Environmental knowledge is inversely associated with climate change anxiety
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Hannes Zacher & Cort W. Rudolph
Climatic Change volume 176, Article number: 32 (2023)
Abstract
This study tests the hypotheses that overall environmental knowledge and climate-specific knowledge are inversely related to climate change anxiety, such that people who know more (less) about the environment in general, and about climate in particular, are less (more) anxious about climate change. Time lagged data were collected from N = 2,066 individuals in Germany. Results showed that, even after controlling for demographic characteristics, personality characteristics, and environmental attitudes, overall environmental knowledge and climate-specific knowledge were negatively related to climate change anxiety (both B = -.09, p < .001).
1 Introduction
The British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) is quoted as saying, “The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts, the less you know the hotter you get.” Consistent with this idea, we report the results of a study that tested the hypotheses that overall environmental knowledge and climate-specific knowledge are negatively related to climate change anxiety. The rationale for investigating these relationships is that climate change anxiety may be reduced through interventions that enhance environmental knowledge. Environmental knowledge refers to the body of acquired facts and learned expertise in the environmental domain (including climate; Geiger et al. 2019). Climate change anxiety involves people’s self-reported negative emotional responses associated with their awareness of climate change (Clayton 2020). Accordingly, the measure used in this study assesses responses such as worrying and distress, reduced well-being, as well as concentration and sleep difficulties due to people’s thoughts about climate change (Clayton and Karazsia 2020). Compared to more constructive forms of worrying about global warming that result in adaptive responses (e.g., Verplanken et al. 2020), it seems desirable to reduce climate change anxiety because it has been shown to have detrimental consequences for people’s general health and well-being, including higher levels of depression, anxiety, and distress (Schwartz et al. 2022; Searle and Gow 2010).
Psychological theorizing suggests that a lack of knowledge about a topic leads to greater feelings of uncertainty which, in turn, may result in anxiety associated with the topic, whereas greater available knowledge about a topic is likely to reduce experiences of topic-associated uncertainty and anxiety (Hirsh et al. 2012; Jungermann and Thüring 1993). Indeed, empirical studies conducted on various topics (e.g., aging, interpersonal and intergroup relations, finances, entrepreneurship) suggest that knowledge about a topic is negatively related to uncertainty and anxiety (Nuevo et al. 2009; Stephan et al. 1999; Townsend et al. 2018; Wang et al. 2011). For example, a meta-analysis showed that knowledge about one’s own and others’ emotions is inversely related to social anxiety (O’Toole et al. 2013).
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/04/16/environmental-knowledge-is-inversely-associated-with-climate-change-anxiety/
