Diversity Science Meets Sustainability Science

Sustainability challenges like climate change are often characterized as collective action problems, however, beyond partisan influences, we know little about how group dynamics impact how people think about these issues. Work in our lab is currently exploring how social identities, inequalities, and intergroup biases shape how people perceive and respond to environmental problems.

Race and income in the US predict exposure to a wide range of environmental hazards linked to persistent health disparities; yet, low-income communities and many communities of color remain underrepresented in environmental sciences, advocacy organizations, federal agencies, and other key decision-making bodies. With collaborators at Cornell and the Environmental Defense Fund, we are currently exploring psychological factors that may contribute to these disparities, such as pervasive racial, ethnic, and class stereotypes that may fuel misperceptions of who is concerned about the environment and may lead organizations to overlook minority and low-income groups in their advocacy, outreach, and policymaking (see here, here, and here).

Additional studies in our lab have documented differences in how advantaged and disadvantaged groups construe environmental issues, their root causes, and solutions. In qualitative and quantitative studies, we have found that economically disadvantaged communities in the United States conceptualize environmental issues more broadly than members of advantaged groups and are more likely to view social and societal factors that fuel vulnerability, such as racism, poverty, and access to health care, as “environmental” issues (for field work with our collaborators, see here).

In work with collaborators at the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, we have explored implications of these divergent perceptions for the U.S. political divide. Aggregating over a decade of nationally representative survey data, we have found that political polarization around climate change is weaker among low-income communities and communities of color, who are more likely to view climate change as a threat to themselves and their communities (e.g., Ballew et al., 2020; Ballew et al., 2021, Pearson et al., 2021; Schuldt & Pearson, 2016; Pearson et al., 2017).

Additional studies are exploring how cultural factors may influence how different groups respond to climate change and its impacts. We found have found that familism – a cultural value reflecting a strong commitment to and prioritization of the family – and concerns about cross-generational harm within the family (e.g., to children and grandchildren) are substantially more predictive of U.S Latinos’ climate beliefs and policy support than factors like one’s political affiliation, income, age, or education level (Pearson et al., 2021).

Social Climate Science

As each new round of climate negotiations illustrates, how people perceive and engage with the issue of climate change is powerfully shaped by how others – including ingroups and outgroups – respond to the issue. Research in our lab is currently exploring how group memberships, political polarization, social class, and inequality influence how people respond to climate change, and organizations working to address it.

Climate change remains surprisingly understudied within psychology. An analysis of over 9,000 articles published between 2005 and 2014 in 7 top-tier psychology journals revealed that only 1% of articles mentioned “climate change” or “global warming,” even anecdotally. For instance, current theories of intergroup relations are often silent in addressing how and when group identities and group hierarchies extend beyond national borders and beyond our own species.

We have developed a conceptual framework for understanding how both individual (e.g., cognitive biases) and group-level (intra- and inter-group) processes shape how people perceive and respond to climate change which is guiding new empirical work in this area (Pearson et al., 2016).

Current studies are exploring optimal ways to inform people about the disproportionate risks climate change poses to some populations (see Pearson et al., 2023; Schuldt & Pearson, 2023). Social psychological research suggests that simply conveying statistics about extreme social disparities (e.g., racial disparities in incarceration rates in the United States) can paradoxically fuel support for policies that exacerbate those disparities by reinforcing stereotypes. We are currently exploring whether conveying certain environmental inequities (e.g., via repeated or chronic exposures) may have similar unintended social psychological effects, such as reinforcing a belief that hardship “hardens” people to emotional and physical suffering (i.e., a “thick skin bias” in judgments of vulnerability; Cheek & Shafir, 2020), leaving impacted communities in less need of financial support or social services.

For our perspective on what’s “social” about the problem of climate change, see our article, “Social Climate Science,” introductions to the Special Issues, “Climate Change and Intergroup Relations,” and, “Behavioural Climate Policy,” and our recent article in American Psychologist, “Climate Change and Health Equity“.