The Moral Obligation of Climate Change Across the Six Americas
Rose LeFevre-Levy & Christie Manning
Macalester College, St. Paul, MN
Introduction
• Despite widespread alarm over climate change in
the scientific community, the public remains less
concerned (Leiserowitz, Maibach, Roser-Renouf,
Feinberg & Howe, 2013).
• Construal Level Theory (CLT), a theory of
psychological distance (Spence, Poortinga &
Pidgeon, 2012) suggests that less psychological
distance from climate change is associated with
less concern and vice versa.
• Among groups defined by attitudes and beliefs
towards global warming (Six Americas groups:
Alarmed, Concerned, Cautious, Disengaged,
Doubtful, and Dismissive; Leiserowitz et al.,
2013), those that are more concerned are more
politically liberal (Hamilton, 2009). This could be
due to differences in core moral beliefs
(Markowitz & Shariff, 2012), as liberals focus on
fairness/justice, and not causing harm, while
conservatives focus on ingroup status, hierarchy
and purity (Haidt & Graham, 2006).
• Furthermore, moral obligation to act in a
situation increases when current actions are
framed as causing a burden to, rather than
benefiting, future generations (Markowitz &
Shariff, 2012).
Hypotheses
•
•
Concern over climate change will vary according
to the moral focus of questions: Individuals in
the Alarmed and Concerned groups will express
more concern over climate change when it is
framed in terms of fairness/justice and harm,
while those in the Dismissive and Doubtful
groups will express more concern when it is
framed in terms of ingroup status and purity.
The most effective ways of eliciting concern for
environmental issues is to frame them in terms
of imposing a burden or reducing a benefit
rather than framing them in terms of imposing a
benefit and reducing a burden.
Method
Participants: 150 participants from the United States were surveyed
using Qualtrics through Amazon Turk.
The present study consisted of two parts which were administered
as part of a larger survey. The entire survey took 15 to 20 minutes to
complete.
Discussion
• Although the results do not support our
original hypotheses, they do support a more
general pattern we would expect to see in
the Six Americas.
• As one would expect, results showed low
rating concerns in the Doubtful and
Dismissive groups and increasing concern as
you move along the Six Americas towards
the Concerned and Alarmed groups.
Participants were initially given a question to self-identify which
Six Americas grouping they belonged to .
Part 1: Part one was a within subject quasi-experimental design.
Participants rated their concern for environmental issues framed
around different moral concerns (Fairness/jusctice, harm, ingroup
or purity). Two questions were used for each of these four moral
concerns for a total of eight items.
Part 2: A with subjects design was carried out in which
environmental issues were framed in terms of 1) benefit or
burden and 2) in terms of reducing or imposing that benefit or
burden. Participants then indicated on a likert scale how morally
obligated they felt to act in response to each environmental issue.
This sections consisted of five items.
Results
Part 1: Significant differences in moral concern across Six
Americas for all four types of moral framing, with the Alarmed
showing the most concern and the Dismissive showing the least.
Part 2: Significant differences in feelings of moral obligation was
found across the Six Americas. No significance was found for
either the benefit versus burden or imposing or reducing
manipulations. However, benefit versus burden approached
significance.
References
Akerlof, K., Maibach, E. W., Fitzgerald, D., Cedeno, A. Y., & Neuman, A. (2013). Do people ''personally experience'' global warming, and if
so how, and does it matter?. Global Environmental Change, 23, 1, 81-91.
Gattig, A., & Hendrickx, L. (2007). Judgmental discounting and environmental risk perception: dimensional similarities, domain
differences, and implications for sustainability. Journal of Social Issues, 63, 1, 21-39.
Haidt, J., & Grahm, J. (2006). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social
Justice Research. http://cbdr.cmu.edu/seminar/Haidt.pdf
Hamilton, L.C. (2009). Education, politics and opinion about climate change evidence for interactions effects. Climate Change. Vol_
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~lch/Hamilton_climate_interaction.pdf
Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Roser-Renouf, C., Feinberg, G., Rosenthal, S., & Marlon, J. (2014)
Climate change in the American mind: Americans’ global warming beliefs and attitudes in November, 2013. Yale
University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Project on Climate Change
Communication.
Markowitz, E.M., & Shariff, A.F. (2012). Climate change and moral judgment. Nature Climate Change, 2, 243-247. Doi:
10.1038/NCLIMATE1378
Milfront, T.L. (year).Global warming, climate change, and human psychology. Psychological approaches to sustainability: Current trends in
theory, research and practice. (Eds.) Corral-Verdugo, V., Garcia-Cadena, C. H., & Frias-Armenta, M.
Trope, Y., Liberman, N., & Wakslak, C. (2007). Construal Levels and Psychological Distance: Effects on Representation, Prediction,
Evaluation, and Behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 17, 2, 83-95.
Spence, A., Poortinga, W., & Pidgeon, N. (2012). The Psychological Distance of Climate Change. Risk Analysis, 32, 6, 957-972.
Wade-Benzoni, K.A., Sondak, H. & Galinsky, A.D. (2010). Leaving a Legacy: Intergenerational Allocations of Benefits and Burdens. Business
Ethics Quarterly, 20, 1.
Weber, E.U. (2006). Experience-based and description-based perceptions of long-term risk: why global warming does not scare us (yet).
.
Climatic Change,77, 103-120