Running head: FRAMES OF MIND
Frames of Mind: Targeting Compassionate Emotions in Environmentally Concerned People to
Motivate Them to Take Action against Climate Change
Rachel F. Pearce-Smith
University of Puget Sound
Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my family and friends for taking good care of me during my time writing this paper. I am also thankful to Dr. Sarina Saturn for helping me conduct some of the research. Her attitude is always cheerful and encouraging. Thanks to Dr.
Carolyn Weisz for assisting by reading drafts and providing her support. Finally, I am profoundly grateful to Dr. Mark Reinitz for spending his valuable time helping me develop ideas for the second experiment and reviewing my writing. FRAMES OF MIND 2
Abstract Anthropogenic climate change is a phenomenon with profound impacts on human life and wellbeing, yet its uncertainty to, distance from, and apparently gradual onset toward the individual do not tend to motivate response behavior. These experiments examined the framing of climate-related messages that would influence concern about climate change. Experiment 1 tested relevant psychological dimensions of people who are concerned about the environment, which is heavily impacted by climate change. In Experiment 2 I used the Experiment 1 results to develop frames conducive to the behavior change of the environmentally-concerned audience.
More specifically, Experiment 1 explored the relationships among environmental concern, moral elevation, and dispositional compassion. Moral elevation is a reaction to witnessing acts of moral excellence. I found that environmental concern is significantly and positively related to moral elevation and compassion. Experiment 2 tested whether dispositional environmental concern can be translated into increased concern for climate change in an Other- versus a Self-frame.
Participants reported their environmental concern and read a document detailing some of the impacts of climate change on human health, and were shown either a photograph of their own face or of a peer’s face. I measured shifts in their concern and compulsion to act on climate change. Participants’ concern and compulsion to act on climate change significantly increased, but there was no effect of focusing on the self or an other, nor was there an effect of environmental concern. No interaction was observed. These experiments allowed some observation of the psychological characteristics of people who are environmentally-concerned and showed that concern and compulsion to act around climate change could be increased by informing people about the health risks of climate impacts. However, the communication frame used was unsuccessful at shifting attitudes more effectively. Other factors at play are explored, and suggestions are made for strengthening frames. FRAMES OF MIND 3
Influence of Compassionate Emotions on Environmental and Climate Change Concerns
In the new millennium, advances in agricultural, health, and information technologies have allowed for a mushrooming in human population, and for many people, huge advances in living conditions. However, this success has come at a price. Anthropogenic climate change (rapid warming of the Earth’s atmosphere caused by human activities), which is widely understood among the scientific community to be a serious challenge for human welfare and a dire threat to biodiversity, is leading to rates of extinction estimated at 16% to 54% of all species on Earth by
2050 (Thomas et al., 2004; Urban, 2015). Other consequences include hotter and longer droughts contributing to heat-related illness and death, crop failure, expansion of deadly parasites to humans and crops, sea-level rise inundating coastal communities and agricultural resources, hurricanes and snowstorms destroying property and crops and contaminating drinking water, and year-round wildfires, all of which may lead to secondary effects, such as mass migration of climate refugees, government destabilization, and increased mental illness (e.g., PTSD, anxiety, depression) from experiencing such catastrophes firsthand or anticipating their arrival.
Collaborative efforts among businesses, governments, and the public has led to both a better understanding of the most potent causes and impacts of climate change and to rapid progress in climate-aware technology. Despite the availability of this knowledge and technology, global systems and the public have been slow to react to the problem (Spence & Pidgeon, 2009). The failure of humanity to react effectively to the threat of climate change has earned it the appellation of the ultimate wicked problem. Wicked problems are ones that are difficult or impossible to solve because of complex interconnectedness with other issues, making it unhelpful to empirically test solutions to them. There is also no point at which a wicked problem can be declared solved, since there are no right solutions, only good ones (Rittel & Webber, 1973). Climate change is complex FRAMES OF MIND 4 and multifaceted, and it is connected to issues of social justice, human health, and diplomacy. Any potential solution creates more problems.
A population of particular interest in the United States in view of climate change is called the Concerned. This population believes in and worries about climate change, and supports a federal response, but lacks personal involvement (Maibach, Leiserowitz, Roser-Renouf, & Mertz,
2011). Concerned Americans comprise about one third of the American population. They are likely to believe in social and environmental justice, but are relatively uninformed about climate change due to issues that will be discussed later on in the paper (Uggla, 2008). The Concerned differ in only one respect to the people most active in climate action, the Alarmed Americans, who have made personal changes in response to the threat: the Concerned are not yet personally involved.
One key to creating societal change lies in shifting the climate-relevant behavior of the Concerned group to more closely resemble that of the Alarmed group. In the following section I describe the psychological reasons it is difficult for people to invest in performing climate-aware behavior. I then explain framing, a communication tool that provides context for specific issues, before finally outlining the research itself.
Psychological Barriers to Taking Action against Climate Change
One reason climate change has been called a wicked problem is that it is not well suited to eliciting a human problem-solving response. The complexity of climate change means that gaining a thorough understanding of the situation and its potential solutions is costly in time and effort for individual consumers. Politicization of the issue and the difficulty of concisely conveying the causes and effects of climate change can create confusion and invite abandonment of the issue
(Leiserowitz, 2005). Realist/alarmist messaging can create fear and worry, inducing fatalism that FRAMES OF MIND 5 makes people feel that their individual actions have no impact (O’Neill & Nicholson-Cole, 2009).
Since they believe that they cannot control the danger, people choose to control their negative emotions with denial (Witte & Allen, 2000). People may utterly avoid engaging the issues since thinking about it makes them feel too scared and depressed.
Further, the impacts of climate change are highly uncertain, even to climate scientists. In the United States especially, climate science communication has been stifled by well-funded and targeted misinformation campaigns whose principal strategy is to emphasize this uncertainty and confuse the meaning of that uncertainty (Weber & Stern, 2011). These campaigns have led to the public perception that the science of climate change is unsettled due to a lack of distinction in popular media between scientific and colloquial uncertainty (O’Neill & Nicholson-Cole, 2009). A defining principle of science as a way of knowing is that no knowledge is absolutely certain because one can never measure every example of a phenomenon all of the time, and therefore one cannot be sure that the claim being tested is not true somewhere at some time. Science can only lend support to an idea. However, scientific observation can provide evidence that something is almost certainly true, as demonstrated by the thoroughly-supported theory that smoking almost certainly contributes to the development of cancer, or that burning fossil fuels contributes to rapid climate change. The public, on the other hand, interpret uncertainty as meaning that multiple arguments (e.g., that climate change is not real or not anthropogenic) are equally valid, which, in the case of climate change, is decidedly untrue. This impression that the science is not settled then leads to a lack of support for action if not outright denial.
Outcomes perceived as uncertain are not considered as carefully as outcomes considered certain when making decisions (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). Because the worst impacts of climate change exist in the future and are construed as such, the concept of climate change leads FRAMES OF MIND 6 infamously to hyperbolic discounting and overconfidence (Hardisty & Weber, 2009; Trope &
Liberman, 2003). Discounting refers to the rate at which outcomes in the future become devalued.
Hyperbolic discounting is similar to the concept of procrastination, and means that the discount rate is much swifter the closer to the present two times are, such that the difference in value between an immediate outcome and an outcome in one day is much greater than the difference in value between an outcome in five years and an outcome the day after five years from the present.
In other words, people are likely to choose a smaller reward now versus a larger reward tomorrow, but are optimistic about the ability of their future selves to make a choice for the greater benefit.
In the context of climate change, a person might believe that they will be able to modify their behavior in the future for a greater benefit, even though they find themselves incapable of doing so in the present moment. When considering climate change, the audience is often asked to make a great sacrifice (i. e., behavior change) now for an uncertain benefit in the future, which most often results in choosing to continue the behavior.
To elaborate further: people’s evaluation of risk follows a classical conditioning model in which more recent events are given greater weight in risk assessments than more distant events, and especially those that have yet to occur (such as climate-change-related events; Weber, 2006).
For example, a person who has recently experienced an earthquake might be inclined to spend more money retrofitting their house to prepare for earthquakes than for fires. Since rare events have a smaller probability of having occurred recently, they have less impact on decision-making than they should. Climate-related impacts, such as extreme weather events, occur relatively infrequently (though more frequently than in the past), so a person is unlikely to have experienced one recently and therefore unlikely to take such impacts into consideration. The way humans weigh uncertain future outcomes leads to overconfidence and no meaningful behavior change. Suffice it FRAMES OF MIND 7 to state that there are significant barriers to acting on climate change even if people are concerned about it.
Frames for Motivating Climate Action
One effective resource available to communicate the threat of climate change in a way that can lead to potential action is framing. Frames are tools that help an audience to understand a complex issue in context (Nisbet & Mooney, 2008; Scheufele & Nisbet, 2008). Frames work by highlighting selected information while downplaying other information to aid the audience in constructing an intended narrative. They are most effective when they accord with an audience’s pre-existing beliefs, attitudes, or dispositions.
Anyone can make use of frames, although they are most often employed by elite members of the political world or news media. Frames can be any way of conveying information that seeks to diagnose, evaluate, or treat an issue from a certain perspective; they can be used in polls, images, articles, letters, or any format from which emerges a narrative. Aspects of climate change and climate policy can be framed as local or global, losses or gains, growth-related, safety-related, collective or independent, negative or positive, and so on; for example, a message highlighting the gains to be made from avoiding negative consequences of climate change might read, “If we reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, the impacts of climate change will not be as severe.” Climate change frames might also depict its interactions with global health, the economy, or national security.
Although climate change can be read from diverse angles, it is most often classified as an environmental issue, and results in dramatic environmental impacts. Therefore it should be expected that people who are environmentally concerned should be similar to people that are concerned about climate change, and would probably belong in either the Concerned or Alarmed FRAMES OF MIND 8 groups as defined by Maibach et al. (2011). Therefore one goal of the present study was to determine some relevant psychological characteristics of people who are environmentally concerned. A second goal was to make use of those findings to develop appropriate frames through which behavior might be prompted. The paper concludes with an analysis of other potential methods for prompting climate-aware decision-making.
Overview of Research
I present two experiments. The goal of the first experiment was to explore the psychological attributes of people who are environmentally concerned with the ultimate goal of building frames that would harmonize with those attributes. I used a survey to detect whether environmental concern was correlated with prosocial factors, such as compassion. I used the results of the first experiment to inform the selection of frames I hypothesized would differentially impact concern about climate change and willingness to act to mitigate it in people who showed less or more environmental concern. In the second experiment, I tested these frames.
EXPERIMENT 1
People who perform pro-environmental behavior may see humans and nature as diametrically opposed to one another, or may see humans as integrally part of nature. Since environmental impacts are a central part of climate change, people who are concerned about the environment tend to be concerned about climate change as well. Therefore understanding the psychological profiles of such individuals may help to construct frames pertaining to their values.
The purpose of Experiment 1 was to test for a relationship between concern for nonhuman nature and prosocial attitudes. FRAMES OF MIND 9
As yet it is uncertain whether showing environmental concern (EC), a feeling of worry for how human impacts on nonhuman nature affect the self, other humans, and/or the organisms inhabiting a nonhuman environment, should be related to prosocial attitudes or not. In one study, approximately a third of the participants attributed greater moral value to nonhuman nature than to human outgroups, such as welfare recipients and undocumented immigrants (Rottman,
Crimston, Syropoulos, & Benitez, 2018). However, there is reason to expect that EC is correlated with prosocial emotions. Nature relatedness, the extent to which a person feels they are part of nature rather than apart from it, has been linked with psychological wellbeing, meaningfulness, and energy (Cervinka, Röderer, & Hefler, 2012), which are positively correlated with altruism
(Krueger, Hicks, & McGue, 2001) and prosocial personality traits (Nisbet, Zelenski, & Murphy,
2009). Schultz (2000) found that people showing greater nature relatedness also showed more environmental concern, and proposed that a possible explanation is that people who believe themselves to be part of nature more closely understand the interdependent mechanisms between humans and nonhuman nature.
There is also evidence that EC is directly related to prosocial attitudes. EC is strongly positively associated with a sense of responsibility toward the environment (Kellstedt, Zahran, &
Vedlitz, 2008; Ojala, 2012b). Environment-related moral judgment correlates with environmentally responsible behavior (ERB) and moral sensitivity, a sense of awareness of situations and of the impact of actions on others, requiring empathy, and social perspective-taking
(Ojala, 2012b). It is also associated with moral motivation, acting based on moral values rather than other values. Hirsh (2010) found that EC is significantly positively related to the Big Five personality traits of agreeableness, openness, and conscientiousness. Agreeableness is often described as related to empathy and consideration of others, while openness regards flexibility of FRAMES OF MIND 10 thought. Conscientiousness signifies a tendency to follow social rules. Herringer (1998) showed that that all three of these traits are significantly related to altruism as a value. This finding is notable because it might lead to some understanding regarding the motivations driving ERB.
Specifically, in view of the relationship between EC and prosocial attitudes like altruism, ERB may in part show an altruistic attempt to improve other people’s lives, or to protect them from climate-related impacts. If the motivation for ERB is provided partly by such prosocial attitudes, then communication focusing on harms toward other people might be especially effective for stimulating ERB in people who are high in EC.
Altruism is a category of prosocial behavior, and it is most likely explained by the empathy- altruism hypothesis, which has the most consistent support, as compared with other hypotheses stating that altruism is driven by self-benefits, such as suppressing aversive empathic arousal
(Batson & Powell, 2003; Grant & Gino, 2010). The empathy-altruism hypothesis states that tender, empathy-like emotions motivate altruistic behavior with the direct goal of helping another, almost always another person. Altruistic acts are always prosocial, but prosocial acts are not always altruistic. Altruistic acts differ in that they are specified by their lack of benefit to the actor aside from feelings of gratification, and they are often costly to that individual from economic and social perspectives. In order to prompt altruistic ERB, the combined effect of an individual’s disposition
(e. g., environmentally concerned) and the situation (e. g., the threat to another person) should be most potent.
Altruistic behavior is associated with moral elevation. Moral elevation is an emotional and physiological response to witnessing behaviors of moral beauty, such as generosity, loyalty, courage, or compassion (Landis et al., 2009; Piper, Saslow, & Saturn, 2015). This phenomenon can be described as a reactivity to others’ prosocial acts. It represents both an emotional reaction FRAMES OF MIND 11 and an orientation toward the other. People experiencing moral elevation explicitly report an urge to perform prosocial acts (Landis et al., 2009). It has been shown repeatedly that moral elevation inspires helping behavior toward other people (Freeman, Aquino, & McFerran, 2009; Schnall &
Roper, 2012; Schnall, Roper, & Fessler, 2010); however, compassionate feelings due to moral elevation have thus far only been described in cases of interpersonal helping, not toward more distant parties, such as nonhuman nature and the diversity of life therein. This experiment will be the first to my knowledge to measure the relationship between moral elevation and feelings of concern toward the environment in contrast to other people.
The goal of Experiment 1 was to test whether environmental concern (EC) and nature relatedness (NR), both known predictors of ERB, are correlated with various prosocial attitudes related to altruism. In order to assess these relationships, I used the online survey development website Qualtrics and the survey distribution website mechanicalTurk (i. e., mTurk) to collect participants’ responses to questions about their environmental concern and prosocial emotions.
The measures used to assess these constructs are described in detail below. I hypothesized that EC and NR would be positively correlated with measures of prosocial attitudes including moral elevation, compassion, love, and two behavioral indicators. Since EC is related to several moral emotions and personality factors, I hypothesized that EC would be positively correlated with these prosocial attitudes.
Method
Participants. I recruited adult participants (N = 612) for pay from mTurk. The oldest participant was 80 years old, and the youngest was 18 at the time of the survey (M = 35.97). Of my sample, 42.5% identified themselves as male, 56.8% identified as female, .3% identified as transmale, and .3% identified as a gender not listed. The sample included 1.8% people who FRAMES OF MIND 12 identified as American Indian/Alaska Native, 14.4% Asian, 7.4% Black/African American, 69%
White, 2.1% from an unlisted race, 1.3% an unknown race. Of the participants, 3.6% identified as multiracial. In addition, 9.3% of the sample reported a Latinx/Hispanic identity.
Materials. Participants completed the Environmental Concern scale (Schultz, 2000). This scale, which has been shown to have high reliability as well as high convergent and divergent validity, was created to reflect the different value orientations people hold for environmental concern: egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric.
Participants also completed a short scale of nature relatedness called the NR-6 (Nisbet &
Zelenski, 2013). Items were drawn from the original NR scale based on normality of distribution, ability to discriminate high- and low-scorers, and correlations with related concepts (Nisbet &
Zelenski, 2013, Nisbet et al., 2009). The short scale showed correlations in expected directions with measures of satisfaction, environmental concern, and outdoor time; furthermore, it was highly correlated with the original scale (Nisbet & Zelenski, 2013).
Socially positive emotions were measured using the Love and Compassion components of the Dispositional Positive Emotions Scale (DPES; Shiota, Keltner, & John, 2006). Love here means allowing others to care for the self as trusted caregivers. Compassion is prompted by concern for offspring or other close people in distress, and prompts nurturing behavior. Both subscales showed good internal consistency. These two positive emotions are highly associated with altruistic motivations.
To measure trait elevation, the tendency to respond emotionally to examples of moral excellence that do not directly benefit one’s self, participants completed a measure developed by
Landis et al. (2009) that required them to respond to a series of items regarding their response to stories about people helping others. The items regarded how often participants came across stories FRAMES OF MIND 13 that elicited emotional reactions (e.g., “I feel happy”), physiological reactions (e. g., “I feel tingles or chills or goose bumps”), and motivational reactions (e.g., “I feel like I want to do something good too”). The same items were used to measure state elevation following a stimulus described below. For this measure, Landis et al. report good internal consistency.
Figure 1. The video used in the survey to elicit moral elevation.
The moral elevation stimulus was seven-minute video of part of an episode of The Oprah
Winfrey Show, in which a music teacher tells a story about his former music teacher who inspired him and took care of him as a child, and how he now used music to inspire his students. At the end of the video, his students surprise him with a song and thanks. The video has been shown to induce moral elevation (Silvers & Haidt, 2008).
Procedure. The participants filled out a survey containing the scales described above and then watched the video. They then answered the state elevation measure, which included items described above, and completed a dictator task as a measure of altruism, in which they were asked FRAMES OF MIND 14 how many stars they would give to another participant, and how many they would keep for themselves. Participants also responded to a question about donating 0 to 60 minutes of extra time for no extra pay.
Results
Correlation coefficients between the variables of interest are shown in Table 1. EC and
NR were significantly and positively correlated with one another. EC and NR were both significantly and positively correlated with state moral elevation as measured on the post-video questionnaire as well as to trait moral elevation. EC and NR were significantly and positively correlated with self-reported compassion and self-reported love. Willingness to donate time for no pay was significantly correlated with EC and NR. The amount of points a person was willing to give away in the dictator task was correlated with EC and NR. In summary, both EC and NR were significantly positively correlated with every measure of prosocial attitudes included in the study.
Figure 2 shows a regression of compassion and environmental concern.
Table 1
Correlations among the Measures
MES MET EC C L NR DT TD Moral Elevation (State) - Moral Elevation (Trait) .48* - Environmental Concern .19* .29* - Compassion .30* .42* .37* - Love .41* .44* .21* .41* - Nature Relatedness .28* .24* .29* .28* .29* - Dictator Task .23* .16* .09* .10* .11* .13* - Time Donation .27* .22* .11* .05 .18* .20* .23* - Note. * indicate that the correlation is significant at p < .001. FRAMES OF MIND 15
Figure 2. Regression of compassion and environmental concern.
Discussion
The goal of this experiment was to examine whether high EC was correlated with prosocial attitudes, including moral elevation and altruism. There were significant positive correlations between EC and state moral elevation, trait moral elevation, love, point transfer in the dictator task, and time donation, and between EC and compassion. NR was modestly but significantly correlated with state moral elevation, trait moral elevation, compassion, love, point transfer in the dictator task, and time donation. These findings provide preliminary evidence that high EC is associated with more intense experiences of moral elevation and a stronger sense of compassion than in people with less EC. This leads to the conclusion that EC is associated with prosocial attitudes. FRAMES OF MIND 16
This experiment suggests that people whose emotions are more easily influenced by prosocial acts are also more likely to feel connected to nature and feel more EC. One question that arises from this result is whether having a more biospheric outlook on the world (i.e., caring about all living organisms) leads to higher moral elevation and represents more compassion overall, or if the tendency to experience moral elevation and compassion toward people leads one to personify and empathize with the rest of the biosphere, or finally if a third variable, such as having a generally compassionate perspective leads to both outcomes. One clue is presented by Corbett (2005), who found that an altruistic personal norm (a feeling of personal obligation to prevent harm to others) strongly predicted ERB. If that is true, then it is possible that prosocial emotions give rise to EC, rather than a biospheric outlook leading to greater altruistic tendencies. In addition, Pfattheicher,
Sassenrath, and Schindler (2016) showed that priming participants to view images of suffering humans empathetically (the high-compassion condition) versus objectively (the low-compassion condition) led to pro-other and pro-environmental compassion. In this case too, compassion for humans was transferred to nonhuman nature. Experiment 1 corroborated Pfattheicher et al.’s finding that dispositional compassion was significantly positively related to pro-environmental values, intentions, and donations: There was a moderate correlation between environmental concern and compassion.
The Experiment 1 finding that EC is associated with prosocial emotions and moral elevation points to the likelihood that increased EC is correlated with increased empathy. If this hypothesis is correct, climate change frames emphasizing the climate impacts on other people may more effectively influence people who show elevated EC than people who score low on EC. I tested this prediction in Experiment 2.
EXPERIMENT 2 FRAMES OF MIND 17
Experiment 2 tested how both frames focusing attention on either the impacts of climate change on the self or on an unknown peer might influence participants’ willingness to act to prevent climate change. Participants were asked to read a list of impacts on human health and livelihood while considering how those impacts would affect a person depicted on a large screen in front of them. The person in the image was either the individual participating in the experiment
(the Self condition) or an unknown peer (the Other condition). The participants filled out measures assessing their level of environmental concern and pre- and post- measures of concern about and willingness to act to mitigate climate change. It was predicted that individuals who showed greater environmental concern would be more influenced by the Other frame than would people who showed less environmental concern.
One challenge faced by climate communicators is the seeming distance, both temporal and geographical, of climate change. Leiserowitz (2005) asked participants to write down the first associations they had in mind when asked about global warming, and found that 61% of participants thought of distant images over nearby images. In order to close the distance between the threat of climate change and the participant, this experiment involved the use of frames connecting climate change to the participant themselves or an unknown ingroup member.
Although frames are most often seen in text form, in this experiment images were used. Visual frames have been used before in other experiments (Schultz, 2000; Sinatra, Kardash,
Taasoobshirazi, & Lombardi, 2012).
Frames that are more personally relevant might be expected to elicit a more intense emotional response. With that in mind, one goal with the present experiment is to bring the concept of climate change as close as possible: to the participant’s own person or a peer. Visualizing the impact of climate change on these people should have a strong emotional impact. FRAMES OF MIND 18
As reported in Experiment 1 and other experiments, EC is related to empathic feelings toward others. EC is related to a sense of responsibility toward the environment (Kellstedt et al.,
2008; Ojala, 2012b) and the Big Five traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness
(Hirsh, 2010). This evidence implies that a frame manipulation to consider the other should lead to especially strong concern about climate change in people who have high EC as a result of their compassionate dispositions.
As in the previous study, if environmental concern arises partly from a sense of compassion and an orientation toward others, then people who are already high in environmental concern should show increased concern about and conation to mitigate climate change when considering the impacts on another person, versus on the self. People low in environmental concern would be expected to shift similar distances in concern and compulsion to act whether faced with a peer’s suffering or their own, since compassion should have less influence on their attitudes. I predicted that people showing more environmental concern would show more concern about climate change than less compassionate people while visualizing the impact of climate change on other people.
Method
Participants. Forty undergraduate Psychology majors at a liberal arts university in the
Pacific Northwest participated in return for course credit.
Materials. I used the same measure of EC as in the previous study (Schultz, 2000; Snelgar,
2006). Participants also filled out Likert scales about their sense of both concern and conation to act on several globally-important issues. The scales ranged from 1 = not at all to 10 = very much in order to capture small shifts and to thwart ceiling effects. I refer to these items as concern and compulsion. Of these issues, climate change was the only item of interest. The other items were FRAMES OF MIND 19 included to counteract demand characteristics. Finally, participants filled out the same DPES measure of compassion as was used in Experiment 1.
I adapted a fact sheet from an EPA web page detailing the impacts of climate change on human health as a piece for participants to read to inform them of climate impacts while considering themselves or another participant (Climate Impacts, 2017). These materials may be viewed in Appendix A.
Procedure. I tested participants individually. In the Self condition, I took a close-up photograph of the participants’ faces against a white background. Next the participants filled out the EC, concern and compulsion, and Compassion questionnaires while I set up a projection of their own face on a monitor in the testing room, using the photograph I had just taken.
In the Other condition, participants filled out the questionnaires while I set up a photograph depicting an unknown face, sex-matched by best guess to the participant. Participants then read the EPA document describing the impacts on humans of climate change while considering the person in the photograph. The piece included reminders for the participant to look up at the photograph periodically to strengthen their consideration of the person in the photograph. After the participant indicated that they had read it thoroughly, they filled out the world issues measures for a second time. Following that, I debriefed them.
Results
One participant did not fill out the post-manipulation concern and compulsion measures, so their data was excluded from the final analyses. I first conducted two within-subjects t-tests measuring all participants’ shift in concern about and compulsion to act on climate change by subtracting the average of participants’ reports of concern before the manipulation (M = 8.83, SD
= 1.75) from the average of their reports afterward (M = 9.09, SD = 1.65). I did the same for the FRAMES OF MIND 20 compulsion variable (before: M = 8.45, SD = 2.04, after: M = 9.03, SD = 1.68). Participants’ concern about climate change significantly increased post-manipulation t(38) = 2.29, p = .027.
Similarly, participants reported increased compulsion to act to mitigate climate change post- manipulation, t(38) = 3.37, p = .002.
I created a median split in Environmental Concern scores by totaling them, ordering them, and then splitting them into equal groups. Participants whose scores were the median were placed in the Less Concerned group. An independent-samples t-test showed that there was no difference in initial concern about climate change between more- and less-environmentally-concerned participants, t(38) = .57, p = .58. I conducted two two-way ANOVAs to test the effect of frame and environmental concern on climate change concern and compulsion to act, using the same average difference values as I calculated earlier. Cell means and standard deviations can be found in Table 2. For both of these analyses, none of the main effects or interactions approached significance. However, as can be seen in Figures 3 and 4, some trends appeared that may warrant additional research. Though the shift was not statistically significant, those showing more concern about the environment also showed less of a shift in the Other condition and more of a shift in the
Self condition. The same trend appeared for compulsion.
Table 2 Effects of Frame and Environmental Concern on Concern and Compulsion to Act on Climate Change
Self Frame Other Frame Less EC More EC Less EC More EC (n = 13) (n = 7) (n = 8) (n = 11) Concern .31 .43 .31 .10 (1.03) (.79) (.59) (.30) FRAMES OF MIND 21
Compulsion .69 .86 .63 .18 (1.49) (1.22) (.52) (.41) Note. Means show posttest – pretest difference scores. Standard deviations appear below their means in parentheses. For each analysis, there were neither main effects nor interactions.
Figure 3. Average change in self-reported concern about climate change from pre- manipulation to post-manipulation. FRAMES OF MIND 22
Figure 4. Average change in self-reported compulsion to act in view of climate change from pre-manipulation to post-manipulation.
In an effort to detect whether a ceiling effect might be at play, I also measured some descriptive statistics for initial climate change concern and compulsion. For concern, the mean response out of 10 was 8.83. The median was 9, and the mode was 10. For compulsion, the mean response was 8.45. Again, the median was 9, and the mode was 10. Figures 5 and 6 show the frequency of responses for these two items. These are relatively high values that could indicate a ceiling effect. FRAMES OF MIND 23
Figure 5. Frequency of participant responses Figure 6. Frequency of participant responses to to concern question by option. Shows compulsion question by option. Shows clustering in the upper extreme. clustering in the upper extreme. Discussion
The results showed that reading some of the human impacts of climate change and viewing an image led to a significant increase in concern about and compulsion to act to mitigate climate change. However, imagining such changes in relation to one’s self or in relation to another human did not significantly affect the magnitude of these shifts. Neither did intensity of environmental concern. For both concern about and compulsion to act in view of climate change, the effectiveness of the frame did not differ depending on level of environmental concern.
In this experiment, informing people about climate change led to increased concern and compulsion to act. Hungerford and Volk (1990) argue that while many factors are important for prompting ERB, knowledge of the problem is a necessary prerequisite, and a powerful predictor of ERB (Ojala, 2012a). Knowledge of issues influences people’s attitudes about those problems and their perceived behavioral control (PBC), meaning their sense of ability to perform certain behaviors (Bamberg & Möser, 2007). Although most Western liberal arts university students can FRAMES OF MIND 24 be expected to be relatively informed about climate change in comparison with the average
American, climate change is a complex and distressing topic, interacting with other factors, that can invite abandonment, so it would not be surprising if some participants learned about a concerning impact of which they were not previously aware.
It is interesting that the trends are similar for both the concern and the compulsion measures, though they would seem to run contrary to my initial hypothesis. If the trend were meaningful, it could signify that even if more environmental concern is linked with more compassion, the salience of the threat to the self leads to more intense concern than any sense of empathy or prosocial emotion. That phenomenon may have held more true to environmentally- concerned participants if they were already paying more attention to the message about climate impacts. If errors in a situation are perceived as costly to the self, fear may increase systematic processing of a message (Baron, Logan, Lilly, Inman, & Brennan, 1994). Corbett (2005) suggests that although ERB appeals are often framed in terms of sacrifice, self-interest may also be a powerful tool for prompting it. In her surveys, she found that almost half of the variance of a question about intention to perform automobile-related ERBs (i. e., not using automobiles as much) was explained by self-interest factors related specifically to health. While many ERB appeals are aimed at promoting sacrificial behavior by targeting viewers’ moral centers, Kaplan
(2000) suggests that this strategy, though intuitive, may actually fail to take advantage of one of the primary propulsions of human behavior. There are plenty of ERBs that can be framed as having advantage for the person performing them. The self-interest ERBs in the Corbett study represented walking as opposed to using an automobile as helpful for preventing marginal increases of CO2 pollution from entering the atmosphere, which is related to climate change. That unconsumed CO2 would then not be able to damage the lungs of the person walking. Walking would also give a FRAMES OF MIND 25 person moral authority in the community and better physical fitness. This self-interest argument, argues Kaplan, should therefore not be overlooked.
However, this explanation would not be enough to show why such an effect would only be visible for people high in environmental concern, and not low in it. People who show environmental concern, as demonstrated in the first experiment, also showed a sense of nature relatedness, meaning they felt they were a part of nature. For many people, climate change is classified as an environmental problem precisely because it represents dramatically how the success of humans as a species has led to the decline of many others (Bulkeley, 2000). These individuals view the relationship between humanity and nonhuman nature as interdependent, which is perhaps why they showed more of an increase in concern in the Self condition: they felt the information was more credible, since it conveyed to them unfortunate impacts on humanity resulting from humanity’s misuse of resources. That narrative would fit well into an environmentalist narrative.
That possibility would still not explain why such a small effect would exist for the Other condition in those who showed greater environmental concern. One possibility is a ceiling effect.
On suspicion I examined several measures of central tendency for the initial measures of concern and compulsion, and found that in both cases, most participants reported very high initial awareness and feelings of conation around climate change. In both questions, almost half of them reported the maximum response. This finding means that for many participants, there would not have been much room to shift upwards even if the video did affect their opinions. This effect would have been especially true for people who were already concerned about the environment. To prevent this effect, it may have been helpful to give the end anchor stronger language (e.g., FRAMES OF MIND 26
“extremely concerned” versus “very concerned”), and to direct the participants to give an answer about their concern or compulsion to act in comparison to all other people, not just in general.
General Discussion
In the first experiment, I evaluated some psychological characteristics of people showing high environmental concern as a population of interest in climate-aware behavior and found that people who show environmental concern also show more prosocial attitudes. In the following experiment, I developed some frames to coordinate with the characteristics I found. My results showed that informing people about the impacts of climate change on humans increased their concern and compulsion to act, but did not show any effect of frames oriented toward the self or the other, nor any effect of low or high environmental concern. While the results of these experiments were interesting, it is necessary to acknowledge their limitations.
This first experiment was limited by the lack of a manipulation, preventing any claims of causality. In the future, this problem could be remedied by manipulating moral elevation and behavior type. For example, pro-environmental helping behaviors might be more elevating for people whose values are aligned with the behavior. Furthermore, as the correlations are low, the conclusions that can be made are limited, as they could potentially be the result of acquiescence or social desirability bias. Note Figure 2, which demonstrates the correlation between environmental concern and compassion, for which there was a moderate correlation. All of the data clumps toward the upper limits of the graph. There was but one participant who reported both low compassion and environmental concern. However it is also plausible that the correlation resulted from a tendency for Qualtrics participants to be genuinely compassionate and concerned about the environment. FRAMES OF MIND 27
Another weakness was that the study was performed over the Internet, and many of the measures were self-reported. While this procedure allowed us to gather data from a more diverse variety of participants, it also prevented us from measuring pro-environmental behavior itself and external indications of elevation. An ideal test of the effects of moral elevation on pro- environmental values would do so.
The second experiment was also largely based on self-report. Due to the nature of the experiment, participants had to be tested individually; however, it is possible that this situation may have led to an increase in demand characteristics or social desirability. The close-by presence of the experimenter may have led to the increased salience of her opinion.
It is plausible that the message was too effective; that is, the message of the EPA document was meant to convey the possibility of concerning impacts of climate change to humans, but it may have come across as a fear appeal. It has been well established that despite causing an increase in perceived severity of a threat, fear appeals may backfire by making people more conscious of threats to their self-esteem, their lives, or the meaning of their lives, overwhelming any sense of self-efficacy, and may lead ultimately to fatalism (Bilandzic,, Kalch, & Soentgen, 2017;
Dickinson, Crain, Yalowitz, & Cherry, 2013; O’Neill & Nicholson-Cole, 2009; Witte & Allen,
2000). To isolate the manipulation, I purposefully did not include any information about the possibilities of mitigating climate change. If participants felt perceived an overly-negative message from the EPA document, it may have prevented them from feeling it was even worth the trouble of being concerned about or trying to slow down climate change. This effect would have been felt most deeply by people already showing concern for the environment, who would find messages about climate change deeply aversive, and that may have contributed to a suppression effect. FRAMES OF MIND 28
This study showed that informing people about impacts on climate change can increase their concern about and compulsion to act to mitigate it. However, in this case the effort to use frames to communicate in accordance with people’s psychological characteristics was unsuccessful. In other cases, framing has proven an effective strategy in shifting attitudes toward climate change.
For example, in general, gain frames tend to show better results for increasing pro- mitigation attitudes (Gifford & Comeau, 2011). Spence and Pidgeon (2010) found that while loss frames, which emphasized what could be lost from climate impacts, resulted in greater fear and perceived severity, they ultimately resulted in a suppression effect. Gain frames, in contrast, which emphasized what could yet be protected from climate impacts, resulted in judgments that climate change was more severe and mitigation was more worthwhile. This results partly because gain frames are much more effective in highly-uncertain situations (Morton, Rabinovich, Marshall, &
Bretschneider, 2011). However, this tendency has been shown to shift depending on the policy being advocated and the individual’s personality. Gain frames regarding potential growth to the economy from investing in renewables results in greater support from people with a promotion focus (i. e., whose goals are finding opportunities for advancement), while frames depicting potential losses are more effective for people with prevention focuses (i. e., whose goals are to feel secure and avoid danger) (Bertolotti & Catellani, 2014). One way to combine these ideas is to use a gain-negative frame, which combines an action strategy (e. g., “If we lower fossil fuel emissions,
…”) with an avoided loss (e. g., “…then the ocean will be less acidic”) (Bilandzic et al., 2017).
Such a frame has been shown to result in a greater perceived threat of climate change and more willingness to sacrifice because of it. FRAMES OF MIND 29
Another example of the success of framing is the distance frame. Scannell and Gifford
(2013) found that informing local residents about the impacts of climate change on their region has been shown to increase engagement in climate change, and place attachment (i. e., the cognitive and emotional bonds to an area due to cultural significance, memories, and a sense of belongingness and support) is associated with that engagement. In addition, Wiest, Raymond, and
Clawson (2012) found that a local message as compared with a global one led to more concern for the impact of climate change on the self and more support for governmental and personal mitigation efforts. Frames that bring climate change closer to home may be more effective.
Gain frames and local frames are two examples of how frames can be used to elicit more engagement with climate change, but frames have been used effectively in many forms. Another example of success with framing comes from Dickinson et al. (2013), who found that for birdwatchers, a bird frame, which showed the threats of climate change to birds, elicited significantly more interest in reducing carbon footprints than both the control frame (i.e., no message) and the human frame (i.e., the threat to humans from climate change). There is also evidence that Americans respond better to sustainability initiatives whose narratives prime their independence rather than interdependence through framing (Hamedani, Markus, & Fu). Frames that depict a debate around whether to mitigate climate change result in more pro-mitigation attitudes in open-minded people, and decreased support for mitigation in close-minded people
(Nisbet, Hart, Myers, Ellithorpe, 2013). All of these frames have been helpful in communicating climate change, but ample work remains to be done to examine the myriad other approaches that could be yet more powerful.
FRAMES OF MIND 30
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Appendix A Materials Gender: ______
Sociopolitical Attitudes To what extent do you feel concerned about… Positive Emotions 1. …genocide? Circle the number that best represents your 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 position. not at all very much 1. It’s important to take care of people who are vulnerable. 2. …climate change? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Strongly disagree Strongly agree not at all very much 2. When I see someone hurt or in need, I feel a powerful 3. …human trafficking? urge to take care of them. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Strongly disagree Strongly agree not at all very much 3. Taking care of others gives me a warm feeling inside. 4. …wars? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Strongly disagree Strongly agree not at all very much 4. I often notice people who need help. 5. …world poverty? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not at all very much Strongly disagree Strongly agree.
To what extent do you feel compelled to prevent… 5. I am a very compassionate person.
6. …genocide? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Strongly disagree Strongly agree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
not at all very much
7. …climate change? Environmental Concern
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 People around the world are generally concerned not at all very much about environmental problems because of the consequences that result from harming nature. 8. …human trafficking? However, people differ in the consequences that 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 concern them the most. Please rate the following not at all very much items from 1 (not important) to 7 (supreme importance) in response to the question: I am 9. …wars? concerned about environmental problems 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 because of the consequences for ____. not at all very much Animals 10. …world poverty? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 2 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 not at all very much Me 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
My future 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 My lifestyle
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 FRAMES OF MIND 39
Humanity 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Plants 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Whales 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Children 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 People of the Community 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Trees 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 My prosperity 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Future generations 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 My health 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Marine life 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Birds 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 FRAMES OF MIND 40
Climate Change Please read the following carefully while considering the person in the photograph on the screen. Climate change is increasingly leading to a variety of negative impacts on human health and welfare. Among these impacts are: more heat-related deaths, especially in older or more vulnerable populations, due to an increase in heat waves heat stroke, dehydration, and cardiovascular, respiratory, and cerebrovascular diseases associated with heat waves pollution-associated health problems caused by stagnant air associated with heat waves asthma attacks and other cardiorespiratory effects from shifting air patterns cardiorespiratory problems associated with inhaling wildfire smoke respiratory problems from pollutants released in smoke from wildfires allergic reactions from an increase in airborne pollen At this point, please look again at the person in the photograph and consider the effect of these impacts on that person. respiratory problems and death due to an increase in ground-level ozone decreased availability of food and clean drinking water during extreme weather events damage to infrastructure during extreme weather events, decreasing access to food, clean water, medical care, and shelter during extreme weather events disruption to communication channels leading to poorer health care during extreme weather events carbon monoxide poisoning from using electrical generators during storms mental health impacts following extreme weather events, such as PTSD increased exposure to mosquito- and tick-borne illnesses as winters become more mild Please look one more time at the person in the photograph and consider the effect of these impacts on that person. potential increased exposure to waterborne bacteria, viruses, and parasites, as well as toxins produced by cyanobacteria and algae, and chemicals produced by humans due to increased stormwater drainage and rising temperatures increased contamination of recreational bodies of water, drinking water, and areas from which shellfish are harvested due to heavier rainfall and runoff increased exposure to Salmonella and other bacteria on food due to higher temperatures potential increased exposure to chemical contaminants in food (e.g., increased concentration of mercury in fish due to higher sea surface temperatures) stress/mental health responses due to knowing of the threat of climate change magnified risk of death for the mentally ill during heat waves significant disruptions to agricultural yields and availability, leading to increased odds of food poisoning, malnutrition
Adapted from https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/climate-impacts/climate-impacts-human-health_.html