This guest post is by Sander van der Linden, a doctoral candidate in social-environmental psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a visiting research scholar at the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication at Yale University (2012 – present). His research explores judgments and perceptions of environmental risks, the determinants of pro-environmental behavior, risk communication, behavioral change as well as theories of social influence and persuasion.
In a forthcoming paper that will be featured as part of the Journal of European Social Psychology’s special issue on Climate Change, I tackle a crucial question that has so far remained unaddressed: what is the nature of the relationship between personal experiences with extreme weather, negative emotions (or ‘negative affect’) and risk perceptions of climate change?
I try to answer this question in the context of a wider discussion, one that has daunted scientists for centuries, namely; the cognition-emotion debate.
About 30 years ago, the late psychologist Robert Zajonc, published an influential and at the time, somewhat controversial paper in which he suggested that “affect” (the term social psychologists use to denote a specific type of emotion) is fairly independent of, and precedes in time, perceptual and cognitive operations. In other words, we ‘feel’ before we ‘think’.
In a similar vein, more recently, Paul Slovic and colleagues formulated what has now become widely known as “the affect heuristic”. We can think of “affect” as a fast, automatic and evaluative gut reaction that has become associated with a particular object (through learning and experience).
For example, the work of some of my colleagues at the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication has clearly shown that (a) most people tend to have immediate, negative and unpleasant affective associations with the term “global warming” and that (b) “affect” is a key predictor of climate change risk perceptions.
Yet, others have maintained a different perspective. For example, diametrically opposed to Zajonc is the work of the late psychologist, Richard Lazarus.
Lazarus wondered how it is possible that different individuals can experience different emotions given the same situation. In response, he formulated “appraisal theory”, which along with the work of many others, suggests that individuals first perceive, interpret and process information in terms of how it relates to their personal values, goals and experiences. From this point of view, affect is seen as a post-cognitive process (i.e., we must first perceive or appraise a risk before we form any type of affective response). Think of it this way: if you don’t know what it is that you are perceiving, how can you generate an emotion in response?
In light of this debate, recent neurological research has pointed out that thinking in terms of two separate, independent systems (cognition vs. emotion) is really not all that useful at the level of neuroscience, as the pathways related to cognition and emotion are deeply interconnected. Indeed, our cognitions (“thinking”) can influence how we feel (“emotions”) and in turn, our “affective” feeling-states can influence our thinking (“cognition”). Yet, the way in which affect functions in relation to cognition can be strongly dependent on the context.
In fact, when talking about climate change, context is key. Climate change is a relatively unique type of risk in the sense that it cannot be experienced directly. One question that has been puzzling climate change researchers is to what extent personal experiences with extreme weather influence risk perceptions of climate change. It is not unreasonable to assume that people only associate extreme weather with climate change if they make some sort of perceptual or cognitive mental link that these two phenomena are related.
To illustrate, when faced with extreme weather (e.g., a hurricane), most people are likely to experience an instinctive fear-driven emotional reaction. However, at the same time we must retrieve cognitive information about the nature of the perceived risk as well (i.e., how do you know that you should be afraid of a tornado or hurricane?).
What is crucial to understand is that in order for the experienced emotion to be directed at climate change, some type of cognitive link relating the risk event (“extreme weather”) to climate change is needed first. Thus, this perspective seems to be well aligned with Lazarus’ interpretation that affect is post-cognitive. Yet, at the same time, when this link has been made, we would expect that affect is also a strong driver and determinant of risk perception.
Using results from a UK national survey, I found exactly this: negative affect towards climate change is only formed when a conscious risk attribution is made (i.e., people first have to interpret and connect their personal experiences with extreme weather to climate change). However, when that link has been made salient, affect not only clearly functions as a strong driver of risk perception, affect and risk perception actually mutually influence each other in a dynamic feedback system. These results strongly favor a so-called “dual-processing” perspective – implying that both psychological theories hold true.
You might ask; so what?
The way in which cognitive and affective process mechanisms shape our beliefs and perceptions about climate change is important. Indeed, the interactive engagement of both cognitive and emotional processes is key to fostering more public engagement with climate change. For example, research has shown that negative affect motivates people to seek out information about climate change. Additionally, while of course no single weather event can be linked to climate change, based on my research and that of others, one way to increase negative affect is by making the link between the rising incidence rate of extreme weather and climate change much more explicit.
In conclusion, when it comes to climate change communication, pitting cognition against emotion is not a very useful approach, as it is not their separation that is interesting but rather, their interrelation.