Construing Climate Change: Psychological Distance, Individual Difference, and Construal Level of Climate Change

ABSTRACT

This study examines the influences of distance cues and individual characteristics, including trait empathy, time orientation, age, and gender, on people’s construal of climate change. A content analysis was utilized to investigate American adults’ mental construal of climate change after exposure to messages illustrating its impacts in close or distant locations and times. Results of an experiment show that far-distance messages led to increased distance perception and more abstract mental construal of the phenomenon. Further, people with lower trait empathy formed more abstract mental construals when climate change was portrayed or perceived as a distant issue. Concrete construal and close distance perception were also positively correlated with support for climate change mitigation policies. This study complements extant literature on the psychological distance of climate change by pinpointing its effects on people’s mental construal of the phenomenon and the moderating effects of individual characteristics such as trait empathy, gender, and age.

KEYWORDS:

• Construal level
• psychological distance
• trait empathy
• time orientation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Though our U.S.-based participants may not always perceive climate change impacts in their country as spatially or socially close due to geographical distribution and personal relevance, it is reasonable to argue that such impacts in Singapore, which is an island nation in Southeast Asia, are likely perceived as more distant to our participants.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [grant number 1822997].