Social identity theory and self‐categorization theory suggest that people categorize themselves as belonging to certain groups such as nationality, gender, or even sports teams. Social identity theory focuses on how group memberships guide intergroup behavior and influence an individual's self‐concept. Closely tied to self‐categorization is an individual's evaluation of the in‐group. To reach positive evaluations of one's own in‐group, people engage in processes of social comparison. They derogate the out‐group with the aim of increasing their own self‐esteem. Self‐categorization theory proposes that, depending on salience in a situation, either personal identity and interpersonal behavior, social identity and intergroup behavior, or dynamic interplay prevails. These theories have widely been used to explain media use and media effects on people. For example, it has been shown that media users prefer media featuring positively portrayed protagonists of their own in‐group.

The climate crisis is an unprecedented existential threat that causes disturbing emotions, such as anxiety. Recently, Clayton and Karazsia measured climate anxiety as “a more clinically significant ‘anxious’ response to climate change” (2020, p. 9). To gain a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon from an empirical psychological perspective, we translated the core of the Climate Anxiety Scale into German and assessed potential correlates in a large German-speaking quota sample (N = 1011, stratified by age and gender). Overall, people reported low levels of climate anxiety. Climate anxiety correlated positively with general anxiety and depressiveness, avoidance of climate change in everyday life, frustration of basic psychological needs, pro-environmental behavioral intentions, and policy support. It correlated negatively with different forms of climate denial and was unrelated to ideological beliefs. We were not able to replicate the two dimensions found in the original scale. Moreover, we argue that items appear to measure a general climate-related emotional impairment, rather than distinctly and comprehensively capturing climate anxiety. Thus, we encourage researchers to rework the scale and include an emotional factor in future research efforts.

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