Stories vs. facts: triggering emotion and action-taking on climate change

Abstract

Climate change is an issue which elicits low engagement, even among concerned segments of the public. While research suggests that the presentation of factual information (e.g., scientific consensus) can be persuasive to some audiences, there is also empirical evidence indicating that it may also increase resistance in others. In this research, we investigate whether climate change narratives structured as stories are better than informational narratives at promoting pro-environmental behavior in diverse audiences. We propose that narratives structured as stories facilitate experiential processing, heightening affective engagement and emotional arousal, which serve as an impetus for action-taking. Across three studies, we manipulate the structure of climate change communications to investigate how this influences narrative transportation, measures of autonomic reactivity indicative of emotional arousal, and proenvironmental behavior. We find that stories are more effective than informational narratives at promoting pro-environmental behavior (studies 1 and 3) and self-reported narrative transportation (study 2), particularly those with negatively valenced endings (study 3). The results of study 3 indicate that embedding information in story structure influences cardiac activity, and subsequently, pro-environmental behavior. These findings connect works from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, narratology, and climate change communication, advancing our understanding of how narrative structure influences engagement with climate change through emotional arousal, which likely incites pro-environmental behavior as the brain's way of optimizing bodily budgets.

New stories for a more conscious, sustainable society: claiming authorship of the climate story

“…Using a narrative approach facilitated emotional and experiential processing (cf. Morris et al 2019), something that we identified as crucial for strengthening authorship. This result supports increasing research that has shown the importance of addressing emotions and supporting inner capacities for sustainability (Brown et al 2019;Wamsler et al 2018;Wamsler 2018).…”

“…In fact, there is a growing realization within the sustainability debate that it is increasingly less important to claim and portray data and facts. It should be more about owning and conveying "stories and languages of value, culture and ideology" (Leinaweaver 2015, p. 66) (Emerge 2019; Perspectiva 2019, Morris et al 2019) as well as (re-)framing these through new discourses and paradigms (Dryzek 2013;Björkman 2018). Climate change presents a profound global challenge in which we realize that our story has become "inadequate for meeting the survival demands of a present situation" (Berry, p. xi).…”

“…Seeing that science and scientific reasoning are only "a part of the story" (Frank 2017, p. 310)with some even vilifying it as the cause of our environmental crisis (Herman 2015;Plumwood 2002;Sahinidou 2016)there has been a surging interest to find new lenses and modes of inquiry for sustainability, especially through integration of inner or subjective dimensions and associated spheres of transformation (Frank 2017;O'Brien 2018;Parodi and Tamm 2018;O'Brien and Hochachka 2011;Wamsler 2018). In this context the notion of stories and narratives, being the foundation of meaning-and sense making, have been re-discovered (van der Leeuw 2019; Eisenstein 2013; Emerge 2019) as creative tools to both understand environmental issues better and to promote individual pro-environmental behavior (Morris et al 2019). This can be exemplified in the surge of climate fiction that in recent years has become both a creative outlet in dealing with the climate crisis as well as a means for engaging with climate politics (Nikoleris et al 2017;Milkoreit 2016).…”

“…In this context the notion of stories and narratives, being the foundation of meaning-and sense making, have been re-discovered (van der Leeuw 2019; Eisenstein 2013; Emerge 2019) as creative tools to both understand environmental issues better and to promote individual pro-environmental behavior (Morris et al 2019). This can be exemplified in the surge of climate fiction that in recent years has become both a creative outlet in dealing with the climate crisis as well as a means for engaging with climate politics (Nikoleris et al 2017;Milkoreit 2016). Creative storytelling can thus be a means to counteract today's dominant information-driven approach to address climate change (O'Brien et al 2019).…”

The Storytelling Brain: How Neuroscience Stories Help Bridge the Gap between Research and Society

“…In a recent study, embedding climate change information in an emotional story structure affected proenvironmental donation behavior. Thus, eliciting emotional arousal likely improves the odds that listeners will not only engage with the material, but also act on it as a result (Morris et al, 2019). Most researchers have at some point experienced astonishment and wonder in connection with research findings: there is every reason to believe that those same discoveries can prompt similar emotions in nonspecialists.…”