Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumA cautionary note about messages of hope
I don't have access to the entire paper, but the abstract certainly caught my attention.
Highlights
• Emotional distress is strongly correlated with mitigation motivation; hope is not.
• Optimistic messages about carbon emissions reduce climate change risk perceptions.
• Less risk leads to less distress, which in turn lowers mitigation motivation.
• Pessimistic climate change messages avoid complacency without eroding efficacy.
For the first time this millennium, growth in carbon emissions has slowed. Indeed, the year 2014 was the first time in 40 years that the planet saw zero growth in emissions. We examine whether this message of progress can be effective in motivating people to engage in mitigation efforts. This question dovetails with commentary suggesting that gloomy messages about climate change risk fatiguing the population, and that alternative approaches are necessary. It is also informed by work suggesting that hope is a motivating force in terms of engaging in collective action and social change.
Study 1 (N = 574) showed that negative emotions were strongly related to mitigation motivation and feelings of efficacy, but hope-related emotions had a much weaker relationship with these constructs. In the main experiment (Study 2: N = 431) participants read an optimistic, pessimistic, or neutral message about the rate of progress in reducing global carbon emissions. Relative to the pessimistic message, the optimistic message reduced participants’ sense that climate change represented a risk to them, and the associated feelings of distress. Consequently, the optimistic message was less successful in increasing mitigation motivation than the pessimistic message.
In sum, predictions that the optimistic message would increase efficacy did not transpire; concerns that the optimistic message would increase complacency did transpire. Recent progress in curbing global carbon emissions is welcome, but we found no evidence that messages focusing on this progress constitute an effective communication strategy.
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Binkie The Clown
(7,911 posts)That's what I think every time I hear somebody touting hydrogen, wind, solar,... etc., as the miracle cure-all that will save us. It always seemed to me that this kind of optimism was only an excuse not to act, or a justification for not taking the problem seriously.
I can see how progress on carbon emissions would bolster that attitude, and dull the urgency of the problem.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)People don't usually change their minds. People throw numbers at each other until all sides are blue in the face, and depending on if your brain works in an optimistic or pessimistic way, you'll be able to carve out a story to fit your thought process. It's been said many times, by many people, over many years, but we all really do see what we want to see.
In what objective way is climate change truly a problem? Take human consciousness out of the equation, and the climate changing is just a thing that happens. Whatever may or may not be the driving force, it's just a thing that happens. It's not something to fight or stop. It's not good, or bad, it just is.
Take the human mind out of a lot of equations, and a lot of problems fade away. We assign words like good and bad to things that happen, and the bad things become problems, even though we made up the word problem. Out of thin air.
Optimistic messages don't get people doing anything. Pessimistic messages make people not do anything. One is, eh, we're good. One is, eh, what's the point. Either way, humans will do what humans do. We'll call some of those things good, some of those things bad, but we don't really know. That's why our solutions to problems create the next problem to be solved. Good, bad, solution, problem, these are words that exist and have meaning only in the human mind.
On the one hand, we love change. Social change, when it's for the good. Economic change, again, when it's for the good. On the other hand, we don't like change. We don't like climate change at all. We even say we have to fight it, yet we also say violence doesn't solve anything.
We're all crazy, nobody has any idea of what to do, or not to do, and we just make shit up as we go.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)People tend to be very attached to their consciousness. If you can set aside that attachment with its adornment of fear and judgments, even just for a moment, all the "problems" seem to fade away into the space that opens up. It's such an amazing feeling it ought to be illegal. I know a lot of people think it's immoral...
hunter
(38,304 posts)Well, if that's true, this sucks even more:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/full.html
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)
OKIsItJustMe
(19,937 posts)If people have hope, they will try to make things better, and no matter how bad things are, they can always be worse.
OKIsItJustMe
(19,937 posts)4. General discussion
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These data should not be interpreted as implying that hope-related messages can never be an effective communication strategy. First, we used messages that focused on a specific form of hope relating to success in curbing carbon emissions. It remains to be seen whether other dimensions of hope might have more success at catalyzing mitigation action. Second, it could be that hope-related messages might be effective for some subsamples of the population even if it is ineffective at a general level. It is possible, for example, that hope-related messages might be effective if they are tailored to those people who are at risk of withdrawing from the climate change conversation due to feelings of despair or “apocalypse fatigue”. It would also be interesting to examine whether the link between optimistic messages and mitigation motivations are moderated by political ideology or environmental values. Similar to our argument above, it is possible that hope-related messages may be more effective for those who are particularly worried about climate change such as political liberals or people with strong environmental values (Hornsey et al., in press). Finally, Study 2 was a single-dose experiment, and so it reveals little about whether effects would persist over time. It is possible that the effectiveness of hope-related messages might be slower to emerge than more pessimistic messages, but that their effects are more sustained. What our data do suggest, however, is that any immediate pay-offs for a climate change message are more detectable with a pessimistic message than with a message that is framed around the improved outlook with respect to carbon emissions.
It should be noted that the effect of the climate change message was weak overall: although the pessimistic message resulted in reliably stronger mitigation motivations than the other two messages, the effect size was small. This is consistent with a range of studies on message framing, which typically find small-to-moderate increases in mitigation intentions after a climate change message (e.g., Gifford and Comeau, 2011; Hart, 2011; Hart and Nisbet, 2012; Hornsey et al., in press; Morton et al., 2011; Myers et al., 2012; Spence and Pidgeon, 2010). Furthermore, it should be emphasized that the optimistic message did not significantly differ from the neutral condition on the key outcome measure of mitigation motivation. So although there was no evidence that the optimistic message was helpful, neither was there any evidence that it damaged mitigation motivation.
4.1. Conclusions
Hope helps ward off despair and defeatism, and so hope-related messages might be a promising strategy for encouraging constructive responses to climate change threats. Specifically, the fact that carbon emissions have plateaued for the first time in four decades represents a mass communication opportunity. But when this information was presented to community members, the pay-offs in terms of feelings of hope were overwhelmed by the fact that the optimistic message diluted the sense of risk and distress that is effective in motivating mitigation efforts. In short, recent progress in curbing global carbon emissions is an exciting development, but we found no evidence that messages focusing on this progress constitute an effective mass communication strategy.
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GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)What they're saying is that neither an optimistic nor a pessimistic message has much effect, but that the effect of the pessimistic message is at least detectable.
