The Interpersonal Consequences of Climate Anxiety

• In Event: The Political Psychology of Climate Change

Abstract

What are the consequences of functioning in an information environment where we are increasingly privy to how other people feel about one of the most complicated, abstract, and consequential political issues of the day: climate change? People are increasingly sharing their sadness and anger about the climate crisis, and climate change impacts that feel distant could suddenly produce more empathy because we see how something makes a person feel. We might expect then that observing people’s sadness and anger on social media serves as a call to action. However, this assumes emotions are taken at face value, which may not be the case. How we express our emotions is under a certain degree of conscious control, and this is exacerbated by the social media context where people have control over the decision to post their feelings. Across a series of experiments, we show that sharing feelings about climate change backfires when the person sharing their feelings has not been directly affected by the issue, and the observer holds an opposing stance on the climate issue. Under those circumstances, emotions are perceived as unjustified or inauthentic and undermine evaluations of the speaker and support for the movement. Our results suggest empathy is not automatic: We contextualize the emotions others express online in the broader political, environmental, and informational context.

Authors

• Talbot M Andrews, Cornell University

• Lauren Palladino, University of Pennsylvania

• Yanna Krupnikov, University of Michigan