The impact of place and legacy framing on climate action: A lifespan approach.

Despite several decades of research on more effectively communicating climate change to the general public, there is only limited knowledge about how older adults engage with an issue that will shape and define future generations. We focus on two key factors that may motivate younger and older adults to engage in climate change action, legacy concern and place attachment, and assess whether older adults differ in any appreciable way from the general population in this domain. We randomly exposed participants of different ages to either a Legacy, Place, or control writing induction task before they completed various self-report measures. Both induction conditions were associated with significantly greater pro-environmental behavioral intentions and donations for all age groups when compared to the control condition. Legacy motivation and biophilia were used as manipulation checks and found to partially mediate these effects. Findings suggest that legacy and place message framing may be useful in prompting adults of all ages to take action to help combat climate change.

Racial Disparity in the Clinical Risk Assessment.

Implicit bias has been shown to impact care in many medical specialties. However, few studies examine its impact on psychiatry. Psychiatrists, especially in the Emergency Room, must assess patients' level of dangerousness when determining an appropriate disposition. For a variety of reasons, clinical understanding of dangerousness may be highly vulnerable to implicit bias. This study aims to determine if there is implicit bias in a psychiatric emergency room setting when determining disposition. Patients were included if their race was recorded as White or Black and if their disposition was either admitted to the inpatient psychiatric unit or discharged to the community (N = 743). Analyses were performed to evaluate associations between race, age, gender and disposition. No statistically significant difference in admission rates between races was found. While this could indicate genuine racial parity, there are many factors that may have masked racial disparity and could warrant further study.

Communicating uncertainty about facts, numbers and science.

Uncertainty is an inherent part of knowledge, and yet in an era of contested expertise, many shy away from openly communicating their uncertainty about what they know, fearful of their audience's reaction. But what effect does communication of such epistemic uncertainty have? Empirical research is widely scattered across many disciplines. This interdisciplinary review structures and summarizes current practice and research across domains, combining a statistical and psychological perspective. This informs a framework for uncertainty communication in which we identify three objects of uncertainty-facts, numbers and science-and two levels of uncertainty: direct and indirect. An examination of current practices provides a scale of nine expressions of direct uncertainty. We discuss attempts to codify indirect uncertainty in terms of quality of the underlying evidence. We review the limited literature about the effects of communicating epistemic uncertainty on cognition, affect, trust and decision-making. While there is some evidence that communicating epistemic uncertainty does not necessarily affect audiences negatively, impact can vary between individuals and communication formats. Case studies in economic statistics and climate change illustrate our framework in action. We conclude with advice to guide both communicators and future researchers in this important but so far rather neglected field.

The influence of anticipated pride and guilt on pro-environmental decision making.

The present research explores the relationship between anticipated emotions and pro-environmental decision making comparing two differently valenced emotions: anticipated pride and guilt. In an experimental design, we examined the causal effects of anticipated pride versus guilt on pro-environmental decision making and behavioral intentions by making anticipated emotions (i.e. pride and guilt) salient just prior to asking participants to make a series of environmental decisions. We find evidence that anticipating one's positive future emotional state from green action just prior to making an environmental decision leads to higher pro-environmental behavioral intentions compared to anticipating one's negative emotional state from inaction. This finding suggests a rethinking in the domain of environmental and climate change messaging, which has traditionally favored inducing negative emotions such as guilt to promote pro-environmental action. Furthermore, exploratory results comparing anticipated pride and guilt inductions to baseline behavior point toward a reactance eliciting effect of anticipated guilt.

How will I be remembered? Conserving the environment for the sake of one's legacy.

Long time horizons and social distance are viewed as key psychological barriers to proenvironmental action, particularly regarding climate change. We suggest that these challenges can be turned into opportunities by making salient long-term goals and motives, thus shifting preferences between the present self and future others. We tested whether individuals' motivation to leave a positive legacy can be leveraged to increase engagement with climate change and other environmental problems. In a pilot study, we found that individual differences in legacy motivation were positively associated with proenvironmental behaviors and intentions. In a subsequent experiment, we demonstrated that priming legacy motives increased donations to an environmental charity, proenvironmental intentions, and climate-change beliefs. Domain-general legacy motives represent a previously understudied and powerful mechanism for promoting proenvironmental behavior.

Sound credit scores and financial decisions despite cognitive aging.

Age-related deterioration in cognitive ability may compromise the ability of older adults to make major financial decisions. We explore whether knowledge and expertise accumulated from past decisions can offset cognitive decline to maintain decision quality over the life span. Using a unique dataset that combines measures of cognitive ability (fluid intelligence) and of general and domain-specific knowledge (crystallized intelligence), credit report data, and other measures of decision quality, we show that domain-specific knowledge and expertise provide an alternative route for sound financial decisions. That is, cognitive aging does not spell doom for financial decision-making in domains where the decision maker has developed expertise. These results have important implications for public policy and for the design of effective interventions and decision aids.

Local warming: daily temperature change influences belief in global warming.

Although people are quite aware of global warming, their beliefs about it may be malleable; specifically, their beliefs may be constructed in response to questions about global warming. Beliefs may reflect irrelevant but salient information, such as the current day's temperature. This replacement of a more complex, less easily accessed judgment with a simple, more accessible one is known as attribute substitution. In three studies, we asked residents of the United States and Australia to report their opinions about global warming and whether the temperature on the day of the study was warmer or cooler than usual. Respondents who thought that day was warmer than usual believed more in and had greater concern about global warming than did respondents who thought that day was colder than usual. They also donated more money to a global-warming charity if they thought that day seemed warmer than usual. We used instrumental variable regression to rule out some alternative explanations.