Menschen, die höhere Temperaturen als üblich erleben, glauben weniger an Verschwörungstheorien zum Klimawandel. Besonders stark war dieser Effekt bei Menschen in den USA. Wenn die Menschen das Gefühl hatten, der Klimawandel betreffe sie direkt, lehnten sie die Vorstellung, es handele sich um einen Schwindel, eher ab.

I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272494424001828

From the linked article:

As global temperatures continue to rise, so too does the urgency of understanding how people form their beliefs about climate change. A recent study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology explores a link between personal experiences of temperature anomalies and the likelihood of believing in climate change conspiracy theories. The findings indicate that people who experience hotter-than-usual temperatures are less likely to believe in climate change conspiracy theories.

The study involved 1,003 adults from the United States and 1,000 adults from mainland China. Participants were surveyed twice: first in late August and early September 2022, after experiencing the summer, and again in early January 2023, following the winter season. This timing enabled the researchers to capture the participants’ experiences of temperature anomalies during two distinct seasons.

The researchers found that participants who perceived their summer as being hotter than usual were less likely to believe in climate change conspiracy theories, both at the time of the survey and several months later. This suggests that when people experience weather anomalies firsthand, they may become more skeptical of the idea that climate change is a hoax. This effect was particularly strong among participants in the United States.

The researchers also explored how psychological distance—the perceived proximity of climate change—played a role in shaping beliefs. They found that participants who felt that climate change was closer to them geographically, socially, or temporally (in the near future) were less likely to believe in climate change conspiracy theories.

This perception of proximity appeared to mediate the relationship between experiencing a hotter summer and reduced belief in conspiracy theories. In other words, when people felt that climate change was directly affecting them, they were more likely to reject the idea that it was a hoax.

I wonder if southerners or those in hotter parts of the world are more prone to deny climate change. Generally speaking, it’s just hot down here. If it is marginally hotter than normal, such is life. I could see how any explanation which resolves to culpability may fall on more deaf ears when the alternative explanation is simply “that’s living in the South.”

Hard to believe that experiencing a thing makes that thing easier to believe – I hope someone funds a study into this!

I’m having trouble parsing the paper because I’m not accustomed to wordy psychology literature and I don’t understand the way they’ve presented the data in tables and multiple models and not just used graphs, also it’s 22:45

Was the effect they observed meaningfully large (i.e the psych equivalent of clinically significant)?

Were there any subgroup analyses to see if there are particular demographic features that exhibit more/less likelihood of accepting climate change?

What were the actual numbers of people who believed climate change to be a hoax at the first time point?