Early Sunday, a hot day dawns in Perth. Taxi drivers mutter how it’s never this hot this early in Spring. Inside the cavernous Perth Convention Centre, the APS Conference is winding down: exhibitors have packed up, the corridors are empty, voices echo, the complimentary coffee trolley has gone home. You’d be forgiven for thinking the Conference was over. But wait, not yet, what’s this? Down the corridors stride three professors to talk about one of the most serious environmental and health threats of the 21st Century, and why mental health professionals care about it. Introducing former Labor Federal Minister and WA Premier, Carmen Lawrence, now Winthrop Professor of Psychology at the University of Western Australia whose expertise is in psychology and social change; Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, UWA cognitive psychologist currently studying the links between personal ideology and acceptance of climate science; and finally our very own Professor Joseph Reser, co-author of one of the most comprehensive and in-depth studies of Australians’ climate change risk perceptions, understandings and responses. Definitely worth waiting for, and well attended despite the unfortunate timetabling. (Was this, perchance, an example of minimising the threat of climate change?)
Psychological impacts of climate change
The panel of three psychology professors began by talking about the psychological impacts of climate change. A snapshot of current climate threats was outlined. Having lowered the mood, and raised the pulse, our panel members then each focussed on a different aspect of how people cope with these threats. Professor Lawrence described the cumulative impact of climate threats, which can pull communities apart. With repeated incidences of disaster, communities can become less resilient, and less trusting.
Professor Lewandowsky argued that society risks becoming more authoritarian when people feel threatened by an unknown future. He believes that threat often means people look for an enemy, becoming less generous and willing to accept others.
Based on his studies of climate change perceptions and responses, Professor Reser argued taking action is integral to psychological adaptation and coping. He stated, “They’re out there ‘doing the right thing’ ‘making a difference’, making a contribution’. People are adapting both psychologically and behaviourally, and making changes to reduce their own
carbon footprint”.
When asked how psychologists can help people engage in adaptive coping, Lewandowsky felt the important public messages are to let people know that masses of people are already engaged in doing lots of good things, because this creates a sense of empowerment. Reser added that most people are already showing signs of good adaptive coping, and that pointing this out, encouraging them to continue, and perhaps offering strategies, is important.
Research into climate change psychology
Next, each psychology professor presented highlights of their recent research into climate change.
Carmen Lawrence’s presentation looked at the relationship between wealth and environmental damage. Contrary to early expectations that growth would reduce the degradation of the environment, what really has happened is that economic growth has increased environmental damage. On closer examination, it is not growth per se, but inequality that is most damaging – the most unequal societies are more likely to damage their environments (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010). More equal societies, in contrast, are more likely to recycle waste, have business leaders who give a higher priority to complying with international environmental agreements, and have higher levels of trust and social capital. Societies with less social equality produce more waste, have more biodiversity loss, larger ecological footprints, and are less likely to invest in means to reduce consumption. Measures of happiness demonstrate that happier nations are also more energy efficient and require less CO2 per unit GDP. Possible explanations propose that maybe the unequal distribution of wealth and power within countries leads to greater environmental damage by undermining the collective action required for environmental protection (Boyce et al., 2007).
Stephan Lewandowsky’s current research is on why people reject climate science in the face of the overwhelming scientific evidence. Although nearly all domain experts agree that human CO2 emissions are altering the world’s climate, a notable and – until recently – growing segment of the public appears to reject the scientific evidence. What are the reasons underlying this growing disparity between scientific reality and public perception?
Lewandowsky began by asking what affects people’s beliefs about climate change. Perhaps not surprisingly, the weather is a well known factor. A heatwave or flooding rains, for example, strengthen people’s beliefs that climate change is happening. People are also more likely to ‘believe’ in climate change if they think the day is warmer than usual (Li et al., 2011). (More surprising was the finding that dead indoor plants also strengthen climate change beliefs!). Spence et al. (2011) found people who had experienced floods that they thought resulted from climate change were more likely to believe in climate change and take action to mitigate it.
In the absence of personal experience, however, people are easily swayed by irrelevancies. This basic cognitive quirk makes organised denial easy and effective. And this is where Lewandowsky’s current research begins – exploring predictors of rejection of science. In a first study he examined visitors to climate blogs, which represent an important public platform where climate science is hotly debated, and where some people have clearly been influential in questioning climate science.
Lewandowsky surveyed 1,100 climate blog visitors to explore their acceptance of climate science (and other established theories on topics like the cause of HIV-AIDS or the link between tobacco and cancer), and their personal beliefs about free market ideology, and ratings on measures of conservatism/liberalism, their perceptions of consensus among scientists and their belief in conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are an important part of understanding denial because they are formed as a way of explaining away overwhelming scientific evidence. The survey results were stark:
- Climate science was rejected based on bloggers’ beliefs in free market ideology and conservatism.
- Rejection of climate change also correlated with rejection of other well proven scientific theories such as HIV causing AIDS, and smoking causing lung cancer.
- Conspiracist ideation was antithetical to acceptance of science.
Lewandowsky concluded that people's personal ideology, also often referred to as worldview or cultural cognition, is a major predictor of the rejection of climate science (Lewandowsky, Oberauer & Gignac, in press). He argues that the vocal online opposition to climate science, which has demonstrably made inroads into mainstream media, is largely driven by free market ideology and, to a lesser extent, conspiratorial thinking.
The final professor to discuss his research was Joseph Reser, who emerged as the optimist amongst the three professors – a surprise even to him! As previously reported in InPsych, Reser is the co-author of a study into public risk perceptions, understandings and responses to climate change, which has amassed the world’s most complete data set of people’s cumulative experiences with natural disasters.
Reser’s most recent results show that 74 per cent of Australian respondents believe the world’s climate is changing, 87 per cent believe human activities play a causal role, and 54 per cent consider Australia is already feeling the effects. Reser was particularly interested in the 45 per cent who reported having direct personal experiences of environmental changes or events thought to be associated with climate change. These people had very different scores on almost all core psychological variables compared to those without such experience. For starters, direct experience, either in Australia or overseas, is associated with stronger belief in anthropogenic climate change, greater climate change concerns, more distress about climate change, greater self efficacy about taking action and a greater sense of personal responsibility, and these individuals are more likely to take adaptive measures (Reser et al., 2012). A direct encounter with ‘climate change’ is often a genuinely transformative experience, which appears to catalyse motivation, engagement with the threat and issues, and psychological adaptation.
Building hope
Talking about climate change at a psychology conference is hard work. Climate change poses a huge threat to our health and wellbeing, but the extent of the threat is still largely unacknowledged, even within our profession, and people struggle to face the evidence. The challenges are enormous and require profound changes in every part of our lives, and delay only increases the magnitude of the threat, the costs (environmental, economic, human), and the degree of suffering around the globe. So how do you talk about climate change and strike a right balance between despair and hope?
Our three psychology professors gave it their best shot. Yes, the threats are real, and we can respond by ignoring the threats and conducting business as usual, by actively rejecting the science, or by protecting ourselves and rejecting those who are different from ourselves. But when we actually take the pulse of the Australian public as Reser did, we are heartened to hear it beat with engagement and action, especially for those who already have direct experience of natural disasters.
So we go on. Eminent psychologists like Lawrence, Lewandowsky and Reser show us the types of contributions psychology can make to understanding climate change. They remind us of the widespread benefits of more equal societies, show us how Australians are engaging with environmental problems, and teach us the importance of positive, reality-based messages. Most importantly, they show us how working in this area can help shape a better climate future and that this is better done together than alone.