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

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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.

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Data availability

The data for this manuscript can be found at https://osf.io/g5vut/.

Notes

  1. The following images were used in Experiment 1: 12, 13, 29, 39, 46, and 49 (positive relevant); 8, 18, 23, 20, 37, and 62 (negative relevant); and 178, 194, 200, 210, 221, 240, 256, 277, 280, 303, 308, and 315 (irrelevant).

  2. Given that we used positive images of (potential) climate change solutions (e.g., solar panels and windmills), we wanted to know if focusing on these solutions might increase optimism.

  3. Note that the Climate Change Anxiety Questionnaire was collected following training in all groups in Experiment 2. As reported in Table 4, all four groups did not differ in climate change anxiety. Therefore, the ABM variant used in the current study did not appear to induce anxiety. However, longer interventions may induce anxiety and it will be important for future research to assess this possibility.

  4. Pretraining data was combined across Experiments 1 and 2 to maximize the power to detect differences across sex and political orientation (tested in separate models). Main effects for sex (F(1, 192) = 0.12, p = .73, Partial η2 = .001) and political orientation (F(3, 191) = 0.74, p = .53, Partial η2 = .012) on attentional bias were non-significant. Similarly, the interaction with emotion was non-significant for sex (F(1, 192) = 0.54, p = .47, Partial η2 = .003) and political orientation (F(3, 191) = 0.58, p = .63, Partial η2 = .009).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the students at the Northern Michigan University for participating in this research as well as the students in the Cognitive × Affective Behavior & Integrative Neuroscience (CABIN) Lab for assisting in the collection of this data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological Science, Northern Michigan University, 1401 Presque Isle Avenue, Marquette, MI, 49855, USA

    Joshua M. Carlson, Madeline Voltz, John Foley, Lisa Gentry & Lin Fang

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  1. Joshua M. Carlson
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  2. Madeline Voltz
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  3. John Foley
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  4. Lisa Gentry
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  5. Lin Fang
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Contributions

JMC designed the study, analyzed the data, and drafted the manuscript. MV, JF, and LG collected the data. All authors edited and provided critical feedback on the draft manuscript.

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Correspondence to Joshua M. Carlson.

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Carlson, J.M., Voltz, M., Foley, J. et al. Changing how you look at climate change: attention bias modification increases attention to climate change. Climatic Change 175, 16 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-022-03471-3

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