Emotion and the Psychological Distance of Climate Change

By Haoran Chu, J. Yang. Science communication, 2019

110 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Anchored by construal level theory and appraisal theories of emotion, this study examines whether discrete emotions vary along with perceived psychological distance of climate change impacts. We found that reduced psychological distance perception led to an increase in concrete emotions such as anger, fear, sadness, and guilt. In contrast, increased psychological distance perception led to an increase in hope—an abstract emotion. Compared to anger, anxiety, and hope, fear, guilt, and shame had more limited impact on climate mitigation action and policy support. Trait empathy moderated the effect of psychological distance manipulation on distance perception and emotions.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Literature and Literary Theory, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e6b0153d14a4f07aaad31f33a43e936b16e3d9b7

Citations in the corpus

• Positive emotions and climate change (2021, unknown): “For example, Chu and Yang [44] reported that increased psychological distance leads to a greater experience of hope, with down-stream effects on climate change mitigative actions.”