Emotion and the Psychological Distance of Climate Change

Abstract

Anchored by construal level theory and appraisal theories of emotion, this study examines whether discrete emotions vary along with perceived psychological distance of climate change impacts. We found that reduced psychological distance perception led to an increase in concrete emotions such as anger, fear, sadness, and guilt. In contrast, increased psychological distance perception led to an increase in hope—an abstract emotion. Compared to anger, anxiety, and hope, fear, guilt, and shame had more limited impact on climate mitigation action and policy support. Trait empathy moderated the effect of psychological distance manipulation on distance perception and emotions.

Keywords

discrete emotion psychological distance climate change trait empathy

The recent release of the Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume II once again brought climate change back to the center of public attention (Reidmiller et al., 2018). Despite fluctuation in public concern of climate change over the past few decades (Maibach, Roser-Renouf, & Leiserowitz, 2009; Poushter & Huang, 2019), people around the world have begun to recognize that climate change is no longer a distant and uncertain threat, but an imminent danger that is causing damages to communities worldwide (Leiserowitz et al., 2018). In the political domain, the proposal of the Green New Deal, the emergence of climate-related discourse in the 2020 Presidential Election, and the global student walkout on climate change are all signs of growing attention and anxiety among the general public toward climate change (Associated Press, 2019; Ocasio-Cortez, 2019; Worland, 2019). From the research realm, more studies on psychological distance enable us to better understand how portraying the threat of climate change as imminent or distant affects people’s response to it (Brügger, Dessai, Devine-Wright, Morton, & Pidgeon, 2015; McDonald, Chai, & Newell, 2015).

Research has shown that changes in perceived, as well as actual distance of climate change impacts could lead to variation in people’s reactions to this issue (Brügger et al., 2015; McDonald et al., 2015; Rickard, Yang, & Schuldt, 2016). For instance, individuals who have experienced disasters attributed to climate change reported more concern about climate change (Jones, Hine, & Marks, 2017; Spence, Poortinga, & Pidgeon, 2012). Additionally, based on construal level theory, recent research also suggests that proximizing climate change impacts could lead to more consensus in climate change mitigation support among people who hold different political ideologies, while increasing the perceived distance of climate change impacts increases political polarization (Chu & Yang, 2018). However, although construal level theory of psychological distance definitively warrants attention in climate change communication research, there remains much unknown in how psychological distance influences people’s perception and support for climate change mitigation. One commonly observed finding is that despite its effectiveness in raising people’s concern, reduced psychological distance of climate change does not always result in an increase in people’s intention to engage in proclimate behaviors (Brügger et al., 2015; Chu & Yang, 2018). For instance, Spence et al. (2012) noted that experiencing climate change–induced disasters such as flood led to heightened concern and willingness to reduce energy use, while others found that having such experience does not necessarily lead to intention to engage in climate change mitigation (Dessai & Sims, 2010; Whitmarsh, 2008). This inconsistency warrants particular attention from science communication scholars because highlighting personal relevance and proximity of climate change are often proclaimed as a useful strategy to inform and persuade the public. As possible explanations for this discrepancy, individual difference in trait empathy and emotional response to climate change messaging based on psychological distance are worthy of further exploration.

Empathy is not a new concept in the discussion of psychological distance and climate change. Research shows that narrowed psychological distance promotes empathic feelings toward other people and even objects (Lee, 2017; Manning et al., 2018), while empathic feeling toward victims of climate change could increase people’s intention to engage in or support climate change mitigation efforts (Lu & Schuldt, 2016; Swim & Bloodhart, 2015). However, what is largely unaddressed in this research is the role of trait empathy. Characterized as one’s ability and tendency to traverse social distance and take another person’s perspective (M. H. Davis, 1980), trait empathy may influence people’s reaction to messages highlighting climate change’s impacts on socially close or distant others.

In terms of emotional responses, different emotions exert distinctive impacts on people’s engagement with climate change (O’Neill & Nicholson-Cole, 2009; Ojala, 2008; Swim & Bloodhart, 2015). For instance, Swim and Bloodhart (2015) found that hope insitigated by images of suffering polar bears motivated people to donate to climate change activism, while O’Neill and Nicholson-Cole (2009) found that fear stemmed from threatening images did not increase people’s engagement with climate change mitigation. Upstream to the source of emotion, varied distance perception of an object influences people’s emotional response to it (J. I. Davis, Gross, & Ochsner, 2011; Frijda, 1992; Mühlberger, Neumann, Wieser, & Pauli, 2008). For example, J. I. Davis et al. (2011) found that increase in visual and imagined proximity of emotion-inducing pictures such as dead animals intensified people’s negative feelings. Recent research also suggests that in addition to intensity, variation in distance may influence different discrete emotions in different ways. For example, increased temporal and spatial distance seem to trigger more anxiety and less sadness (Doré, Ort, Braverman, & Ochsner, 2015).

Based on the promising findings from research on empathy, emotion, and psychological distance, the current study aims to connect these fields of studies by explicating three important relationships. First, we aim to examine how individual differences in trait empathy influence people’s response to distance manipulation. Second, we intend to understand how changes in the perceived psychological distance of climate change influence emotions. Third, this study aspires to examine how distance-induced changes in emotion lead to different perceptions of climate change risks, as well as varied intentions to support climate change mitigation policies and engage in mitigative behaviors. To addresses these objectives, construal level theory of psychological distance and appraisal theories of emotion are of particular relevance.

Literature Review

Construal Level Theory of Psychological Distance

Construal level theory of psychological distance suggests that psychological distance influences people’s reaction to stimuli anchored at different distances through the mediation of mental construal, which represents the extent to which a stimulus is abstractly or concretely represented in people’s mind (Liberman & Trope, 2008; Trope & Liberman, 2010). The theory suggests that psychological distance has four interrelated dimensions—spatial, social, temporal, and hypotheticality (Trope & Liberman, 2010). Spatial dimension denotes how physically removed an object is from the perceiver—climate change–induced disasters on foreign soils are often perceived as more distant than those affecting one’s native land (Rickard et al., 2016). Social distance captures the intensity and quality of social relationships (e.g., in-group vs. out-group) and is often found to correlate highly with spatial distance perception (Trope & Liberman, 2010). Temporal distance represents how distant an event is anchored on the time spectrum, be it in the future or in the past (Trope & Liberman, 2003). Hypotheticality denotes the certainty of an event, insofar as an uncertain event is perceived as more distant than a certain event (Trope & Liberman, 2010). The latter two dimensions also correlate highly. Construal level theory effectively connects different distance perceptions with the various outcome variables such as evaluation of objects and events, prediction of developments, and decision making (Trope & Liberman, 2010).

Psychological Distance and Trait Empathy

The relationship between construal level and psychological distance has been studied extensively (Trope & Liberman, 2010). However, fewer studies have examined the possible variation in people’s distance perception based on their ability to traverse psychological distance (Liberman & Trope, 2008). Despite a lack of direct evidence, research has hinted at some of these possible individual differences. For instance, J. I. Davis et al. (2011) found that people with higher mental imagery facility, which is the ability to move mental image in the mind’s eye (Cohen et al., 1996), were less responsive to imagined change in distance of emotionally arousing stimuli. Research on narrative transportation also includes a concept termed transportability, which essentially depicts an individual’s ability to be fully absorbed into a narrative, identify with the characters, and temporally escape the reality (Green & Brock, 2000). From the perspective of construal level theory, these findings may characterize individuals who have higher mental imagery facility, which may give them a stronger ability to form concrete mental construal of objects and events, even when these objects and events are psychologically distant from them.

In a similar vein, we believe that trait empathy may also influence an individual’s ability to traverse social distance in order to take a distant other’s perspective, which will subsequently influence his or her mental construal. Notably, research related to climate change thus far has mostly focused on empathy as an emotional state, which greatly intensifies people’s emotional reaction to sufferings related to climate change (Swim & Bloodhart, 2015). Trait empathy, on the other hand, denotes a person’s ability to take the perspective of another and feel his or her pain or joy (M. H. Davis, 1980). Consistent with previous research showing that individuals with lower ability to construe objects concretely are more sensitive to changes in spatial distance (J. I. Davis et al., 2011), it is possible that those who score lower on trait empathy would react more strongly to psychological distance manipulation because they are less capable to traverse social distance. Thus, we hypothesize that trait empathy would moderate the influence of distance manipulation on people’s distance perception and emotional response, in a way that those with lower trait empathy will show greater change in distance perception and emotional response, while individuals with higher trait empathy will show smaller change in distance perception and emotional response (Hypothesis 1).

Psychological Distance and Discrete Emotions

As emotions emerge from the interaction between people and their environment (Lazarus, 1991), the more closely experienced encounters are likely to strengthen emotional arousal (Frijda, 1992; Mühlberger et al., 2008). Similarly, an increase in distance would lead to a decrease in emotion intensity (J. I. Davis et al., 2011; Mühlberger et al., 2008; Pennebaker & Harber, 1993). In the climate change context, it has been consistently shown that people in the United States and Europe are less likely to perceive climate change as a threat and feel less worried when its impacts are portrayed as affecting people in faraway places or in the distant future. This association is particularly noticeable among people who are not in support of environmental protection (Ojala, 2008; Swim & Bloodhart, 2015).

However, the relationship between arousal and distance reflects only a crude understanding of psychological distance’s impacts on emotions, a more meaningful question to address now is how discrete emotions are influenced by psychological distance. Construal level theory suggests two possible pathways. First, construal level may mediate the relationship between distance manipulation and emotional response (D. Han, Duhachek, & Agrawal, 2014; Trope & Liberman, 2010). Emotion theorists have long argued that emotions arise from people’s evaluation and mental construal of their environment (Lazarus, 1991; C. A. Smith & Lazarus, 1993). Therefore, since some emotions may stem from more abstract experiences while others emerge from concrete mental representations (D. Han et al., 2014), it is likely that abstract emotions may be less responsive to distance change or may only be activated at farther distance (Trope & Liberman, 2010). For instance, people may experience both anxiety and fear when thinking about a threat, such as being attacked by a ferocious tiger. When the fear-inducing tiger is removed, their fear may be reduced more than the looming anxiety. Though construal level theory hinted at this possibility, few studies have examined these relationships (Doré et al., 2015; Yzerbyt, Dumont, Wigboldus, & Gordijn, 2003). An important first step of theorization is thus to identify attributes that may make certain emotions more abstract than others.

Second, people may take different perspectives when evaluating similar circumstances. For instance, joy often arise from a socially close situation (i.e., directly related to oneself) as it involves positive evaluation of one’s personal well-being (e.g., winning a lottery), while pride involves a more socially distant perspective because it involves personal achievement recognized by others (e.g., winning an election; C. A. Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). Therefore, these emotions, despite having the same positive valence, may be differently associated with changes in psychological distance. Empirical evidence offers support for this conjecture. For example, people seem to prefer the same event at closer temporal distance (i.e., “Pet Day” in a few days) when it is being described as joyful, but favor the event at farther temporal distance (i.e., “Pet Day” in a few weeks) when the pride of taking part in it is emphasized (Karsh & Eyal, 2015).

Despite the theorization offered above, construal level theory does not maintain an absolutist view on the relationship between emotion and distance (Trope & Liberman, 2010). When an abstract emotion is central to an experience (e.g., anxiously waiting for the result of a job interview), while a concrete emotion is peripheral to the experience (e.g., happiness seeing an old friend at the job interview), these emotions may not shift based on the variation in psychological distance. Thus, the current research examines seven discrete emotions that people may associate with climate change. For example, people may experience anger when they feel disgruntled by government’s inaction to address climate change (Myers, Nisbet, Maibach, & Leiserowitz, 2012), while fear and anxiety may arise from the dire outlook of climate change (O’Neill & Nicholson-Cole, 2009). Similarly, sadness may stem from the loss caused by climate change, while shame and guilt are self-conscious emotions that may emerge from blaming oneself for not doing enough or not being a responsible citizen (Swim & Bloodhart, 2015). Hope, being a positive emotion, is also relevant because people may feel hopeful that human beings could identify viable solutions through collective action (Myers et al., 2012).

Appraisal Theory of Discrete Emotions

After illustrating the possible connections between emotion and psychological distance, the meaningful next step is to identify the degree of concreteness and abstractness in discrete emotion. As suggested by Trope and Liberman (2010), appraisal theories may be helpful here. Appraisal theories suggest that emotions are based on a set of cognitive appraisals (Lazarus, 1991; C. A. Smith & Lazarus, 1993). Common appraisal dimensions include motivational relevance (i.e., relevance to one’s goal), pleasantness or goal congruence (i.e., goal incongruent emotions are unpleasant), responsibility attribution (i.e., to blame or credit oneself or others for the emotionally charged event), coping potential (i.e., effort and attention required to deal with the event), and future expectancy (i.e., certainty of an event or its development; Lazarus, 1991; C. A. Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). Combinations of appraisal dimensions further lead to different appraisal themes (C. A. Smith & Lazarus, 1993). Notably, C. A. Smith and Lazarus (1993) suggest that appraisal themes are beyond simple addition of multiple appraisal dimensions as they represent central relational meaning and encapsulate the core experience of discrete emotions.

For the purpose of this study, we argue that appraisal themes and dimensions can help us triangulate emotions’ relative concreteness and abstractness. For instance, since guilt emerges from behavioral violation (a concrete action) of a moral imperative, while shame represents a general failure to live up to a moral ideal, guilt should be a more concrete emotion than shame (D. Han et al., 2014). Furthermore, different appraisal dimensions may be closely related to different dimensions of psychological distance. Uncertainty appraisal is intuitively related to hypothetical distance. Thus, emotions with uncertainty as their core appraisal patterns (e.g., anxiety) are more likely to vary along with distance manipulation. Similarly, appraisals of emotions’ future expectancy signal temporal distance, while coping potential is related to both temporal and hypothetical distance. Notably, motivational relevance appraisal, which denotes the extent to which people care about an emotional event (C. A. Smith & Lazarus, 1993), may be associated with all four dimensions of psychological distance, as immediate, socially and spatially close, and highly likely situations tend to be viewed as more personally relevant (Petty, Cacioppo, & Goldman, 1981).

Appraisal theories also shed light on another goal of the current study, which is to explicate how emotions mediate the relation between psychological distance and climate change engagement. In particular, appraisal theories suggest that emotions have unique action tendencies (S. Han, Lerner, & Keltner, 2007; Lazarus, 1991) or action readiness (Frijda, Kuipers, & Ter Schure, 1989), insofar as a person feeling different emotions will likely act in different ways. For instance, despite both being negative emotions, angry people tend to engage in effortful retaliation while fearful people often retreat from the situation (S. Han et al., 2007). Therefore, the juxtaposition of construal level theory and appraisal theories offers insight into the role of emotions as mediators. The action tendencies associated with different emotions can help us uncover which emotions are more conducive to proclimate attitudes and behaviors and which emotions may be potentially inhibitive (O’Neill & Nicholson-Cole, 2009; Swim & Bloodhart, 2015). Below, we will explain how seven emotions that are central to climate change communication (i.e., anger, fear, anxiety, sadness, guilt, shame, and hope) may mediate the influence of psychological distance on concern about climate change and engagement with climate change mitigation (i.e., support for mitigation policy and intention to engage in mitigative behaviors), key outcome variables that are often examined in climate change communication research (Chu & Yang, 2018; Zhao, Leiserowitz, Maibach, & Roser-Renouf, 2011). Considering the goal-incongruent nature of negative emotions, we first hypothesize that the negative emotions will lead to increase in concern about climate change, while hope will lead to decrease in concern (Hypothesis 2).

Anger

Lazarus (1991) argues that anger is one of the most powerful emotions due to its relational and psychological impacts. Arising from the “demeaning offense against me and mine,” anger is often a result of concrete mental construal of assaults to one’s identity (Lazarus, 1991, p. 222). Anger’s appraisal profile also indicates close perceptual distance. First, an anger-inducing experience often involves a certain and identifiable perpetrator (Lazarus, 1991; C. A. Smith & Ellsworth, 1985), which suggests close hypothetical distance. In addition, as an angry person often perceives the situation to be modifiable with swift response (Lerner & Keltner, 2001), it is likely that anger embodies a temporally close perspective. Empirical evidence also points to anger’s concreteness. For instance, Yzerbyt et al. (2003) found that people were angrier when victims of an unfavorable policy were portrayed as in-group members (i.e., socially close) rather than out-group members (i.e., socially far). Construing anger as a more concrete emotion also makes sense in the climate change context. As the impacts of climate change are becoming more observable around the world (McDonald et al., 2015), more and more people are feeling angry for the lack of unified action. Characterized with active coping and tendencies to retaliate against those who make us angry (S. Han et al., 2007; Yang & Chu, 2018), anger is strongly motivating. Research also shows that angry individuals are more likely to support punishment of wrongdoers related to environmental protection (Harth, Leach, & Kessler, 2013). Therefore, we hypothesize that anger will mediate the impact of psychological distance on people’s engagement with climate change mitigation (i.e., support mitigative policies and engage in mitigative behaviors; Hypothesis 3_anger) in a way that increase in perceived distance will lead to an increase in anger (Hypothesis 4_anger), while anger will be positively related to climate change engagement (Hypothesis 5_anger).

Fear-Anxiety

Fear and anxiety are two highly intertwined emotions. They both stem from the experience of being threatened (Lazarus, 1991). However, fear is stimulated by imminent physical harm, while anxiety is characterized by ambiguous threat (Lazarus, 1991). Fear requires the existence of an impending threat (Lazarus, 1991), which means fear is more likely a concrete emotion. The immediacy of fear-inducing threat could also shorten the psychological distance between the perceiver and the threat. In comparison, as anxiety is often associated with a future outlook, it should be more strongly associated with a distant perspective (C. A. Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). Due to its intrinsic ambiguity, anxiety is more likely to be an abstract emotion. Empirical evidence also supports these arguments. For example, as social distance increased, although fear did not increase to the same degree as anger, it increased more than other emotions (Yzerbyt et al., 2003). Furthermore, analysis of Twitter comments on the Sandy Hook shooting revealed that an increase in perceived spatial and temporal distance between Twitter users and the victims intensified people’s anxiety (Doré et al., 2015). Fear, characterized with an action tendency of retreat or the flight response, may not be very conducive to climate mitigation actions (O’Neill & Nicholson-Cole, 2009). Though the uncertainty associated with anxiety often leads to indecisiveness in coping strategy and action tendency (Lazarus, 1991), it is possible that those who feel anxious may search for solutions that could alleviate existential threats (Lazarus, 1991), and the uncertainty associated with anxiety also leaves room for the possibility of overcoming threat (Frijda et al., 1989). Based on such conceptualization, two groups of hypotheses were proposed. Specifically, fear will mediate the relationships between distance and climate engagement (Hypothesis 3_fear) in that increase in perceived distance will lead to decrease in fear (Hypothesis 4_fear), which leads to decrease in climate change engagement (Hypothesis 5_fear). Anxiety may also mediate the relationship between distance and the outcome variables (Hypothesis 3_anxiety) in that increase in perceived distance will lead to increase in anxiety (Hypothesis 4_anxiety), which leads to increase in climate change engagement (Hypothesis 5_anxiety).

Sadness

Despite arising from human encounter with negative situations, sadness differs significantly from the negative emotions discussed above (Lazarus, 1991; C. A. Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). Sadness is posited to emerge from irrevocable losses that are settled and fated (Lazarus, 1991). Moreover, not only is a sad encounter irrevocable, a sad person usually accepts the loss (Lazarus, 1991). The notion of irreversibility and acceptance both suggest that sadness stems from concrete experiences and close distance perspective. Furthermore, as moving away from things that make us sad could ameliorate this feeling, it is likely that a sad person would refrain from acting to resolve this feeling (Lazarus, 1991). For instance, past research shows that temporal and spatial distance are negatively associated with the expression of sadness (Doré et al., 2015). Thus, we also hypothesize that sadness would mediate the relationship between distance and climate change engagement (Hypothesis 3_sadness) in that increase in distance perception will lead to decrease in sadness (Hypothesis 4_sadness), which will lead to decrease in climate change engagement (Hypothesis 5_sadness).

Guilt and Shame

Guilt and shame are two self-conscious emotions (Beer & Keltner, 2004) that are also relevant to our discussion because some people may experience self-blame in thinking of the anthropogenic nature of climate change (Doherty & Clayton, 2011). Trope and Liberman (2010) also speculate that these two emotions may represent affective experiences that stem from increased social distance, as they both involve socially approved moral principles. However, guilt and shame are often induced by different types of moral violation. Guilt centers on the transgression of specific moral standards, while shame arises from the failure to live up to a moral ideal (Lazarus, 1991). For instance, people may feel guilty for littering, but shame will arise from their recognized failure to be responsible citizens. As guilt emerges from what has been done, while shame is associated with the incongruence of a higher level goal (Vallacher & Wegner, 1989), guilt is a more concrete emotion than shame. Supporting such claim, D. Han et al. (2014) showed that guilt is associated with concrete mental construal while shame is associated with abstract construal. Guilt and shame also diverge in their action tendencies (Swim & Bloodhart, 2013; Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007). A guilty individual is more apologetic and thus has stronger intention to make up for his or her action, but a shameful person is more likely to hide from the shame-inducing situation (Lazarus, 1991). In the climate change context, research also shows that guilty people are often more likely to engage in climate activism (Ferguson & Branscombe, 2010; Swim & Bloodhart, 2015), but no such tendency exists for shame. Instead, shameful people may even avoid action altogether based on the belief that change is impossible (Tangney et al., 2007). We thus hypothesize that guilt will mediate the relationship between distance and climate change engagement (Hypothesis 3_guilt) in that increase in distance perception will lead to decrease in guilt (Hypothesis 4_guilt), which will lead to decrease in climate change engagement (Hypothesis 5_guilt). In contrast, shame will mediate the relationship between distance and climate change engagement (Hypothesis 3_shame) in that increase in distance perception will lead to increase in shame (Hypothesis 4_shame), which will lead to decrease in climate change engagement (Hypothesis 5_shame).

Hope

Hope is often accompanied by adversity with a positive yet uncertain future lying ahead (Lazarus, 1991; C. A. Smith & Ellsworth, 1985). The uncertainty attached to hope also makes it somewhat similar to anxiety, as the latter may be converted to the former when a positive future expectancy ensues (Lazarus, 1991). This future-orientation and uncertainty also make hope a more abstract emotion stemming from distant perspective. Furthermore, bringing the daunting impacts of climate change closer may make individuals feel more powerless (Swim & Bloodhart, 2015), which means decreased psychological distance will reduce hope (Hypothesis 4_hope). Hope has received some attention in health communication research as a motivator for action (Chadwick, 2015; Snyder, 2002). Since a hopeful person is someone who yearns for a positive outcome, it is likely that this emotion could motivate action (Hypothesis 5_hope). Synthesizing these two hypotheses, we propose that hope will mediate the relationship between distance and the outcome variables (Hypothesis 3_hope).

To summarize the key hypotheses examined in this study, Figure 1 provides an overview of our theoretical framework. In sum, the independent variable of this research is distance manipulation (close distance = 0, far distance = 1). Trait empathy is hypothesized to moderate the relationships between distance manipulation and distance perception, as well as between distance manipulation and emotions. Emotions are hypothesized as mediators between distance perception and the three outcome variables, namely concern, policy support, and behavioral intention.

Method

An experimental survey was administered in September 2018. An adult sample of 429 Amazon MTurk workers from the United States were recruited. Only workers who have completed more than 95% of their previous tasks were sampled to ensure data quality. To prevent the possible automatic response from some MTurk workers (Dennis, Goodson, & Pearson, 2018), a reCAPTCHA challenge was included at the beginning of the survey. Another attention check question was also incorporated into the questionnaire, and those who failed these quality checks were excluded from analysis, resulting in a final sample of 399 participants.

The participants were randomly assigned to two conditions in which they read a mock-up Associate Press story on climate change’s impacts in the United States (i.e., spatially and socially close, n = 201; coded as 0 in subsequent analyses) or in Singapore (i.e., spatially and socially far, n = 198; coded as 1 in subsequent analyses). The news articles were of similar length and synthesized content from a recent report from NASA on climate change. Only country names, the agencies involved (i.e., NASA in the United States vs. National Environmental Agency in Singapore) and some geographically bounded disasters (i.e., hurricane in the United States vs. typhoon in Singapore) were different across the conditions, while the rest of the two stories were identical. Both stories have approximately 250 words, and the country names were mentioned in the title, as well as highlighted multiple times in the main body of the text (see Supplemental Material, available online).

A series of univariate analysis of variance indicated that there were no significant between condition differences in participants’ age, F(1, 397) = 0.02, p = .90, M_{pooled sample} = 36.11, standard deviation (SD) = 0.55; gender, χ²(1) = 0.42, p = .52, pooled sample: 50.1% female; race, χ²(4) = 0.71, p = .95, pooled sample: 77.9% White; education, F(1, 397) = 0.77, p = .38, Mdn_{pooled sampl}_e: 4-year college; and annual household income, F(1, 397) = 0.07, p = .79, Mdn_{pooled sample}: $50,000-$74,999. Participants’ political ideology, measured on a 7-point scale (1 = Very conservative to 7 = Very liberal) also did not differ significantly across conditions, F(1, 397) = 0.06, p = .81, M_{pooled sample} = 4.26, SD = 0.10. Thus, random assignment was successful.

Measures

Trait Empathy

Trait empathy was assessed before exposure to the experimental stimuli using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index’s Perspective Taking subscale with seven items (M. H. Davis, 1980). Sample items include “Before criticizing somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place,” “If I’m sure I’m right about something, I don’t waste much time listening to other people’s arguments,” and “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective.” Participants responded on a 5-point scale (1 = Does not describe me to 5 = Describes me very well). After proper recoding, the scale loaded well on one factor (α = .84). On average, our participants were fairly empathic toward others (M = 3.71, SD = 0.68).

Perceived Distance

On a 5-point scale (1 = Strongly disagree to 5 = Strongly agree), perceived social distance was measured with three items—“climate change is unlikely to have big impact on people like me,” “climate change is unlikely to have big impact on my family and friends,” and “climate change is unlikely to have big impact on the average American.” Perceived spatial distance was measured with three items—“climate change is unlikely to affect my local area,” “climate change will mostly affect areas far from here,” and “climate change will mostly affect countries in faraway places.” These items were adapted from past research (Jones et al., 2017; Spence et al., 2012). On average, our participants perceived climate change as psychologically close (social distance: M = 2.28, SD = 1.22, α = .87; spatial distance: M = 2.24, SD = 1.05, α = .78).¹

Emotions

Consistent with past research (Lerner, Gonzalez, Small, & Fischhoff, 2003; Yang, Chu, & Kahlor, 2019), we utilized a multi-indicator approach to measure discrete emotions. Following the same prompt, “On a scale of 0 = not at all to 10 = very much, please indicate how you feel when you think about climate change,” participants reported their levels of anger (angry, mad, and irritated; M = 5.43, SD = 3.12, α = .90), fear (fearful, afraid, and scared; M = 5.90, SD = 3.27, α = .95), anxiety (anxious, worried, and nervous; M = 6.32, SD = 3.13, α = .91), sadness (sad, sorrowful, and unhappy; M = 6.09, SD = 3.17, α = .90), and hope (hopeful, optimistic, and upbeat; M = 4.15, SD = 2.69, α = .83). Two self-conscious emotions were assessed on the same 11-point scale, but with only one item each (guilt: M = 4.05, SD = 3.31; shame: M = 5.03, SD = 3.36).² Given our intension to distinguish the impact of psychological distance on discrete emotions, we kept the different emotions as separate indices.

Concern

Concern about climate change was measured with three items on a 7-point scale (1 = Not at all to 7 = Very)—“How concerned are you about climate change?,” “How serious are the current impacts of climate change?,” and “How likely do you think climate change impacts will happen?” (Chu & Yang, 2018). In general, our participants were quite concerned about climate change (M = 5.55, SD = 1.55, α = .92).

Policy Support

Five items were used to measure support for climate change mitigation policies (Schuldt, Rickard, & Yang, 2018; Zhao et al., 2011) on a 7-point scale (1 = Strongly oppose to 7 = Strongly support). Sample items include “regulate carbon dioxide (the primary greenhouse gas) as a pollutant;” “require automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of cars, trucks, and SUVs to 54.5 mpg;” and “require electric utilities to produce at least 20% of their electricity from wind, solar, or other renewable energy sources.” Participants in general were supportive of these policies (M = 5.70, SD = 1.30, α = .92).

Mitigation Action

Last, on a 7-point scale (1 = Not at all likely to 7 = Very likely), five items were used to measure participants’ intention to engage in behaviors that could contribute to climate change mitigation in the next 12 months, such as “turn off lights when they are not needed,” “use public transportation or carpool is possible,” and “eat food that is locally grown or in season” (Yang, Seo, Rickard, & Harrison, 2015). Again, participants in general were in favor of these behaviors (M = 5.26, SD = 1.08, α = .92).

Results

A series of analyses of variance were conducted to examine the main effects of experimental manipulation. No significant between condition difference was found in perceived spatial distance, F(1, 397) = 0.26, p = .61. However, its impacts on social distance perception was marginally significant, F(1, 397) = 3.00, p = .08, showing that participants were more likely to believe that climate change is socially close to them when United States (M = 2.17, SD = 1.12), rather than Singapore (M = 2.38, SD = 1.31), was featured in the message. No significant between condition effect was found on most of the emotions. However, participants were significantly more anxious when climate change was portrayed as influencing the United States instead of Singapore, F(1, 397) = 5.00, p = .03; United States: M = 6.66, SD = 2.95; Singapore: M = 5.97, SD = 3.27.

To examine Hypothesis 1 (trait empathy moderation) and Hypothesis 4 (distance-emotion relationship), a group of moderated mediation analysis was conducted with the PROCESS Macro in SPSS (Hayes, 2018). Perceived social and spatial distance were submitted into the models as mediators, while trait empathy was included as a moderator of distance framing’s impacts on the criteria variables. Demographic variables were entered into the model as covariates to control for their potential impacts on participants’ emotional responses (Table 1). As expected, trait empathy moderated distance framing’s impacts on perceived social distance (Hypothesis 1a). Spotlight analysis further shows that participants with lower trait empathy (0.22 SD below the mean trait empathy score) were more likely to perceive climate change as socially close when exposed to the story featuring climate change impact on the United States, as compared to Singapore (Figure 2). Among participants who reported moderate and high levels of trait empathy, however, perceived social distance did not vary based on distance manipulation. There was also no significant main or interaction effect on spatial distance perception.

Table 1.

Moderated Mediation Models Predicting Emotions.

	Social	Spatial	Anger	Fear	Anxiety	Sadness	Hope	Guilt	Shame
Intercept	3.63	4.23	2.53	7.51	7.88	6.03	2.12	4.53	5.01
Female	−0.28**	−0.20*	−0.25	0.22	0.38	0.23	−0.58*	0.34	0.25
Age	0.01	−0.01**	−0.02	−0.06***	−0.04**	−0.02	−0.02	−0.07***	−0.07***
White	0.11	−0.13	0.43	−0.23	−0.12	−0.09	−0.33	−0.53	−0.11
Education	0.10**	0.05	0.15	0.11	0.13	0.12	0.17⁺	0.24*	0.13
Income	0.02	−0.01	0.09	0.11	0.04	0.11	−0.03	0.07	0.08
Ideology	−0.30***	−0.21***	0.28**	0.08	0.06	0.13	−0.23**	0.08	0.14
Distance manipulation^a	1.13*	0.12	−0.92	−3.19*	−3.34*	−2.5	−1.97	−2.15	−2.30
Trait empathy	−0.23*	−0.18⁺	0.54⁺	0.3	0.35	0.29	0.43⁺	0.36	0.28
Trait empathy × distance	−0.26⁺	−0.03	0.33	0.82⁺	0.79*	0.72⁺	0.41	0.54	0.66
Perceived social distance			−0.65***	−0.93***	−1.13***	−1.04***	0.40**	−0.41*	−0.46*
Perceived spatial distance			0.26	0.15	0.15	0.12	0.58***	0.17	0.37⁺
R ²	.39	.22	.16	.24	.31	.25	.28	.15	.13
Adjusted R²	.37	.20	.13	.22	.29	.23	.26	.12	.10

Dummy-coded distance framing (1 = distant, 0 = close).

p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Corresponding to Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 4, trait empathy also interacted with distance manipulation to predict fear, anxiety, and sadness. Among participants with low trait empathy, far-distance stimulus (i.e., Singapore), as compared to the close-distance one (i.e., United States), led to decrease in two concrete emotions (i.e., fear and sadness) and anxiety, an abstract emotion. Social distance perception was negatively related to concrete emotions such as anger, fear, sadness, and guilt. However, for the more abstract emotions—anxiety, hope, and shame, the findings were mixed. Perceived social distance was negatively related to anxiety and shame, but positively related to hope, while perceived spatial distance was positively related to hope and shame.

Mediation analyses with bias-corrected bootstrapped samples (N = 1,000) also showed that for participants with lower trait empathy (1 SD below the mean), social distance perception negatively mediated the influence of distance manipulation on anger (Β = −0.20, 95% confidence interval [CI: −0.43, −0.02]), fear (Β = −0.28, 95% CI [−0.58, −0.04]), anxiety (Β = −0.34, 95% CI [−0.67, −0.04]), and sadness (Β = −0.31, 95% CI [−0.62, −0.05]). Specifically, reading about climate change impacts in Singapore, as compared to reading about these impacts in the United States, led to increased social distance perception, which subsequently alleviated anger, fear, anxiety and sadness among participants scoring low in trait empathy. Distance framing’s conditional indirect effects on guilt (Β = −0.12, 95% CI [−0.31, 0.00]) and shame (Β = −0.14, 95% CI [−0.34, −0.00]) were negative but approaching significance, while the indirect effect on hope was positive (Β = 0.12, 95% CI [0.01, 0.28]), suggesting that the far distance message increased hope through social distance. No other conditional indirect effect was found at medium or high trait empathy or through spatial distance perception. Synthesizing findings above, except for two negative and abstract emotions (anxiety and shame), most of the hypotheses on the relationship between psychological distance and emotions were supported.

To examine emotion’s impacts on concern (Hypothesis 2) and climate change engagement (Hypothesis 5), a series of regression models were employed with concern about climate change, policy support, and mitigation action as the dependent variables (Table 2). We found that participants with closer perceived social distance, more anxiety, and greater sadness were more likely to report concern about climate change. Similarly, perceived social distance and sadness were significant predictors of policy support. For behavioral intention, we found that participants who experienced more anger, more anxiety, and more hope were more likely to express an intention to perform mitigation actions.

Table 2.

Regression Models Predicting Concern, Policy Support, and Behavioral Intention.

	Concern		Policy		Behavior
Intercept	3.610	4.17	4.500	5.23	3.960	3.69
Anger	0.00	−0.03	0.04	0.01	0.09***	0.08**
Fear	−0.06	−0.01	−0.07	−0.03	−0.06	−0.03
Anxiety	0.30***	0.18***	0.17***	0.07	0.13***	0.10**
Sad	0.13**	0.08*	0.14***	0.09*	0.05	0.01
Guilt	0.00	0.00	0.01	0.01	−0.02	−0.01
Shame	−0.04	0.01	−0.06*	−0.01	−0.03	0.00
Hope	−0.06**	0.03	−0.06**	0.02	0.05**	0.08***
Spatial		0.05		−0.08		−0.05
Social		−0.55***		−0.40***		−0.12
Female		0.01		−0.04		−0.02
Age		0.00		0.00		0.01
White		0.06		−0.07		0.00
Education		0.14***		0.11**		0.08*
Income		−0.01		−0.03		−0.02
Ideology		0.10**		0.08*		0.04
ANOVA	F(7, 391) = 55.81***	F(15, 383) = 47.01***	F(7, 391) = 29.38***	F(15, 383) = 24.97***	F(7, 391) = 18.06***	F(15, 383) = 10.15***
R ²	.50	.65	.34	.49	.24	.28
Adjusted R²	.49	.63	.33	.47	.23	.26

Note. ANOVA = analysis of variance.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Last, focusing on emotions’ role as mediators between distance perception and climate change engagement (Hypothesis 3), Table 3 illustrates indirect effects of social and spatial distance perception through emotions. Observably, anxiety and sadness mediated social distance perception on policy support, suggesting that perceiving climate change as a socially close threat strengthens anxious and sad feelings, which further increased people’s support for climate change mitigation policy. Anger and anxiety–mediated social distance perception’s influence on behavioral intention. Increase in distance reduced anger and anxiety, which lead to decrease in intention to perform mitigative actions. Hope mediated social and spatial distance perception’s influence on behavioral intention, suggesting that perceiving climate change as a close threat dampened hope, which made people less likely to engage in mitigative actions.

Table 3.

Indirect Effects From Distance Perception to Policy Support and Behavioral Intention.

	Β (SE^a)	Lower level 95% CI^a	Upper level 95% CI^a		Β (SE^a)	Lower level 95% CI^a	Upper level 95% CI^a
Social distance perception → emotion → policy support				Social distance perception → emotion → behavioral intention
Anger	−0.010 (0.020)	−0.06	0.030	Anger	0.003 (0.009)	−0.015	0.025
Fear	0.028 (0.038)	−0.042	0.105	Fear	−0.005 (0.010)	−0.028	0.013
Anxiety	−0.095 (0.052)	−0.205	0.001	Anxiety	0.013 (0.016)	−0.014	0.052
Sad	−0.102 (0.043)	−0.188	−0.019	Sad	0.011 (0.018)	−0.021	0.051
Guilt	−0.004 (0.013)	−0.029	0.022	Guilt	0.001 (0.006)	−0.01	0.016
Shame	0.007 (0.014)	−0.017	0.039	Shame	−0.004 (0.010)	−0.027	0.013
Hope	0.004 (0.008)	−0.010	0.021	Hope	0.01 (0.015)	−0.019	0.044

Spatial distance perception → emotion → policy support				Spatial distance perception → emotion → behavioral intention
Anger	−0.058 (0.026)	−0.115	−0.015	Anger	0.02 (0.017)	−0.012	0.057
Fear	0.032 (0.049)	−0.061	0.13	Fear	−0.005 (0.013)	−0.038	0.015
Anxiety	−0.133 (0.054)	−0.245	−0.032	Anxiety	0.018 (0.021)	−0.019	0.065
Sad	−0.017 (0.046)	−0.111	0.073	Sad	0.002 (0.009)	−0.015	0.025
Guilt	0.007 (0.013)	−0.017	0.035	Guilt	−0.003 (0.006)	−0.017	0.009
Shame	0.002 (0.014)	−0.024	0.034	Shame	−0.001 (0.01)	−0.023	0.018
Hope	0.021 (0.014)	−0.006	0.051	Hope	0.051 (0.020)	0.018	0.094

Note. SE = standard error; CI = confidence interval.

Estimated with bias-corrected bootstrapping (N = 5,000).

Discussion

As expected, trait empathy moderated the impact of distance manipulation on social distance perception and emotions. This finding shed light on trait empathy’s role in psychological distance research. Expanding previous research that mostly focused on state empathy (Swim & Bloodhart, 2015), our findings support the claim that people’s innate trait empathy also affects the way they respond to change in distance. People who are less empathic tend to be more influenced by distance manipulation, while those who are more likely to take others’ perspective are not as affected by distance manipulation. It is thus likely that people may differ in their ability to traverse psychological distance due to trait empathy, which suggests an interesting direction for future research.³

Psychological distance’s differential impacts on emotions corroborated our theorization. Anger, fear, sadness, and guilt, as emotions arising from more concrete experiences, had negative relationships with perceived psychological distance. That is, participants reported stronger anger, fear, sadness, and guilt when they perceived climate change as socially close. In contrast, they reported more hope, a more abstract emotion, when they perceived climate change as a socially distant issue. Contrary to our prediction, however, social distance perception also negatively influenced anxiety and shame. That is, participants who perceived climate change as socially close also reported feeling more anxious and shameful. One possible explanation for these findings may be the strong negative valence associated with these emotions. Considering that valence or goal congruence is the most important determinant of emotions (C. A. Smith & Ellsworth, 1985), the negativity associated with climate change impacts probably overwrites the nuanced difference in anxiety and shame’s perceptual distance. Additionally, as emotions become more intense at shortened distance (J. I. Davis et al., 2011; Mühlberger et al., 2008), it is possible that our participants reported more anxiety and shame simply because they felt more negative about climate change in general. The exploratory factor analysis results also support this interpretation because anxiety and shame tend to covary highly with the other negative emotions.

Summarizing discrete emotions’ relationships with our key outcome variables, anxiety and sadness were significantly related to concern, sadness was a significant predictor of policy support, while anger, anxiety, and hope were significantly related to participants’ intention to engage in mitigation actions. Particularly, anger, anxiety and sadness negatively mediated distance’s impact on people’s intention to engage in climate change action either by supporting mitigation policies or practicing climate-friendly behaviors. Despite being a negative emotion, anger tends to be an effective motivator for climate mitigation action. Notably, as we did not measure the target of anger (e.g., toward industries that contribute to climate change), it would be meaningful to further explicate if feeling angry toward different agents would result in different action tendencies. As anxious people tend to seek solutions for their crisis (Lazarus, 1991), its relationships with concern, policy support, and mitigation action make sense. Though also induced by external threats, anxiety motivated climate change engagement much more than fear. Consistent with other research (O’Neill & Nicholson-Cole, 2009), our findings suggest that fear may not be a conducive emotion for climate change communication. Despite its retreat-oriented action tendency, sadness is often used to describe negative feelings in general (Lazarus, 1991). Therefore, it is likely that those who felt sad about climate change impacts supported climate change mitigation policies as a way to cope with negative feelings in general (Lazarus, 1991). Interestingly, hope was also positively related to mitigation action, which supports hope’s motivational effect in promoting citizen engagement (Chadwick, 2015).

Neither of the two self-conscious emotions was significantly related to the outcome variables. It is possible that the self-blame arising from perceived failure to uphold important moral values makes people more likely to hide from the problem, instead of confronting it (Lazarus, 1991; Tangney et al., 2007). The lack of findings associated with fear, guilt, and shame also signals potential limitations of the present study. As all emotions were measured as within-subject constructs, it might have been difficult for participants to differentiate subtle emotions they experienced when thinking about climate change. Thus, future research may consider using associative words to assist participants in discerning discrete emotions. For instance, instead of asking how anxious a participant feels about climate change, researchers may consider asking how anxious he or she feels toward the uncertainty of climate change. In addition to the emotions examined in this study, other emotions also warrant further investigation, such as interest and disgust (N. Smith & Leiserowitz, 2014). Furthermore, as some emotions may interact to boost or diminish each other’s impacts on the outcome variables (N. Smith & Leiserowitz, 2014), investigation into this possibility may offer greater insight. Related to this, another important limitation in the current study and other appraisal research is the lack of measurement for appraisal dimensions (e.g., Lerner & Keltner, 2001). Models including appraisal dimensions may help us better understand the relationship between emotions and other key variables such as construal level and psychological distance.

In addition, spatial and social distance was manipulated simultaneously in our experimental design. Though this practice is common in the literature (Chu & Yang, 2018; McDonald et al., 2015), separating these two dimensions may better explicate how different distance influences people’s response to climate change messaging. For instance, future research may consider manipulating spatial distance only by holding the exemplars constant, such as the same group of identifiable exemplars located in a spatially close or far place. In our study, distance manipulation influenced only social distance perception among the less empathic participants, which may suggest that social distance is more dominant in influencing individuals’ distance perception than spatial distance.

We also need to point out that several important relationships were only marginally significant, such as the interaction effect of distance manipulation and trait empathy on social distance perception. Though our sample size should offer sufficient power to detect these relationships, examining them in a more nationally representative and larger sample may better reveal how distance manipulation influences distance perception. Considering that most research based on construal level theory and appraisal theories has been conducted in strictly controlled experimental settings, applying these theories to study climate change communication may require an even larger sample size to reveal the nuanced relationships among the constructs.

Last, although MTurk workers mirror the psychological characteristics of the American public (Huff & Tingley, 2015), the sample collected is not demographically representative as we hope. In particular, MTurk workers are often more educated, younger, and more liberal leaning. Thus, a more ecologically valid sample is recommended for future research.

Conclusion

Despite some initial evidence that emotions tend to vary in intensity along with psychological distance, we argue that emotions’ appraisal patterns may also contribute to these relationships. We found that concrete emotions such as anger and fear decreased as perceived social distance about climate change increased, whereas hope, as an abstract emotion, increased along with social distance perception. Emotions also played different roles in influencing people’s concern about climate change, policy support, and mitigation action. Specifically, anger, anxiety, sadness and hope contributed to policy support and mitigation action while fear, guilt, and shame were not conducive to climate change engagement.

This study offers important practical implications. On one hand, science communication researcher and practitioners may consider tailoring messages to better approach individuals with different levels of trait empathy. Highlighting the proximity of climate change may appeal more to people who are less empathic, but it may not yield significant change among those with high trait empathy. Additionally, narrowing the psychological distance of climate change may intensify negative emotions, while at the same time, decrease hope. Because not all emotions contribute to greater climate change engagement, science communicators need to use caution in designing climate change messaging. A tangible recipe, based on our research, is to maintain a healthy level of anxiety and anger without dampening hope.

Supplemental Material

Appendix – Supplemental material for Emotion and the Psychological Distance of Climate Change

Supplemental material, Appendix for Emotion and the Psychological Distance of Climate Change by Haoran Chu and Janet Z. Yang in Science Communication

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1822997. This material is partially supported by the Mark Diamond Research Fund, University at Buffalo under Grant No. SP-18-27.

ORCID iD

Haoran Chu

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online at .

Notes

Author Biographies

Haoran Chu is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Relations at Texas Tech University. He conducts research on the role of psychological distance and emotions in shaping people’s cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses to messages related to environmental and health topics. He also has interests in studying how different media contribute to community resilience to natural disasters. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation.

Janet Z. Yang is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. Her primary research interest is in communication issues related to environmental, health, science, and risk topics, with a special focus on cognitive and affective determinants of risk perception and its impact on information seeking, information sharing, and information processing. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, among others.

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