Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Roles of Psychological Distance and Emotional Response in Explaining Differences in Perceived Risk and the Climate Change Concern/Intentions Gap

一项研究考察了个人对气候变化带来的威胁表达担忧的程度，发现如果信息以一种使影响“心理上接近”的方式传达，那么表达担忧的程度就会增加，而且这种影响在自由派受访者中比在保守派受访者中更为明显。研究还表明，关注的增加并没有转化为参与缓解活动的实际意图的增加。本项目应用心理距离/解释水平理论的原则，研究以心理上接近或遥远的方式呈现的关于气候影响/缓解行动类型的信息如何影响关注程度，这些信息所引起的不同情绪（例如恐惧或愤怒）如何解释在政治说服方面观察到的反应差异，以及为什么“关注”和“意图”之间存在差异。这些研究结果很可能适用于各种社会问题。通过揭示影响人类感知和决策的基本机制，该项目将深入了解美国公众对各种问题的风险感知、情绪反应、政策支持和缓解意图的性质和决定因素。气候变化（影响和减缓努力）的感知心理距离（时间和空间/社会）对感知可取性（改善的关注）和可行性（行为意图）的影响，由情绪反应和自我效能介导，并由文化世界观调节，将使用涉及大型代表性调查的实验结果进行测试。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Research examining the extent to which individuals express concern over the threat posed by climate change finds that expressed concern increases if the information is conveyed in a way that makes the impacts "psychologically close" and that this effect is more pronounced among liberal than among conservative respondents. Research also shows that the increased concern does not translate into an increase in actual intentions to engage in mitigation activities. This project applies principles of psychological distance/construal level theory to examine how messages about types of climate impacts/mitigation actions presented in psychologically proximate or distant terms can influence levels of concern, how different emotions elicited by these communications (e.g., fear or anger) may explain the observed response discrepancies with respect to political persuasion, and why there is a disparity between "concern" and "intentions." These research findings are very likely applicable to a variety of social issues. By shedding light on the fundamental mechanisms that influence human perception and decision-making, this project will provide insights into the nature and determinants of the U.S. public's risk perception, emotional responses, policy support, and mitigation intentions related to a variety of issues.The effects of perceived psychological distance (temporal and spatial/social) of climate change (impacts and mitigation efforts) on perceived desirability (concern to ameliorate) and feasibility (behavioral intentions), mediated by emotional responses and self-efficacy, and moderated by cultural worldview, will be tested using the results of an experiment involving a large representative survey.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.