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This article investigates the influence of exposure to the IPCC special report on 1.5 °C global warming on climate change attitudes. Among a nationally representative sample of the Norwegian public, we found that exposure to the report is associated with greater perceived threat from climate change and increased climate change concern. However, this association was modestly moderated by political orientation. Exposure to the report had a weaker association with perceived threat and climate change concern among politically right-leaning individuals, compared with their left-leaning counterparts, and there was no association between exposure to the report and climate change concern among individuals who self-identified as being on the far-right end of the political spectrum. We conclude that, despite the commonly observed tendency for biased assimilation of climate change information and polarisation of opinion among the public, scientific communication regarding climate risks may still have a viable role to play in promoting climate change engagement and action.

While several studies show an association between flooding experience and climate change engagement, a few show no evidence of such a link. Here, we explore the potential that this inconsistency relates to the measurement of flooding experience in terms of individual versus local experience, and the subsumption of multiple distinct constructs within composite indicators of climate change engagement. Using national survey data from Norway, we show that individual and local flooding experiences differentially predict subjective attribution and climate change concern. People with individual flooding experience reported significantly greater climate change concern than those with local, or no, flooding experience. Subjective attribution of flooding to climate change did not differ significantly between people with individual versus local flooding experience, except among those with a right-wing political orientation where individual experience was associated with greater subjective attribution. Our findings highlight the need for careful operationalisation of flooding experience and climate change engagement in subsequent research.

This paper explores whether efficacy beliefs can alter the relationship between worry about climate change and personal energy-saving behaviors, controlling for climate change beliefs and socio-demographics. For this purpose, we used data from 23 countries that participated in the European Social Survey Round 8 (N = 44 387). Worry about climate change, personal efficacy, personal outcome expectancy, and collective outcome expectancy were each associated with personal energy-saving behaviors concerning either energy curtailment or energy efficiency. The results further show that outcome expectancies moderate the association between worry about climate change and both types of energy behaviors. Worry was more strongly related to energy curtailment behaviors among those with high levels of personal and collective outcome expectancy. A similar pattern was found for energy efficiency behaviors, which were more strongly predicted by worry about climate change when combined with high levels of collective outcome expectancy. These findings are relevant for climate change communication, especially informational campaigns aiming to lower overall household energy use.

This study examines what individuals expect will be the most important impacts of climate change on their respective countries, and how these expectations relate to individual risk judgments. Open-ended responses from representative samples in four European countries (each n > 1000), were sorted into six categories: expectations of climate change leading to changes in attitudes and goals, human activities, emissions and pollution, environmental changes, impacts on humans, or few or no impacts. The results showed that the most frequently mentioned climate change impacts were related to environmental changes. Although most results were consistent across the UK, Norway, Germany, and France, some differences were identified. For example, respondents in the UK and Norway more frequently mentioned changes in human actions and activities among the most important climate change impacts. We also found differences between demographic groups; men, those in the oldest age groups, and those placing themselves further right on the political spectrum were more likely to expect few or no consequences of climate change on their country. Additional analyses examined relationships between the six impact categories and two different measures of individual risk judgments. Those expecting climate change to lead to changes in attitudes and goals, environmental changes, or impacts on humans reported higher levels of worry about climate change and expected more negative effects on their country. Climate change worry, but not the evaluation of how positive or negative effects will be on one’s country, was further related to the number of consequences mentioned in response to the open-ended question and the specificity conveyed.

Climate change threatens mental health via increasing exposure to the social and economic disruptions created by extreme weather and large-scale climatic events, as well as through the anxiety associated with recognising the existential threat posed by the climate crisis. Considering the growing levels of climate change awareness across the world, negative emotions like anxiety and worry about climate-related risks are a potentially pervasive conduit for the adverse impacts of climate change on mental health. In this study, we examined how negative climate-related emotions relate to sleep and mental health among a diverse non-representative sample of individuals recruited from 25 countries, as well as a Norwegian nationally-representative sample. Overall, we found that negative climate-related emotions are positively associated with insomnia symptoms and negatively related to self-rated mental health in most countries. Our findings suggest that climate-related psychological stressors are significantly linked with mental health in many countries and draw attention to the need for cross-disciplinary research aimed at achieving rigorous empirical assessments of the unique challenge posed to mental health by negative emotional responses to climate change.

Energy security is an important policy goal for most countries. Here, we show that cross-country differences in concern about energy security across Israel and 22 countries in Europe are explained by energy-specific and general national contextual indicators, over-and-above individual-level factors that reflect population demographics. Specifically, public concerns about import dependency and affordability reflect the specific energy context within countries, such as dependency on energy imports and electricity costs, while higher concerns about the affordability, vulnerability and reliability of energy are associated with higher fossil fuel consumption. More general national context beyond energy also appears to matter; energy security concerns are higher in countries that are doing less well in terms of economic and human well-being. These findings indicate that wider energy, social and economic context influence people’s feelings of vulnerability and sense of security, which may inform the development of effective energy security strategies that assuage public concerns. Energy security is an important policy objective across Europe. Public concern about energy security varies across countries due to differences in national energy context and more general national indicators of economic and human well-being, over-and-above individual population characteristics.

A four-fold classification of emotions with respect to their functions in decision making is proposed. It is argued that emotions are not homogenous concerning their role in decision making, but that four distinct functions can be distinguished concerning emotional phenomena. One function is to provide information about pleasure and pain for preference construction, a second function is to enable rapid choices under time pressure, a third function is to focus attention on relevant aspects of a decision problem, and a fourth function is to generate commitment concerning morally and socially significant decisions. The pertinent literature on the relationship between emotion and decision making is reviewed, and it is concluded that most approaches fit into the proposed framework. We argue that a precise conceptualization of emotional phenomena is required to advance our understanding of the complex role of emotions in decision making.

Based on national survey data from Norway, this study assesses if exposure to the IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5 °C can be associated with support for climate protests and mitigation policies. Respondents were asked if they had heard about the report (closed-ended question) and what they had learned from or about the report (open-ended question). Analyses of the closed-ended question showed that those who had heard about the report were also more likely to express their support for, as well as to plan on engaging in, protest for increased action by the government against climate change. A similar pattern was observed with respect to support for policy changes that can assist in mitigating climate change. Complementary analyses of the open-ended question revealed that evaluative statements formed the largest category of responses. This category included both references to the seriousness of the evolving climate crisis and comments questioning the credibility of the presented information, with the former being the most frequent response. The findings from this study are discussed in the context of public engagement with climate change, with a particular scope on the potential impacts of making the insights from scientific reports known to the general public.

The purpose of the present note is to draw attention to the potential role of a recently discovered visual illusion in creating traffic accidents. The illusion consists in a compelling and immediate experience that the space behind an occluding object in the foreground is empty. Although the illusion refers to a region of space, which is invisible due to occlusion (a blind spot), there is evidence to suggest that it is nevertheless driven by visual mechanisms and that it can be just as deceptive and powerful as ordinary visual illusions. We suggest that this novel illusion can make situations involving blind spots in a road user's field of view even more dangerous than one would expect based on the lack of visibility by itself. This could be because it erroneously makes the road user feel that (s)he has actually seen everything there is to see, and thus has verified that the blind spot is empty. This hypothesis requires further testing before definitive conclusions can be drawn, but we wish to make researchers and authorities involved in the analysis of traffic accidents and on-the-spot crash investigations aware of its potential role in order to encourage registration of relevant data and facilitate further research.

Microplastics have been studied extensively, yet considerable uncertainty remains about the risks they pose. One way to characterize the state of knowledge about a hazard and the risks it poses is to examine how scientists specializing in that hazard understand and think about it. In two complementary studies our interdisciplinary team examined how microplastics scientists understand and think about the hazards of microplastics accumulation in freshwater systems, and what risks they may pose. Each study used a different approach. Study 1 studied the causal beliefs—that is, the “mental models”—scientists applied in decision contexts. It relied on a mixture of open- and closed-ended questions, and tasks during which microplastics scientists ( N  = 15) were asked to think aloud. This approach revealed scientists’ causal thinking about where microplastics come from and about the health and environmental consequences of microplastics. Specifically, in Study 1 microplastics scientists emphasized household consumption as a primary source of microplastics, while acknowledging multiple direct and indirect sources and exposure pathways, and often dwelling on the uncertainties about human health consequences. Study 2 applied the M-Tool, which is a different approach to studying mental models. In Study 2 microplastics scientists ( N  = 38) used the M-Tool to draw causal connections between core ideas about microplastics. Top concepts selected in this exercise included waste mismanagement, textiles, plastic degradation, individual littering, and water quality. Across both studies there were commonalities in how scientists understood the sources and exposure pathways for microplastics. Scientists emphasized household consumption of plastics as a direct and indirect source of microplastics, but there were gaps in how they talked about dose–response functions. Together the two studies portray how scientists from diverse disciplines understand the potential risks of microplastics accumulation in freshwater ecosystems. Findings suggest that microplastics risk communication and management strategies can be improved by providing a broader perspective on sources of microplastics beyond household consumption, by sharing information about diverse approaches to managing risks of microplastics, and by addressing uncertainties as well as gaps between knowledge and concerns about human health effects. The novel comparative research approach explored here demonstrates the complementarities of the methods employed, which we hope will be useful for those interested in understanding the social and decision dimensions of microplastics and other environmental problems.