von Gal Alessandro, Fabiani Greta, Piccardi Laura
Spatial Cognition Lab, Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
San Raffaele Cassino Hospital, Cassino, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2024 Feb 29;15:1341921. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1341921. eCollection 2024.
Climate change anxiety (CCA) is an emerging yet not clearly defined construct. Here, we examine the relationship between CCA and climate change-related fear in response to messages differently framing uncertainty and anticipation concerning climate change, exploring how the former differs from general anxiety measures. To this purpose, young and healthy volunteers were assigned to three different framing conditions. Their emotional responses as well as eco-emotions and beliefs about climate change were collected. By employing a Bayesian approach, we found that framing the consequences of climate change effectively induces heightened fear and that CCA strongly predicted fear levels, while general anxiety measures did not. Overall, these results reflect CCA's unique and specific nature in influencing climate change-related fear. Interestingly, we found fear to predict intention scores only following the framings that did not effectively induce action intentions, consistent with prior findings on fear without efficacy framing. Instead, reading about the negative consequences motivated action the most. Following this framing, we found that eco-anger, instead of fear, consistently predicted intentions to engage in climate action. These results emphasize the complex interplay between CCA, eco-emotions, efficacy, and behavioral engagement.
气候变化焦虑（CCA）是一个新兴但尚未明确界定的概念。在此，我们研究了CCA与气候变化相关恐惧之间的关系，以回应不同框架下关于气候变化不确定性和预期的信息，探讨前者与一般焦虑测量方法的差异。为此，将年轻健康的志愿者分配到三种不同的框架条件下。收集他们的情绪反应以及生态情绪和对气候变化的信念。通过采用贝叶斯方法，我们发现对气候变化后果进行框架构建能有效引发更高的恐惧，并且CCA强烈预测恐惧水平，而一般焦虑测量方法则不然。总体而言，这些结果反映了CCA在影响气候变化相关恐惧方面的独特性和特殊性。有趣的是，我们发现只有在没有有效引发行动意图的框架下，恐惧才会预测意图得分，这与先前关于无效能框架下恐惧的研究结果一致。相反，了解负面后果最能激发行动。在这种框架下，我们发现生态愤怒而非恐惧始终能预测参与气候行动的意图。这些结果强调了CCA、生态情绪、效能和行为参与之间的复杂相互作用。
