Climate change and health equity: A research agenda for psychological science.

Climate change poses unique and substantial threats to public health and well-being, from heat stress, flooding, and the spread of infectious disease to food and water insecurity, conflict, displacement, and direct health hazards linked to fossil fuels. These threats are especially acute for frontline communities. Addressing climate change and its unequal impacts requires psychologists to consider temporal and spatial dimensions of health, compound risks, as well as structural sources of vulnerability implicated by few other public health challenges. In this review, we consider climate change as a unique context for the study of health inequities and the roles of psychologists and health care practitioners in addressing it. We conclude by discussing the research infrastructure needed to broaden current understanding of these inequities, including new cross-disciplinary, institutional, and community partnerships, and offer six practical recommendations for advancing the psychological study of climate health equity and its societal relevance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Ethics, morality, and the psychology of climate justice.

Climate change is increasingly understood as a social justice issue by academics, policymakers, and the public; however, the nature of these perceptions and their implications for cooperation and decision-making have only recently begun to receive empirical attention. We review emerging empirical work that suggests that morality and justice perceptions can serve as both a bridge and a barrier to cooperation around climate change and highlight two critical areas for future development, identifying psychological processes that promote and impede climate vulnerability and that enhance equity in the design and implementation of climate solutions. We argue that conceptualizing climate justice as a multidimensional process addressing both social and structural barriers can stimulate new psychological research and help align disparate approaches within the social sciences.

Using qualitative approaches to improve quantitative inferences in environmental psychology.

This article describes the qualitative approach used to generate and interpret the quantitative study reported by Song and colleagues' (2020) in their article, "What counts as an 'environmental' issue? Differences in environmental issue conceptualization across race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status." Song and colleagues (2020) describe the results of a survey documenting that, in the United States, White and high-SES respondents perceive environmental issues differently than their non-White and lower-SES counterparts, reflecting structural differences in environmental risks. While Song and colleagues (2020) discuss the survey results in detail, the discussion of the qualitative research that led to the creation of that survey was limited due to space constraints. The current article provides a more holistic account of the methods behind the Song and colleagues (2020) study by discussing the qualitative component of the research in detail. In addition to discussing how the qualitative research complements and critically informs the findings reported by Song et al., we also consider the broader implications and value of integrating qualitative and quantitative methods in environmental psychology.•Conduct qualitative study to inform quantitative design.•Use qualitative patterns to make inferences about quantitative indicators.

Diverse segments of the US public underestimate the environmental concerns of minority and low-income Americans.

In a nationally representative survey experiment, diverse segments of the US public underestimated the environmental concerns of nonwhite and low-income Americans and misperceived them as lower than those of white and more affluent Americans. Moreover, both whites and nonwhites and higher- and lower-income respondents associated the term "environmentalist" with whites and the well-educated, suggesting that shared cultural stereotypes may drive these misperceptions. This environmental belief paradox-a tendency to misperceive groups that are among the most environmentally concerned and most vulnerable to a wide range of environmental impacts as least concerned about the environment-was largely invariant across demographic groups and also extended to the specific issue of climate change. Suggesting these beliefs are malleable, exposure to images of a racially diverse (vs. nondiverse) environmental organization in an embedded randomized experiment reduced the perceived gap between whites' and nonwhites' environmental concerns and strengthened associations between nonwhites and the category "environmentalists" among minority respondents. These findings suggest that stereotypes about others' environmental attitudes may pose a barrier to broadening public engagement with environmental initiatives, particularly among populations most vulnerable to negative environmental impacts.

When does deprivation motivate future-oriented thinking? The case of climate change.

Pepper & Nettle overstate cross-domain evidence of present-oriented thinking among lower-socioeconomic-status (SES) groups and overlook key social and contextual drivers of temporal decision making. We consider psychological research on climate change - a quintessential intertemporal problem that implicates inequities and extrinsic mortality risk - documenting more future-oriented thinking among low- compared to high-SES groups.

Social Climate Science: A New Vista for Psychological Science.

The recent Paris Agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions, adopted by 195 nations at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, signaled unprecedented commitment by world leaders to address the human social aspects of climate change. Indeed, climate change increasingly is recognized by scientists and policymakers as a social issue requiring social solutions. However, whereas psychological research on intrapersonal and some group-level processes (e.g., political polarization of climate beliefs) has flourished, research into other social processes-such as an understanding of how nonpartisan social identities, cultural ideologies, and group hierarchies shape public engagement on climate change-has received substantially less attention. In this article, we take stock of current psychological approaches to the study of climate change to explore what is "social" about climate change from the perspective of psychology. Drawing from current interdisciplinary perspectives and emerging empirical findings within psychology, we identify four distinct features of climate change and three sets of psychological processes evoked by these features that are fundamentally social and shape both individual and group responses to climate change. Finally, we consider how a more nuanced understanding of the social underpinnings of climate change can stimulate new questions and advance theory within psychology.

Nutrient-centrism and perceived risk of chronic disease.

This experiment explored consequences of two common lay theories about the diet-disease link: nutrient-centrism, the belief that nutrients (e.g. potassium) are crucial to staving off disease, and whole-food centrism, the belief that whole foods (e.g. bananas), containing these nutrients in their natural context, are most beneficial. Depicting an individual's diet in terms of nutrients rather than whole foods containing these nutrients reduced the perceived likelihood that the individual would experience leading diet-related diseases (e.g. heart disease, diabetes). Although nutrition experts increasingly emphasize the health benefits of natural whole foods, people nevertheless appear to privilege nutrients when estimating disease risks.

Anxiety perseverance in intergroup interaction: When incidental explanations backfire.

Intergroup interactions are often anxiety provoking, and this can lead members of both majority and minority groups to avoid contact. Whereas negative consequences of experiencing intergroup anxiety are well documented, the role of perceived anxiety has received substantially less theoretical and empirical attention. We demonstrate in 3 experiments that the perception of anxiety in others can undermine intergroup interactions even when the anxiety can be attributed to a source that is unrelated to the interaction. Participants who learned that a cross-race partner's anxiety could be attributed to an upcoming evaluation (Study 1) or a stimulant (i.e., caffeine, Studies 2 and 3) expressed less interest in continuing an interaction (Studies 1 and 2), showed less self-disclosure (Study 2), and increased physical distance between themselves and their partner (Study 3) than did those given no source information and participants who interacted with a same-race partner. Moreover, compared to control participants, perceivers who were given an incidental explanation for their partner's anxiety perceived outgroup, but not ingroup, partners as more anxious (Studies 1 and 3) and showed heightened accessibility of anxiety words (Study 3), indicating that incidental source information enhanced accessibility of intergroup (but not intragroup) anxiety at early stages of information processing. Theoretical and practical implications for combating paradoxical effects of perceived anxiety in intergroup interactions are considered.

Racial attitudes and visual cues in political judgments: support for Obama during the 2008 presidential election.

The present longitudinal study examined the complex role of race-including racial attitudes and visual representations of race-in White Americans' responses to Obama during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Consistent with prior research, participants who perceived Obama as darker skinned were less likely to vote for him and generally evaluated Obama less positively. It is important to note, however, that these effects were stronger among Whites with more egalitarian expressed racial attitudes. Moreover, this pattern occurred over and above effects of political orientation and remained stable over a 2-month period, including pre- and postelection. Implications of these findings for understanding the complex and persistent influence of race in politics are considered.

The fragility of intergroup relations: divergent effects of delayed audiovisual feedback in intergroup and intragroup interaction.

Intergroup interactions between racial or ethnic majority and minority groups are often stressful for members of both groups; however, the dynamic processes that promote or alleviate tension in intergroup interaction remain poorly understood. Here we identify a behavioral mechanism-response delay-that can uniquely contribute to anxiety and promote disengagement from intergroup contact. Minimally acquainted White, Black, and Latino participants engaged in intergroup or intragroup dyadic conversation either in real time or with a subtle temporal disruption (1-s delay) in audiovisual feedback. Whereas intergroup dyads reported greater anxiety and less interest in contact after engaging in delayed conversation than after engaging in real-time conversation, intragroup dyads reported less anxiety in the delay condition than they did after interacting in real time. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for understanding intergroup communication and social dynamics and for promoting positive intergroup contact.

Racial prejudice, intergroup hate, and blatant and subtle bias of whites toward blacks in legal decision making in the United States

Este estudio examina la naturaleza multidimensional del odio intergrupal y el papel potencialdel odio y del prejuicio, en las expresiones del tratamiento que los estadounidensesblancos dan a los negros dentro del contexto del sistema legal estadounidense. Participantesblancos leyeron un informe acerca de un asalto violento, provocado o no provocado,y perpetrado por un asaltante negro a una víctima blanca. Se evaluaron lasreacciones emocionales y las recomendaciones de castigo (la sentencia a dictar y el apoyoa la pena de muerte). Se encontró apoyo para el modelo doble de odio propuesto porSternberg (2003), según el cual el odio explícito (autoinformado) refleja componentesdiferenciados de negación de la intimidad (por ejemplo, asco y rechazo), pasión (enfadoy miedo) y devaluación/compromiso (por ejemplo, atribuciones de maldad y falta dehumanidad). A su vez, estos componentes actuaban de forma diferente como mediadoresde la punitividad hacia el asaltante. Los resultados pusieron también de manifiesto que,aunque el efecto directo del prejuicio sobre la retribución estaba mediado por el odioautoinformado, tenían lugar otros efectos más sutiles e indirectos, independientemente delodio o de sus componentes afectivos. Se analizan las implicaciones teóricas y prácticasde estos resultados para la toma sesgada de decisiones en los contextos legales(AU)

The present study examined the multidimensional nature of intergroup hate and the potentialroles of hate and prejudice in expressions of White Americans’ treatment of Blacks withinthe context of the U.S. legal system. White participants in the U.S. read about a provokedor unprovoked violent assault perpetrated by a Black assailant on a White victim. Emotionalreactions and recommendations for punishment (prescribed sentencing and support forthe death penalty) were assessed. Supportive of Sternberg’s (2003) duplex model of hate,we found that explicit (self-reported) hate reflected separate components of negation ofintimacy (e.g., disgust and repulsion), passion (anger and fear), and devaluation/commitment(e.g., attributions of evil and inhuman); these components, in turn, differentially mediatedpunitiveness toward the assailant. The results also revealed that although the direct effectof prejudice on retribution was mediated by self-reported hate, more subtle and indirecteffects occurred independently of hate or its affective components. Practical and theoreticalimplications of these findings for biased decision making in legal contexts are considered(AU)

Perspective and prejudice: antecedents and mediating mechanisms.

The present work investigated mechanisms by which Whites' prejudice toward Blacks can be reduced (Study 1) and explored how creating a common ingroup identity can reduce prejudice by promoting these processes (Study 2). In Study 1, White participants who viewed a videotape depicting examples of racial discrimination and who imagined the victim's feelings showed greater decreases in prejudice toward Blacks than did those in the objective and no instruction conditions. Among the potential mediating affective and cognitive variables examined, reductions in prejudice were mediated primarily by feelings associated with perceived injustice. In Study 2, an intervention designed to increase perceptions of a common group identity before viewing the videotape, reading that a terrorist threat was directed at all Americans versus directed just at White Americans, also reduced prejudice toward Blacks through increases in feelings of injustice.