Emotional reactions to climate change predict climate-friendly outcomes in 63 countries

As the predicted impacts of climate change on nature and society worsen, it is essential to not only understand how to communicate climate risks but also how communicating them affects people’s climate-relevant emotions, scientific beliefs, political attitudes, and behavior around the world. Here, we conducted a preregistered secondary analysis of the “negative emotional induction” condition of the International Climate Psychology Collaboration (Doell, Todorova, Vlasceanu, et al., 2024). Participants (N = 5167) from 63 countries reported eight emotional reactions–anger, anxiety, depression, fear, guilt, helplessness, hope, indifference–to climate change before and after receiving an emotionally salient, negatively valenced, text about the impacts of climate change. Participants’ belief in climate change, support for nine climate mitigation policies, willingness to share a climate post on social media, and online climate-friendly behavior were assessed. We found that anger, anxiety, depression, fear, and guilt increased post-intervention, and an aggregate score of these negative emotions in turn predicted an increase in all climate-friendly outcomes across all countries. Conversely, optimistic indifference–hope and indifference–decreased and predicted a decrease in climate beliefs and behavior. This negative effect on climate-friendly outcomes was primarily predicted by feeling indifferent to climate change, rather than helpless. Together, these results show that the interplay between multiple emotional reactions to climate change is an important predictor of climate-friendly outcomes across 63 countries, and that climate communications should focus on reducing indifference to the climate crisis.