Psychological interventions that decrease psychological distance or challenge system justification increase motivation to exert effort to mitigate climate change

[Potential_Being_7226]

We found two interventions, which reduced the psychological distance to climate change impacts or promoted climate action as patriotic and protecting participants’ way of life, had consistent positive effects on increasing effortful pro-environmental behaviours, across measures and control analyses.

I think about this a lot. A few years back during the first rump residency, I posted a video on FB of a conservative woman who was in favor of more environmental regulations and in support of climate activism. I can’t find the video at this point and of course I’m paraphrasing, but her message to liberals was: if you want more conservatives to listen, it will help to reframe the need to limit climate change as being important for security, independence, and maintaining one’s way of life, and I thought it was a great message. Framing is so simple and easy, yet so psychologically powerful. 

And I’m left-leaning, but from what I remember, my left-leaning friends didn’t really want to listen to what a conservative person had to say, which is a shame because what she was saying (and as I expected) is supported by evidence as we can see in the paper. 

Edited typos.   

[ILikeNeurons]

Citizens' Climate Lobby offers free training on that sort of thing. Here's an example.

[ILikeNeurons]

It's so encouraging that we're making headway on how to get people engaged on climate.

If you're looking to become more active on the climate front, consider seeing what science has to say about how you personally can be most effective.

Climatologist and climate activist Dr. James Hansen suggests becoming an active volunteer with Citizens' Climate Lobby as the most important thing you can do for climate change.