more inclined to accept information from sources they identify with, such as political or social groups, rather than objectively evaluating evidence from multiple sources
Status Quo bias	Preference for maintaining the current state of affairs, even when presented with evidence that change may be necessary	People may resist policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions because they prefer the familiarity and perceived stability of the current situation
Loss aversion	Tendency to prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains	People may be more focused on the short-term economic costs of transitioning to renewable energy or implementing climate policies, rather than considering the long-term benefits of mitigating climate change and its potentially disastrous consequences
Fundamental Attribution Error	Tendency to overemphasize personal factors and underestimate situational factors when explaining someone’s behavior	People might blame individuals for not taking enough action to combat climate change, while overlooking systemic factors that contribute to the problem, such as government policies or corporate practices

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The human brain is predisposed to errors such as discounting distant or future events, often hindering our ability to take meaningful action on long-term threats. But our brain is not a deterministic system — it has general tendencies, but is also influenced by individual differences, as well as being responsive to new experiences and learning.⁸ But to support our natural ability to learn new information and update our cognitive structures, climate communication needs to step up to the challenge.

Research published in Nature Communications in 2022 reveals a critical misunderstanding about public perception on climate change: While 66 to 80% of Americans support climate change policies, they inaccurately believe that only 37 to 43% of others do.¹⁰ Despite supporters of climate change policies outnumbering opponents by two to one, many Americans hold the opposite perception. This false social reality suppresses open discussions about climate change and hinders the drive and political pressure necessary for implementing effective climate policies. According to climate communications expert Susan Joy Hassol, a crucial step towards rectifying this misconception is to engage in more climate-related conversations amongst family, friends, coworkers, and leaders in both the public and private sectors, as each individual can be part of the solution through their influence.¹¹

Effective communication is more than just broadcasting messages — it’s about forging genuine connections with target audiences, and understanding their deeply rooted beliefs and identities. Research indicates that people are most receptive to information that aligns with and affirms their existing values, often dismissing or rejecting content that poses a challenge to their views. To bring about a meaningful shift in behavior or beliefs, communication strategies must be framed to resonate with the values of the intended audience.¹²

Take, for example, the effort to encourage bodybuilders to reduce meat consumption: an exclusively environmental appeal might fall flat due to the prevailing association between meat and performance in this community. However, spotlighting stories of top-tier vegan athletes who have achieved great strength can make all the difference — as demonstrated by the success of The Game Changers documentary. This approach doesn’t confront existing beliefs of a community, but instead showcases a path that aligns with existing goals and values. To craft impactful campaigns, it’s vital to pinpoint influential groups within the target audience, understand their core values, and design messages that don’t just provide information but also offer real value — paving the way for deeper engagement and effective outcomes.¹²

Some experts argue that research efforts should focus more on effective engagement to enable rapid wide-scale climate mitigation, rather than understanding the structure of climate change beliefs.¹³ There is a widespread belief that only those in power can drive change, which often hampers global efforts to address climate change. To achieve the necessary level of transition, it is crucial to accelerate action across the world and involve all layers of society. Democratic governments are unlikely to implement transformative changes — which may come with short-term costs — without the support of their citizens.^14.Widespread lifestyle adjustments in areas such as diet, personal travel, and home heating can also contribute to reaching the ambitious 1.5°C target. Gaining public buy-in is vital to preventing resistance and ensuring the success of policy measures.

Making these shifts is easier said than done. Meeting our ambitious climate targets depends on considerable social and behavioral change — but many of the necessary behaviors are currently too expensive, too inconvenient, unappealing, or simply not compatible with our habits and social norms.¹⁶ In the UK, for example, research by GoodLife has found that despite widespread climate change concern only a small proportion of the public make individual changes necessary to mitigate climate change¹⁷ — but 9 out of 10 actually want to make sustainable choices in their lives. But for the majority of the population, this would involve a lot of personal effort and compromise due to our current economic, infrastructural, societal and media environments.¹⁶

What is Behavioral Science?

Behavioral science is the cross-disciplinary science of understanding the causes of individual, group and organizational behavior across different levels. Behavioral Science encompasses the social sciences, and brings together insights and methods from a variety of fields and disciplines like behavioral economics, organizational behavior, neuroscience, and others. Under the umbrella of Behavioral Science, these disciplines, which separately do not provide a complete picture of human behavior, offer a comprehensive understanding as to why humans behave the way they do, and how these behaviors are linked to perceptions as opposed to actual statistics and data. This field of study provides decades of robust evidence that it is our perceptions that drive our behaviors, which ultimately explains why climate change impacts are so easily overlooked.

Since the dawn of our species, our brains have been designed to react in certain ways to risks around us, particularly to overreact to those that are novel, unfamiliar, or have the potential for catastrophic consequences. It’s worked out well for us for the most part. For example, our ancestors would see a poisonous snake and immediately jumpstart the response to react and hopefully run away. There were cues in the environment that their brains would rapidly scan and process to assess the risk; e.g., the color of the snake, its position and stance, the lack of other animals around. Most of this processing and subsequent decision-making was subliminal and automated.

Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman referred to this phenomenon as “System 1” processing. We are running simple cognitive risk analyses, which result in low perceptions of risk and leave us unprepared for what is to come. We are being influenced by cognitive biases (e.g, sea level rise as slow-moving) in a way that is harmful to our futures, and we must apply the science of communication to correct erroneous perceptions to align with reality.

This requires taking the time to map out existing risk perceptions across thoughtfully segmented audiences prior to communicating. This allows science communicators to understand what knowledge gaps, erroneous beliefs, misconceptions, or conflicting values exist to carefully craft effective and impactful messages. It will also help identify trusted spokespeople for science. Research has shown that communicators who are perceived to share values with their audience are more effective at correcting inaccurate perceptions of risk.

According to climate scientists from the International Energy Agency, lifestyle and behavioral changes could make significant contributions to reduce emissions by 2050. However, a large number of individuals are still unwilling to make enough changes to reach the target of Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050. So far, governments and businesses have tended to work on technologies such as electric vehicles and small sustainable product swaps to help individuals make greener lifestyle choices.¹⁸

While individual behaviors play a critical role in reducing emissions, it can be difficult for individuals to fully understand the complexity of how their daily actions link to corresponding carbon emissions. While there is a wealth of information available to help consumers make environmentally conscious decisions, many people lack the time and resources to implement them. “Nudge” approaches can be an effective solution this this in some contexts, as they allow for positive and gentle persuasion to encourage green behavior,¹⁹ but it is crucial to engage people consciously with climate issues to avoid boomerang effects and behavioral spillover — using sustainable behaviors as justification to engage in other high-carbon behaviors. Action at structural levels will therefore be crucial — the broader systems which shape our choices need to facilitate sustainability, rather than hinder it.⁸

CASE STUDY

Using choice architecture to motivate sustainable behavior

The UK government’s “Nudge Unit,” officially known as the Behavioural Insights Team, is a social purpose organization that applies behavioral science to inform policy and improve public services.^20.Established in 2010, it uses insights from psychology and behavioral economics to subtly influence people’s behaviors, aiming to “nudge” citizens towards making better choices for themselves and society. It has been successful on a range of issues, from public health to education and energy conservation.²¹

Research by the Behavioural Insights Team suggests that individuals make choices on three levels:²²

Individual preferences, knowledge, values and biases;
Within choice environments that are determined by pricing, convenience, salience and norms;
Within larger systems of commercial incentives, regulation, investment, infrastructure and institutional leadership.

Amplifying the issue are growing global economic and sociopolitical uncertainties, which exacerbate the struggle for individuals to live more sustainably. Data from ten countries published by Accenture Song shows that a slight majority (53%) of people in ten countries are striving to maintain sustainability principles despite current hardships, though nearly half (47%) have lessened their focus on sustainability due to economic pressures like inflation and rising costs. Consequently, sustainability is not a priority in most purchasing decisions — with price and quality taking precedence for over 71% of consumers.²³

Individual challenges must be contextualized within broader societal patterns. While individual factors influence attitudes to climate change, individuals are also embedded in social, economic and geographical contexts that shape said attitudes as well as policy preferences. For example, research found that the financial crisis of 2008 led to a significant priority shift away from environmental and towards economic policies, a trend which took about ten years to recover. This prioritization of immediate, short term issues poses a barrier to action on climate and environmental problems, which tend to occur over relatively long time spans.²⁴

The same study found that environmental concern tends to be higher in countries and regions in Europe with higher income levels, lower inequality and cleaner industry (with less dependence on fossil fuels). However, GDP does not further contribute to environmental concern beyond €40,000 per capita, indicating a value shift towards less immediate issues once basic needs are socially guaranteed and a relatively high standard of living is reached. Regions with younger and better educated populations (indicating better science literacy and more socially-oriented social norms) also exhibited higher levels of environmental concern.²⁴

Paradoxically, personal carbon emissions are on the rise — even though sustainable practices, such as buying second-hand or repaired products or reducing overall purchases, can offer financial relief. Consumption is not just a matter of economics but also embodies a cultural dimension shaped by our values, beliefs, attitudes, identities, and aspirations. To encourage broader adoption of sustainable behaviors, we must not only make sustainability affordable and straightforward, but also address these complex cultural dynamics.²³

What has been shown to work for difficult behavior change?

Building on decades of neuroscience research, strategies relevant to challenging behavior change have arisen in contexts such as treatment of addiction and large-scale societal public health interventions. Successful change typically follows several general principles, including the following:

“Positive” works better than “negative”; praising or otherwise rewarding the new, desired behavior usually changes it faster than punishing lapses.
New information that provides the rationale for the behavior change is most readily accepted when it comes from someone known and respected by the recipient, rather than from a stranger.
Public affirmation of a commitment to change increases the chance that the change will be maintained.
Substituting new behaviors that meet the needs of the recipient/community, come from respected authority figures, and are sensitive to the cultural context increases behavior change success.
Strong inclusion of social rewards to substitute for the rewards being given up lies at the core of many successful behavior change strategies.

Our understanding of climate change is largely driven by our values and worldviews — a lot more so than education and knowledge. People who do not care about climate change do not necessarily do so due to a lack of morals – they must just be different from ours. This is why it’s important to stress climate change poses to things we universally and personally value – the health of our families, the economic strength of our communities, and the stability of our world.²⁵

Effective messaging is paramount. Certain message framings can positively affect individuals’ engagement with climate change by altering perceived norms and self-efficacy. Effective framings include those that emphasize the environmental, economic, and moral dimensions of climate change.²⁶ Climate messages resonate more effectively when they are culturally congruent, or tailored to people’s geographical context (for example, telling farmers that climate impacts will limit their availability to grow food). Emphasizing the threat climate change poses to people’s way of life has been shown to be effective with climate skeptics, and makes it more likely for people to shift their opinions on climate change, compared to frames focusing on global impacts.

Making climate change personal and local

A 2021 Pew Research Center poll showed only 57% of American adults believed climate change was affecting their local communities at a “great deal” or at “some” level. When broken down by political parties, the divide grew — effectively, half the country doesn’t see what climate change personally means to them in their lives and communities.²⁷

The gap in “issue identification”, or connecting more people personally to an issue like climate change, is also global, as highlighted by a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report. The IMF surveyed 30,000 people across 28 countries and found more public support is needed to pass climate-friendly policies. The majority of respondents said they cared about climate change, but this sentiment alone wasn’t enough to lead to new climate policies in those countries.²⁸

These polls come despite countless examples of how climate change affects human populations. There may be a climate crisis in the scientific sense — but for all practical applications of the solutions we need to pursue, we are in a humanitarian crisis. Every piece of the Paris Agreement is grounded in making our human society more resilient, more sustainable, and profitable. Clean air, clean water, a clean energy revolution that creates millions of jobs and dramatically improves our standard of living. The agreement’s most ambitious goal of limiting warming to no more than 1.5ºC by the year 2100 (over pre-industrial levels) was created with the citizens of small island nations in mind, who will literally go underwater if that temperature threshold is exceeded.

Building direct, personal connections is a foundational step to overcome a knowledge gap on any issue. It helps bring something that may still seem so large or abstract to so many into focus. These connections also build political support and are the missing links to passing more effective climate policies.

Making climate change personal and local

Making Pro-Environmental Behavior the Norm

For most people, choices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions simply may not “feel” as rewarding and satisfying as most decisions people are used to making. Information about climate change usually comes from strangers, “experts” in areas of science with which most people are unfamiliar and can’t judge independently using their own experience or cultural learning. The consequences of climate change are easily attributed to other causes. Whose responsibility it is to “fix” climate change is murky to most people.

A pro-environmental decision rarely provides the immediate reward that follows most standard decisions and helps convince you it was the right choice – a better bottom line, praise from colleagues, a bonus, or some other tangible effect. Instead, for many decisions that mitigate an enormous and globally distributed problem like climate change, the rewards almost certainly will occur far away, to someone else, and will feel insignificant – and likely will never be perceived directly. The consequences won’t be felt as directly as, say, those that benefit many charity and humanitarian causes that have more direct and clearly identified recipients. It is unlikely that anyone will thank you directly for making a change in their life.

Thus, the rewards you get will be largely social. These can be reinforced by forging ties with like-minded people who also recognize the importance of climate stabilization as an urgent, existential challenge that comes with a rapidly shrinking window of opportunity.

Social rewards are some of the most powerful motivating forces — if our community approves of sustainable behaviors, they are more likely to become habits. In Europe, the rise of low-carbon community initiatives are becoming an important part in accelerating behavior change and the energy transition,⁴² with empty UK shops being transformed into community hubs and climate emergency centers.⁴³ These spaces provide a way for people to socialize and connect with their communities, while learning new skills that help them live more sustainably.

Aside from psychological barriers, critics of existing behavior change strategies have argued that a wrong-headed understanding of “freedom” in western countries is part of the reason for slow progress on behavior change — a prominent recent example being conspiracy theories targeting 15-minute neighborhoods. To overcome this barrier, it is recommended that policymakers should make sustainable options the easiest and cheapest option.¹⁸

Addressing climate change requires a multifaceted approach that encompasses not only scientific and technological advancements but also a deep understanding of human behavior and psychology. The climate crisis, and our inherent struggle to fully grasp its meaning within our own lives, underscores the necessity of reimagining our visions of the future. By utilizing effective communication strategies, fostering supportive social environments, and implementing policies that make sustainable choices accessible and appealing, we can bridge the gap between individual actions and global climate goals. But communication is not only key in building motivation — the way we frame the crisis also has profound implications for our mental wellbeing and therefore capacity to act, as we explore in the next chapter.

Next Up

The Climate and Mental Health Crisis

Nearly one in five US adults struggles with mental illness, and an increasing amount of research indicates that climate change can exacerbate these mental health challenges. The latest IPCC reports highlight the profound mental repercussions of climate events — with 20-30% of those experiencing hurricanes facing depression or PTSD in the subsequent months, with similar rates in flood survivors.

Contributors in this Section

Notes

Stoknes PE. What We Think about When We Try Not to Think about Global Warming: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action. Chelsea Green Publishing; 2015.
Kasperson RE, Webler T, Ram B, Sutton J. The social amplification of risk framework: New perspectives. Risk Anal. 2022;42(7):1367-1380. doi:10.1111/risa.13926
Leiserowitz A, Maibach E, Rosenthal S, et al. Global Warming’s Six Americas, December 2022. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Published 2023. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://live-yccc.pantheon.io/publications/global-warmings-six-americas-december-2022/‍
Leiserowitz A, Maibach E, Rosenthal S, et al. Climate Change in the American Mind: Beliefs and Attitudes, Spring 2023. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Published June 8, 2023. Accessed August 24, 2023. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/climate-change-in-the-american-mind-beliefs-attitudes-spring-2023/‍
Leiserowitz A. Global Warming’s Six Audiences: A cross-national comparison in nearly 200 countries and territories worldwide. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Accessed August 21, 2023. https://mailchi.mp/yale/global-warmings-six-audiences-a-cross-national-comparison-in-nearly-200-countries-and-territories-worldwide?e=8afe127479‍
Firstlight Group. Re-Thinking Climate Communications: Lessons from Deniers and Delayer. Firstlight; 2023. https://www.firstlightgroup.io/app/uploads/2023/01/Rethinking-Climate-Comms-final.pdf‍
Duhaime AC. You believe in climate change but drive a gas-guzzler, don’t recycle. Why? Harvard Gazette. Published December 6, 2022. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/12/excerpt-from-minding-the-climate-by-ann-christine-duhaime/‍
Duhaime AC. Minding the Climate: How Neuroscience Can Help Us Solve Our Environmental Crisis. Harvard University Press; 2022.
Olano LV. Communicating the Climate Crisis. Climate-XChange. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://climate-xchange.org/communicating-the-climate-crisis/‍
Lloyd R. Climate Change Actions Are Far More Popular Than People in U.S. Realize. Scientific American. Published August 2022. Accessed July 19, 2023. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-actions-are-far-more-popular-than-people-in-u-s-realize/‍
Hassol SJ. The Right Words Are Crucial to Solving Climate Change. Scientific American. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0223-64
Christiano A, Neimand A. The Science of What Makes People Care. Stanford Social Innovation Review. Published 2018. Accessed August 25, 2023. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_science_of_what_makes_people_care‍
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Leiserowitz A, Carman J, Buttermore N, et al. International Public Opinion on Climate Change, 2022. New Haven, CT: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and Data for Good at Meta.; 2022.
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Purpose Disruptors. Good Life 2030. Purpose Disruptors. Published 2022. Accessed May 24, 2023. https://www.purposedisruptors.org/good-life-2030‍
Nuttall P. Calls for clearer communication to cultivate greener consumers. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/3d1a4498-e386-4da8-a7ac-21c4dee53110. Published February 27, 2023. Accessed May 23, 2023.
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Psychological barriers to climate change. Source: Caroline Hickman at TEDxBathUniversity

The Psychology of Climate Change

“Thanks to our evolutionary history, we’re programmed to deal with the lion coming from the woods, not to strategize how to save our civilization over the next hundred years.”

JEFF GOODELL

Case Study

Which factors influence how we perceive risk?‍

Case Study

Global Warming Six America’s

“To understand the paradox of our inactivity in this outward-facing, global-scale problem of climate change we need to look inward, at how our brains work. Within these insights (...) lies potential for change, and some cause for hope.”

JEFF GOODELL

Ann-Christine Duhaime

Why Our Brains Struggle to Process Climate Change

COGNITIVE BIASES

Sweta Chakraborty, PhD

What is Behavioral Science?

CASE STUDY

Using choice architecture to motivate sustainable behavior

Ann-Christine Duhaime

What has been shown to work for difficult behavior change?

Will Hackman

Making climate change personal and local

Making climate change personal and local

Ann-Christine Duhaime

Making Pro-Environmental Behavior the Norm

Next Up

The Climate and Mental Health Crisis

Contributors in this Section

Ann-Christine Duhaime

Sweta Chakraborty, PhD

Will Hackman

Notes

The Psychology of Climate Change

“Thanks to our evolutionary history, we’re programmed to deal with the lion coming from the woods, not to strategize how to save our civilization over the next hundred years.”

JEFF GOODELL

Case Study

Which factors influence how we perceive risk?‍

Case Study

Global Warming Six America’s

“To understand the paradox of our inactivity in this outward-facing, global-scale problem of climate change we need to look inward, at how our brains work. Within these insights (...) lies potential for change, and some cause for hope.”

JEFF GOODELL

Ann-Christine Duhaime

Why Our Brains Struggle to Process Climate Change

COGNITIVE BIASES

Sweta Chakraborty, PhD

What is Behavioral Science?

CASE STUDY

Using choice architecture to motivate sustainable behavior

Ann-Christine Duhaime

What has been shown to work for difficult behavior change?

Will Hackman

Making climate change personal and local

Making climate change personal and local

Ann-Christine Duhaime

Making Pro-Environmental Behavior the Norm

Next Up

The Climate and Mental Health Crisis

Contributors in this Section

Ann-Christine Duhaime

Sweta Chakraborty, PhD

Will Hackman

Notes

Download the Whitepaper