Changing how you look at climate change: attention bias modification increases attention to climate change

Joshua M. Carlson (), Madeline Voltz, John Foley, Lisa Gentry and Lin Fang
Additional contact information
Joshua M. Carlson: Northern Michigan University
Madeline Voltz: Northern Michigan University
John Foley: Northern Michigan University
Lisa Gentry: Northern Michigan University
Lin Fang: Northern Michigan University

Climatic Change, 2022, vol. 175, issue 3, No 6, 18 pages

Abstract: Abstract Mitigating the negative impacts of anthropogenic climate change is among the most serious and pressing challenges facing the global community. Despite the severity of the issue, there seems to be a lack of attention paid to climate change in our daily lives. Yet, climate change-related information can capture observers’ attention, and when attention is drawn to a particular environmental risk, the perceived severity of this attended risk is enhanced. The question then is whether attention to climate change-related information can be modified or enhanced. Here, we report the results of two experiments using single-session attention bias modification training procedures designed to increase attentional focus on climate change-related information. In Experiment 1, attention training to emotionally positive images of climate change (e.g., potential solutions such as windmills and solar panels) increased attention to these images, but not emotionally negative images of climate change (e.g., air pollution, natural disasters, and melting ice). In Experiment 2, this effect was replicated. In addition, Experiment 2 revealed that training to emotionally negative images of climate change increased attention to negative images of climate change, and there was a trend for this enhanced attention to generalize to positive images of climate change. Furthermore, attention training towards negative images of climate change enhanced self-reported levels of concern about climate change. Collectively, our results suggest that attention training can increase the allocation of attention to climate change-related information and, under certain training conditions, concern for climate change increases.

Keywords: Attention training; Cognitive bias modification; Attention bias modification; Climate change; Global warming (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-022-03471-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:175:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s10584-022-03471-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-022-03471-3

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().