Suchergebnisse

AbstractWe review findings from social psychology and related fields to examine the bidirectional relationship between the public—what are their views about climate change and the need for policies to address the climate crisis—and the politicians who are making (or not making) climate policy and beholden to electoral constraints. We illustrate social psychological pressures that influence policy support and their relevance to how policies emerge from coordinated action and how barriers impede policy progress. We review two factors that have been the focus of research within communication, political science, and psychology and that are relevant to how climate policies are promoted (or undermined): activists and the media. We examine the process by which activists amplify and transmit the preferences of the public to politicians, and how research on persuasion and social norms helps understand how this effect can be amplified or diminished. We also describe how the media environment can amplify or diminish the roles of the public and the politicians in influencing each other. As the world confronts the climate crisis, research from social psychologists, environmental psychologists, political scientists, and communication scholars has examined the interrelations between the public, politicians, media, and activists, but largely in a disconnected way. The current paper provides a social psychological framework to integrate these approaches and, in so doing, suggest new directions for research and theory‐guided ways to influence policy around climate change.

Two studies investigated how generalized uncertainty affects the tendency to coordinate perceptions of the ingroup with intergroup perceptions. Across two field studies, we found that uncertainty leads to a stronger association between the perceived entitativity of an ingroup and the extent of perceived attitude polarization between the ingroup and outgroup. Study 1 showed that, for striking grocery store employees, feelings of uncertainty were associated with enhanced coordination of ingroup entitativity and intergroup polarization. Study 2 primed Democrat and Republican partisans to feel either high uncertainty or high certainty. Those who felt uncertain associated their perceptions of their group's entitativity with perceived polarization of the two parties more strongly than did those who felt certain. Discussion centers on processes underlying the phenomena as well as the implications of the findings for political polarization in American society.

The present study contributes a cultural analysis to the literature on the persuasive effects of matching message frame to individuals' motivational orientations. One experiment examines how members of cultural groups that are likely to differ in their regulatory focus respond to health messages focusing on either the benefits of flossing or the costs of not flossing. White British participants, who had a stronger promotion focus, were more persuaded by the gain-framed message, whereas East-Asian participants, who had a stronger prevention focus, were more persuaded by the loss-framed message. This cultural difference in persuasion was mediated by an interaction between individuals' self-regulatory focus and type of health message. Thus health messages framed to be culturally congruent led participants to have more positive attitudes and stronger intentions to perform the health behaviors, and the interaction between self-regulatory focus and message frame emerged as the pathway through which the observed cultural difference occurs. Discussion focuses on the integration of individual difference, socio-cultural, and situational factors into models of health persuasion.

AbstractCitizen activists play a role in translating public concern about the climate crisis to policymakers and elevating it on the political agenda. We consider the dynamic between citizen activists and the decision-makers they seek to influence and we review psychological research relevant to advocating for climate legislation. We conducted a study with citizen activists who lobby the US Congress for a carbon pricing policy to address climate change. The study assessed how activists think about four social psychological approaches: affirmation, social norms, legacy and immediacy. The findings provide a window into activists' intuitions about which strategies to use, whom to use them with and their perceived effectiveness. A strategy of establishing shared values and common ground (affirmation) was used most frequently overall. A strategy emphasizing the long-term costs and benefits of addressing climate change (legacy) was employed less frequently than affirmation and seen as less effective by activists but it was the only strategy that was associated with perceived increases in Congressional Representatives' support of the policy. Citizen activists and their interactions with elected officials provide an opportunity for social-behavioral scientists to understand and potentially overcome barriers to enacting climate policy.

The 2008 presidential election brought the partisan divide between U.S. Republicans and Democrats to the forefront. In such contested situations, people who identify with the parties and their candidates experience pressure to adhere to their group's core beliefs and behaviors. This research hypothesized that providing individuals a chance to affirm their self‐integrity would relieve some of this pressure and facilitate greater openness to the opposition. In the 2 days prior to the 2008 election, Democrats (N= 50) and Republicans (N= 60) who affirmed their self‐integrity by writing about important personal values (versus those who did not self‐affirm) were less driven by partisan preferences in their evaluations of Barack Obama's debate performance, more favorable to opposition candidates, and more generally open to alternative viewpoints. Additionally, 10 days after the election, affirmed Republicans thought Obama would make a better president than did nonaffirmed Republicans. Discussion centers on how motivational factors can exacerbate—and attenuate—the divide between "red" and "blue" America.

Two experiments examined the polarization of public support for COVID-19 policies due to people's (lack of) trust in political leaders and nonpartisan experts. In diverse samples in the United States (Experiment 1; N = 1,802) and the United Kingdom (Experiment 2; N = 1,825), participants evaluated COVID-19 policies that were framed as proposed by ingroup political leaders, outgroup political leaders, nonpartisan experts, or, in the United States, a bipartisan group of political leaders. At the time of the study in April 2020, COVID-19 was an unfamiliar and shared threat. Therefore, there were theoretical reasons suggesting that attitudes toward COVID-19 policy may not have been politically polarized. Yet, our results demonstrated that even relatively early in the pandemic people supported policies from ingroup political leaders more than the same policies from outgroup leaders, extending prior research on how people align their policy stances to political elites from their own parties. People also trusted experts and ingroup political leaders more than they did outgroup political leaders. Partly because of this polarized trust, policies from experts and bipartisan groups were more widely supported than policies from ingroup political leaders. These results illustrate the potentially detrimental role political leaders may play and the potential for effective leadership by bipartisan groups and nonpartisan experts in shaping public policy attitudes during crises.

Political polarization impeded public support for policies to reduce the spread of COVID-19, much as polarization hinders responses to other contemporary challenges. Unlike previous theory and research that focused on the United States, the present research examined the effects of political elite cues and affective polarization on support for policies to manage the COVID-19 pandemic in seven countries (n = 12,955): Brazil, Israel, Italy, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Across countries, cues from political elites polarized public attitudes toward COVID-19 policies. Liberal and conservative respondents supported policies proposed by ingroup politicians and parties more than the same policies from outgroup politicians and parties. Respondents disliked, distrusted, and felt cold toward outgroup political elites, whereas they liked, trusted, and felt warm toward both ingroup political elites and nonpartisan experts. This affective polarization was correlated with policy support. These findings imply that policies from bipartisan coalitions and nonpartisan experts would be less polarizing, enjoying broader public support. Indeed, across countries, policies from bipartisan coalitions and experts were more widely supported. A follow-up experiment replicated these findings among US respondents considering international vaccine distribution policies. The polarizing effects of partisan elites and affective polarization emerged across nations that vary in cultures, ideologies, and political systems. Contrary to some propositions, the United States was not exceptionally polarized. Rather, these results suggest that polarizing processes emerged simply from categorizing people into political ingroups and outgroups. Political elites drive polarization globally, but nonpartisan experts can help resolve the conflicts that arise from it. ; Funding Agencies|NSF Division of Social and Economic Sciences [2029183]

Political polarization impeded public support for policies to reduce the spread of COVID-19, much as polarization hinders responses to other contemporary challenges. Unlike previous theory and research that focused on the United States, the present research examined the effects of political elite cues and affective polarization on support for policies to manage the COVID-19 pandemic in seven countries (n = 12,955): Brazil, Israel, Italy, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Across countries, cues from political elites polarized public attitudes toward COVID-19 policies. Liberal and conservative respondents supported policies proposed by ingroup politicians and parties more than the same policies from outgroup politicians and parties. Respondents disliked, distrusted, and felt cold toward outgroup political elites, whereas they liked, trusted, and felt warm toward both ingroup political elites and nonpartisan experts. This affective polarization was correlated with policy support. These findings imply that policies from bipartisan coalitions and nonpartisan experts would be less polarizing, enjoying broader public support. Indeed, across countries, policies from bipartisan coalitions and experts were more widely supported. A follow-up experiment replicated these findings among US respondents considering international vaccine distribution policies. The polarizing effects of partisan elites and affective polarization emerged across nations that vary in cultures, ideologies, and political systems. Contrary to some propositions, the United States was not exceptionally polarized. Rather, these results suggest that polarizing processes emerged simply from categorizing people into political ingroups and outgroups. Political elites drive polarization globally, but nonpartisan experts can help resolve the conflicts that arise from it.

Abstract
People believe they should consider how their behavior might negatively impact other people, Yet their behavior often increases others' health risks. This creates challenges for managing public health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined a procedure wherein people reflect on their personal criteria regarding how their behavior impacts others' health risks. We expected structured reflection to increase people's intentions and decisions to reduce others' health risks. Structured reflection increases attention to others' health risks and the correspondence between people's personal criteria and behavioral intentions. In four experiments during COVID-19, people (N = 12,995) reported their personal criteria about how much specific attributes, including the impact on others' health risks, should influence their behavior. Compared with control conditions, people who engaged in structured reflection reported greater intentions to reduce business capacity (experiment 1) and avoid large social gatherings (experiments 2 and 3). They also donated more to provide vaccines to refugees (experiment 4). These effects emerged across seven countries that varied in collectivism and COVID-19 case rates (experiments 1 and 2). Structured reflection was distinct from instructions to carefully deliberate (experiment 3). Structured reflection increased the correlation between personal criteria and behavioral intentions (experiments 1 and 3). And structured reflection increased donations more among people who scored lower in cognitive reflection compared with those who scored higher in cognitive reflection (experiment 4). These findings suggest that structured reflection can effectively increase behaviors to reduce public health risks.