Much of what passes for Science® these days is the construction of some focus groups given various subjective A/B tests, then followed up by detailed statistical analysis of subjective surveys of the participants. Not just “Climate Communications”. I’ve seen the same thing in other soft subjects, such as “Design Science” for years. The following is a classic of the genre.
Their conclusion seems to be that if you ask people to make sacrifices, they resist more conspicuously than if you tell people in passive voice that things must be done, especially by others.
Lots of math was involved in order to reach this spectacular and profound conclusion.
This study posits the hypothesis that the lack of an individual’s engagement in mitigating climate change might be due to reactance, a motivational psychological state that occurs when one’s perceived freedom to think or act is being threatened. In a 2 × 2 between-subjects experimental design (N = 623), we varied how mitigation recommendations for transportation were communicated (individual vs. policy appeal) in an online article. Additionally, we manipulated how directly the need to act was stressed (high- vs. low-controlling language). Outcome measures to capture reactance were perceived threat to freedom, counterarguing, and support for recommended mitigation efforts. Participants in the individual condition reported higher perceived threat to freedom, counterarguing, and showed lower support for the recommendations compared to those in the policy condition. In addition, high-controlling language increased perceptions of freedom threat. Results help clarify public responses to climate change mitigation appeals and offer insights about people’s perspectives on climate change mitigation.
Climate change is one of the most serious threats the world is facing today. Adequately addressing the issue and achieving an ecologically sustainable future, requires fundamental political and individual changes. Politicians are expected to introduce public policy initiatives designed to reduce humans’ impact on the climate, and individuals are expected to support those and take mitigative actions to reduce their carbon footprint. Despite widespread awareness and concern about climate change (European Commission, Citation2020), the global scale of mitigation action is slower than the pace required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement (IPCC, Citation2022). Hence, it seems crucial to appeal for climate action in the public discourse. However, such persuasive messages might be met with resistance when communicators strongly suggest a course of action, especially when they are perceived to restrict the public’s autonomy. One form of resistance against persuasion is psychological reactance, a motivational state aroused by the perception that one’s freedom to think or act in a certain way is being threatened (Brehm & Brehm, Citation1981). The goal of the present study is to investigate the impact of appeals promoting climate change mitigation on people’s psychological reactance and their perspectives on the topic in order to improve the effectiveness of environmental communication initiatives.
Psychological reactance
Psychological reactance theory (PRT; Brehm, Citation1966; Brehm & Brehm, Citation1981) posits that when an individual perceives a threat to a valued freedom, a motivational state called psychological reactance drives the individual to reassert that freedom (Brehm, Citation1966). The theory postulates that even when a message is not contrary to someone’s existing beliefs, efforts at influencing someone’s attitudes, opinions, or behavior can be perceived as a threat to their individual autonomy. The theory further predicts a so-called boomerang effect following state reactance: an individual might eventually engage in the opposite behavior being recommended in an attempt to restore their freedom (Brehm, Citation1966; Brehm & Brehm, Citation1981; Dillard & Shen, Citation2005). Empirical findings seem to support this notion: Bensley and Wu (Citation1991), for instance, found that anti-drinking messages triggered reactance, which, in turn, increased drinking behavior – the opposite behavior than intended by the message.
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Emphasis mine below
The question of responsibility within the climate change discourse
Although effective solutions to mitigate climate change must address multiple actors, potential measures can be broadly divided into two main branches: those who encourage individuals to adopt behaviors that reduce their own carbon footprint and those who propose more systematic policy efforts to reduce or eliminate carbon emissions (Lubell et al., Citation2007; Zahran et al., Citation2006). Climate change mitigation is “an anthropogenic intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases” (Watson et al., Citation2001, p. 379), such as by introducing renewable energy technologies, minimizing waste, and embracing public transport commuting practices. With this in mind, behavioral efforts that can mitigate climate change comprise reducing emission-intensive consumption as well as supporting climate-related policies and mitigation technologies.
While previous research has shown that although individual and policy efforts have to go hand in hand (Brownstein et al., Citation2022), studies have shown that these two types of solutions to climate change can be perceived differently by the public. When it comes to taking personal responsibility for climate change, people might prefer a top-down solution that would not affect their personal freedom of choice directly: Unsworth et al. (Citation2016) found that people think companies and government have a greater duty to deal with climate change compared to individuals and families. Furthermore, even when the cost to consumers is kept equal, people seem to prefer producers rather than consumers of carbon to be taxed (Hardisty et al., Citation2019). Moreover, Palm et al. (Citation2020) found that recommendations for behavioral changes to address climate change, such as taking fewer plane flights, driving less, eating less beef, etc., decreased individuals’ willingness to take personal actions to reduce greenhouse gases, their willingness to support pro-climate candidates, and their belief in the accelerated speed of climate change, compared to messages emphasizing the adoption of public policy to address climate change.
The present study proposes that one possible mechanism behind the preference for policy in comparison to individual efforts to mitigate climate change might be psychological reactance, as recommending changes in one’s personal lifestyle and habits might arouse people’s perceptions of freedom threat and their motivation to resist such appeals more strongly than recommending public policy measures to mitigate climate change. Furthermore, the magnitude of a request can also have an influence on psychological reactance: Rains and Turner (Citation2007) found that when individuals were asked to perform a large task, they experienced more reactance than individuals asked to perform a small one. It is possible that for an individual, changing one’s behavior on one’s own is perceived as a task larger in magnitude than supporting public policy measures that aim to foster or regulate that same behavior. Hence, we proposed that appealing to an individual course of action increases psychological reactance, compared to appealing to policy solutions to mitigate climate change.
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Communicating about climate change
While there has been much research on perceptions of climate change communication, less research has focused on how individuals themselves discuss about the topic and what they think about different mitigation measures. In order to take this research area forward, we were interested in examining if aspects of psychological reactance are reflected in the communication of reactant individuals, more specifically on their word use. First, given that reactance is elicited by a threat to an individual’s freedom, we were interested in examining how much people related the content of the climate change mitigation appeal to themselves by referring to themselves. Second, we were interested in how emotionally laden participants’ communication about the topic would be. Most of the research about psychological reactance has been conducted in the context of health communication (Ratcliff, Citation2021). Compared to health communication, climate change communication refers to a topic that is, for many people, less central to their day-to-day life and is often perceived as psychologically distant (Spence et al., Citation2012). Thus, we did not measure anger as a main component of psychological reactance as proposed by Dillard and Shen (Citation2005). However, we were still interested if it impacted the way individuals communicated about the issue.
Present study
In order to study the effect of different types of appeals and controlling language on perceptions of climate change communication, we constructed an online article ostensibly written by a climate scientist in which we manipulated these two factors as independent variables. The article discussed the newest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) results and included recommendations on how to mitigate climate change in the transport sector. We used transportation as a topic of interest due to the high CO2 emissions associated with the sector in Germany (Umweltbundesamt, Citation2022). Using a 2 (type of appeal) × 2 (controlling language) experimental design, we investigated the potential effects of (1) the scientist appealing either to individuals or to policy to mitigate climate change and (2) the scientist using high- or low-controlling language when communicating. We expected higher perceived threat to freedom (H1a), higher counterarguing (H1b), and lower support for the recommendations (H1c) when the scientist appealed to individuals in comparison to policy to mitigate climate change. Furthermore, we hypothesized higher perceived threat to freedom (H2a), higher counterarguing (H2b), and lower support for the recommendations (H2c) when the scientist used high-controlling language compared to low-controlling language when communicating.
The degree to which messages employing controlling language arouse negative persuasive effects might depend on the behavior being advocated. A previous study found the effect of high-threat messages to be more pronounced when the advocated behavior entailed a greater threat to the self (abstinence of alcohol consumption vs. controlled drinking) (Bensley & Wu, Citation1991). Hence, we expect the effect of controlling language on perceived freedom threat (H3a), counterarguing (H3b), and support for the recommendation (H3c) to be stronger in the case where the scientist appealed to individuals in comparison to policy to mitigate climate change.
In line with the idea that perceived freedom threat is an antecedent of psychological reactance, which in turn, influences attitudinal outcomes (Brehm, Citation1966; Ratcliff, Citation2021), we exploratively tested the serial mediation of perceived threat to freedom and counterarguing in the relation of type of appeal and controlling language on support for the recommendations. While we did not pre-register this idea, we were still interested in examining the full reactance model proposed by Dillard and Shen (Citation2005).
Additionally, we also formulated open research questions to examine how participants communicated about climate change mitigation when they were asked about their opinion on effective mitigation measures: Does the content (type of appeal) and language (controlling language) of advocacy statements influence the extent to which participants refer to themselves (RQ1), the number of negative emotional words they use (RQ2), and the type of mitigation measures participants see as effective (RQ3)?
Look…MATH!
You can read the full masterpiece here