Anger is most powerful emotion by far for spurring climate action, study finds

People should feel angry because they had been deliberately deceived by fossil fuel companies and governments had let that happen

People should feel angry because they had been deliberately deceived by fossil fuel companies and governments had let that happen, said Dr Laura Thomas-Walters, a social scientist at the Yale Programme on Climate Communication and an activist with Extinction Rebellion, who was not involved in the studies.

The link from anger to activism was logical, she added. “It’s in the name that activism is an ‘active’ behaviour, and anger can spur action.”

But messages that make people angry can also push others to shut down, particularly if they feel powerless. There were robust studies from health psychology that showed communicating risks could backfire if people were not also told how they could protect themselves, said Lorraine Whitmarsh, the head of the UK’s Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations, who was not involved in the study. “People really need to feel they can make a difference on climate change. And it’s much harder to make a difference on climate change than it is on health risks, because it’s a great big global collective problem.”

People really need to feel they can make a difference on climate change

Scientists are working to understand the role that hope plays. A review study published on Tuesday found “partial yet inconclusive evidence” that increasing hope makes people engage more with the climate. It found people whose hope was rooted in complacency were less likely to engage than those whose hope was linked to action.

“Even there, the relationship seems to be more the other way around,” said Lea Dohm, a psychologist and co-founder of the German climate action group Psychologists for Future, who also was not involved. “It may be less that hope comes first and then brings action, but rather that people act and then hope arises.”

What people needed from the media, she said, was above all an honest portrayal of the facts. “When we state scientific facts, some feelings will come. And what we need to do then is validate them and say, hey, what you feel is justified, reasonable and shared by many other people.”