Slowing human-caused climate change requires decisive action. But according to psychologists, the gradual rise in global temperatures can lead to climate apathy, especially among those who don’t face frequent climate disasters.
Climate apathy is a general indifference or lack of emotional or behavioral response to climate change and environmental issues. People experiencing climate apathy may feel disconnected, overwhelmed, powerless, or simply uninterested in climate issues, leading them to avoid taking action or engaging in conversations about it.
A new study by researchers from UCLA and Princeton University looked into ways to effectively communicate about climate change. The research team found that presenting people with continuous data, like rising temperatures in a town, gave them only a vague sense of gradual change. But showing them binary data—like whether a lake froze or not each winter—illustrated the change more effectively.
In the study, which was recently published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, the researchers showed participants either temperature graphs or lake-freezing data for fictional and real towns in order to measure how each format affected their perceptions of climate impact. Participants who saw whether lakes froze rated climate change as more impactful—12% higher on average—than those who saw only temperature data.
By focusing on the increasing rate of once-rare events, the researchers hope that the same temperature data that once led to climate apathy may instead help communities care more about the climate crisis.
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UCLA study: How to break through climate apathy
Photo, posted November 20, 2008, courtesy of Brad Saunders via Flickr.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio
