The emotional engagement of climate experts is related to their climate change perceptions and coping strategies

Abstract

The emotional engagement of climate experts is related to their climate change perceptions and coping strategiesThe study aimed to reveal the role of emotions in Lithuanian climate experts' perceptions of climate change (i.e., their beliefs about the causes and risk perceptions of climate change) and fill the gap in scientific knowledge about the coping strategies that climate experts tend to employ in order to deal with climate-change-related emotions.To investigate climate experts' emotional reactions to climate change, we applied a four-factor model comprising morality-based other-and self-related as well as consequence-based retrospective and prospective emotions. The results indicated that the climate experts showed great variation in their emotional reactions; two clusters of experts emerged -those who were emotionally engaged and those who were disengaged with regard to climate change. Emotionally engaged experts were more likely than their disengaged counterparts to emphasize anthropogenic climate change, to believe that the consequences of climate change would appear both locally and globally, and to consider the consequences to be uncontrollable, dreadful, and morally unacceptable. Emotionally engaged and disengaged climate experts agreed on the extent to which they evaluated climate change as societally disputed. Additionally, experts working in the government were more emotionally engaged with climate change issues than academics. Finally, in order to deal with climate-change-related emotions, emotionally engaged experts were more likely to invoke problem-and emotion-focused coping strategies, whereas the two groups of experts did not differ in their tendencies to avoid climate change issues.

Climate Change Risk Perceptions of Audiences in the Climate Change Blogosphere

“…These findings are largely congruent with the findings of Van der Linden [22] and Xie et al [23]. While the importance of affect in shaping risk perceptions was diminished in earlier research [57], more recent research largely endorses the idea that emotions and affect play a crucial role in forming climate change risk perceptions [22,23,31,[58][59][60][61][62][63][64]. Therefore, since once again the importance of emotions and affect in understanding risk perceptions of climate change is underscored, the need for future research focusing on how emotions can-and should-be addressed in climate change communications is paramount.…”

A Research Agenda for Affective Dimensions in Climate Change Risk Perception and Risk Communication

“…Lazo et al (2000) found that laypeople showed more intense emotions than experts when perceiving climate change risks. Contrastingly, Jovarauskaite and Böhm (2020) found that experts tended to show more intense negative emotions (e.g., disappointment, sadness, guilt) to climate change impacts than laypeople. Experts experience diverse negative affective responses to perceived climate change risks including contempt, anger, worry, disappointment, guilt, and sadness (Jovarauskaite and Böhm, 2020).…”

“…Contrastingly, Jovarauskaite and Böhm (2020) found that experts tended to show more intense negative emotions (e.g., disappointment, sadness, guilt) to climate change impacts than laypeople. Experts experience diverse negative affective responses to perceived climate change risks including contempt, anger, worry, disappointment, guilt, and sadness (Jovarauskaite and Böhm, 2020). Negative affective responses (e.g., fear) were common in laypeople, who, in some cases, tended to overestimate the potential risks (e.g., flooding) .…”

“…Over time, different positive and negative emotions, including fear and anxiety, started to be elicited in studies but were not typically a primary focus. More recently, a small but growing number of studies have focused on disaggregating negative and positive responses into specific emotions and feelings (Graybill, 2013;Jovarauskaite and Böhm, 2020). Fear, anger, worry, and anxiety were among the most studied affective responses in our review.…”

“…No insights into role of affective response in risk communication. Jovarauskaite and Böhm (2020) No insights into role of affective response in risk communication. Morss et al (2020) No insights into role of affective response in risk communication.…”