Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries.

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions' effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior-several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people's initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors.

Climate Concern and Engagement: Large Face-to-Face and Online Polls by the Dutch non-profit Milieudefensie.

Climate change mitigation depends on tracking public opinion across populations. Social scientists can collaborate with environmental organizations that conduct surveys among their audiences. We teamed up with the non-profit Milieudefensie, who surveyed Dutch attitudes towards climate change in 2019-2020. The large dataset had face-to-face (n = 3,102) and online interviews (n = 30,311) of urbanity, climate concern, policy preferences, interviewer-rated engagement with climate change, and behavior (whether the interviewee provided their email and phone number to the organization). To reveal the representativeness of these kinds of convenience samples, we tested whether attitudes and their associations with behaviors were similar to previous studies. Climate concern, preference for climate policy, and interviewer-rated engagement were high. In the online survey, 47% of respondents signed up for an email newsletter, and 7% provided their phone number. Higher climate concern and preference for climate policy predicted interviewer-rated engagement and behavior (weak to strong associations). Urbanity was not related to concern, policy preferences, or interviewer-rated engagement. Policy preferences did not differ between the face-to-face and online samples. The results provide convergent evidence to conventional online surveys. These Dutch residents appear slightly more engaged with systemic change to mitigate climate change than the general public.

Climate Concern and Engagement: Large Face-to-Face and Online Polls by the Dutch non-profit Milieudefensie

Climate change mitigation depends on tracking public opinion across populations. Social scientists can collaborate with environmental organizations that conduct surveys among their audiences. We teamed up with the non-profit Milieudefensie, who surveyed Dutch attitudes towards climate change in 2019–2020. The large dataset had face-to-face (n = 3,102) and online interviews (n = 30,311) of urbanity, climate concern, policy preferences, interviewer-rated engagement with climate change, and behavior (whether the interviewee provided their email and phone number to the organization). To reveal the representativeness of these kinds of convenience samples, we tested whether attitudes and their associations with behaviors were similar to previous studies. Climate concern, preference for climate policy, and interviewer-rated engagement were high. In the online survey, 47% of respondents signed up for an email newsletter, and 7% provided their phone number. Higher climate concern and preference for climate policy predicted interviewer-rated engagement and behavior (weak to strong associations). Urbanity was not related to concern, policy preferences, or interviewer-rated engagement. Policy preferences did not differ between the face-to-face and online samples. The results provide convergent evidence to conventional online surveys. These Dutch residents appear slightly more engaged with systemic change to mitigate climate change than the general public. (AU)

Discovering the psychological building blocks underlying climate action-a longitudinal study of real-world activism.

We are in a climate emergency. Because governments are reacting too slowly, grassroots collective action is key. Understanding the psychological factors underpinning engagement can facilitate the growth of such collective action. Yet, previous research in psychology rarely provided causal evidence for which factors trigger action, lacked focus on the climate crisis, was mostly self-reported behaviour or intentions rather than objective measures, and was mostly cross-sectional rather than longitudinal. Here we conducted a longitudinal study on the effectiveness of a 12-week video intervention designed to increase psychological predictors of collective action. The intervention boosted affective engagement, collective efficacy, and self-efficacy, but did not increase observed attendance of activism events. Interviews suggested that Zoom fatigue and the online study design undercut the social interaction participants wanted in order to join events. However, a smaller in-person replication did not increase activism either. Debriefings suggested that the replication participants were primarily motivated by payment and lacked time or resources for more engagement. These results highlight the crucial importance of going beyond measures of self-reported attitudes or intentions to objectively measuring activism behaviours and showing the difficulty of fostering event attendance.

To strike or not to strike? an investigation of the determinants of strike participation at the Fridays for Future climate strikes in Switzerland.

The Fridays for Future strikes involve students striking for increased action on climate change, and this movement has spread to 185 countries and received widespread media attention. This exploratory study investigates motives for participating or not in the climate strikes and future participation among students in Switzerland. In a sample of N = 638 university students, we found that trust in climate scientists, low trust in governments, response efficacy, protest enjoyment and the perceived success of the strikes predicted participation. Contrary to statements in the public media but consistent with the literature, students who participated in the climate strikes reported consuming less meat, flying less and taking more steps to compensate the CO2 emissions from flights compared to students who did not participate. We discuss how the insights from this study help reveal the determinants of youth collective action on climate change.

A solution scan of societal options to reduce transmission and spread of respiratory viruses: SARS-CoV-2 as a case study.

Societal biosecurity - measures built into everyday society to minimize risks from pests and diseases - is an important aspect of managing epidemics and pandemics. We aimed to identify societal options for reducing the transmission and spread of respiratory viruses. We used SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) as a case study to meet the immediate need to manage the COVID-19 pandemic and eventually transition to more normal societal conditions, and to catalog options for managing similar pandemics in the future. We used a 'solution scanning' approach. We read the literature; consulted psychology, public health, medical, and solution scanning experts; crowd-sourced options using social media; and collated comments on a preprint. Here, we present a list of 519 possible measures to reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission and spread. We provide a long list of options for policymakers and businesses to consider when designing biosecurity plans to combat SARS-CoV-2 and similar pathogens in the future. We also developed an online application to help with this process. We encourage testing of actions, documentation of outcomes, revisions to the current list, and the addition of further options.

Motivation and climate change: A review.

This paper reviews motivations people experience about climate change and integrates recent findings into the BUCkET model of core social goals. We argue that environmentalism is not the main cause of thoughts or behaviors about climate change. Rather, the evolved social needs for Belongingness, Understanding, Control, self-Enhancement, and Trust are more practical intervention targets than the attempt to create environmentalist beliefs or identities. We used database searches to identify the key research areas on motivation and climate change and synthesized articles into the BUCkET model. This reveals some limiting assumptions of previous approaches and suggests the effectiveness of targeting existing motives rather than fostering new values or worldviews.

Green when seen? No support for an effect of observability on environmental conservation in the laboratory: a registered report.

Understanding how humans navigate the tension between selfish and prosocial behaviour is central to addressing social dilemmas and several environmental issues. Many accounts predict that human prosociality would increase in the presence of observing individuals. Previous studies on this observability effect predominantly relied on artificial observability manipulations and low-cost measures of prosociality. In the present Registered Report, we used a recently validated laboratory procedure of repeated dilemmas to test whether the presence of actual observers affects costly prosocial behaviour in the domain of environmental conservation. When completing this dilemma task, participants repeatedly chose between minimizing the length of the laboratory session and minimising wasted energy from a bank of LED lights. Their choices were made either in private or in the presence of actual observers. Contrary to our expectation, we did not observe higher rates of energy-conserving behaviour when participants' choices were being observed. Manipulation and robustness checks indicate that this lack of a finding is unlikely to be owing to arbitrary methodological choices. In view of these findings, we argue that a more comprehensive analysis of situation- and behaviour-specific consequences might be necessary to predict how particular behaviours are affected by observability.

Risk communication in tables versus text: a registered report randomized trial on 'fact boxes'.

OBJECTIVES: identifying effective summary formats is fundamental to multiple fields including science communication, systematic reviews, evidence-based policy and medical decision-making. This study tested whether table or text-only formats lead to better comprehension of the potential harms and benefits of different options, here in a medical context. DESIGN: pre-registered, longitudinal experiment: between-subjects factorial 2 (message format) × 2 topic (therapeutic or preventative intervention) on comprehension and later recall (CONSORT-SPI 2018). SETTING: longitudinal online survey experiment. PARTICIPANTS: 2305 census-matched UK residents recruited through the survey panel firm YouGov. PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURE: comprehension of harms and benefits and knowledge recall after six weeks. RESULTS: fact boxes-simple tabular messages-led to more comprehension (d = 0.39) and slightly more knowledge recall after six weeks (d = 0.12) compared to the same information in text. These patterns of results were consistent between the two medical topics and across all levels of objective numeracy and education. Fact boxes were rated as more engaging than text, and there were no differences between formats in treatment decisions, feeling informed or trust. CONCLUSIONS: the brief table format of the fact box improved the comprehension of harms and benefits relative to the text-only control. Effective communication supports informed consent and decision-making and brings ethical and practical advantages. Fact boxes and other summary formats may be effective in a wide range of communication contexts.

Socioeconomic Status Moderates the Effects of Health Cognitions on Health Behaviors within Participants: Two Multibehavior Studies.

BACKGROUND: Socioeconomic differences in health-related behaviors are a major cause of health inequalities. However, the mechanisms (mediation/moderation) by which socioeconomic status (SES) affects health behavior are a topic of ongoing debate. PURPOSE: Current research on SES as moderator of the health cognitions-health behavior relation is inconsistent. Previous studies are limited by diverse operationalizations of SES and health behaviors, demographically narrow samples, and between-person designs addressing within-person processes. This paper presents two studies addressing these shortcomings in a within-person multibehavior framework using hierarchical linear models. METHODS: Two online studies, one cross-sectional and one 4 week longitudinal, assessed 1,005 (Study 1; Amazon MTurk; USA only) and 1,273 participants (Study 2; Prolific; international). Self-reports of multiple SES indicators (education, income, occupation status; ZIP code in Study 1), health cognitions (from the theory of planned behavior), and measures of six health behaviors were taken. Multilevel models with cross-level interactions tested whether the within-person relationships between health cognitions and behaviors differed by between-person SES. RESULTS: Education significantly moderated intention-behavior and attitude-behavior relationships in both studies, with more educated individuals showing stronger positive relationships. In addition, ZIP-level SES (Study 1) moderated attitude-behavior effects such that these relationships were stronger in participants living in areas with higher SES. CONCLUSIONS: Education appears to be an important resource for the translation of intentions and attitudes into behavior. Other SES indicators showed less consistent effects. This has implications for interventions aiming at increasing intentions to change health behaviors, as some interventions might inadvertently increase health inequalities.

Gender inequity in speaking opportunities at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.

Implicit and explicit biases impede the participation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematic (STEM) fields. Across career stages, attending conferences and presenting research are ways to spread scientific results, find job opportunities, and gain awards. Here, we present an analysis by gender of the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting speaking opportunities from 2014 to 2016. We find that women were invited and assigned oral presentations less often than men. However, when we control for career stage, we see similar rates between women and men and women sometimes outperform men. At the same time, women elect for poster presentations more than men. Male primary conveners allocate invited abstracts and oral presentations to women less often and below the proportion of women authors. These results highlight the need to provide equal opportunity to women in speaking roles at scientific conferences as part of the overall effort to advance women in STEM.

The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology through a Distributed Collaborative Network.

Concerns have been growing about the veracity of psychological research. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions, or attempt to replicate prior research, in large, diverse samples. The PSA's mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time-limited), efficient (in terms of re-using structures and principles for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in terms of participants and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside of the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance our understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematically examining its generalizability.

Impact of Cultural Exposure and Message Framing on Oral Health Behavior: Exploring the Role of Message Memory.

BACKGROUND: Health messages are more effective when framed to be congruent with recipient characteristics, and health practitioners can strategically choose message features to promote adherence to recommended behaviors. We present exposure to US culture as a moderator of the impact of gain-frame versus loss-frame messages. Since US culture emphasizes individualism and approach orientation, greater cultural exposure was expected to predict improved patient choices and memory for gain-framed messages, whereas individuals with less exposure to US culture would show these advantages for loss-framed messages. METHODS: 223 participants viewed a written oral health message in 1 of 3 randomized conditions-gain-frame, loss-frame, or no-message control-and were given 10 flosses. Cultural exposure was measured with the proportions of life spent and parents born in the US. At baseline and 1 week later, participants completed recall tests and reported recent flossing behavior. RESULTS: Message frame and cultural exposure interacted to predict improved patient decisions (increased flossing) and memory maintenance for the health message over 1 week; for example, those with low cultural exposure who saw a loss-frame message flossed more. Incongruent messages led to the same flossing rates as no message. Memory retention did not explain the effect of message congruency on flossing. LIMITATIONS: Flossing behavior was self-reported. Cultural exposure may only have practical application in either highly individualistic or collectivistic countries. CONCLUSIONS: In health care settings where patients are urged to follow a behavior, asking basic demographic questions could allow medical practitioners to intentionally communicate in terms of gains or losses to improve patient decision making and treatment adherence.

Message framing for health: moderation by perceived susceptibility and motivational orientation in a diverse sample of Americans.

OBJECTIVE: The present study examined how gain- and loss-framed informational videos about oral health influence self-reported flossing behavior over a 6-month period, as well as the roles of perceived susceptibility to oral health problems and approach/avoidance motivational orientation in moderating these effects. METHOD: An age and ethnically diverse sample of 855 American adults were randomized to receive no health message, or either a gain-framed or loss-framed video presented on the Internet. Self-reported flossing was assessed longitudinally at 2 and 6 months. RESULTS: Among the entire sample, susceptibility interacted with frame to predict flossing. Participants who watched a video where the frame (gain/loss) matched perceived susceptibility (low/high) had significantly greater likelihood of flossing at recommended levels at the 6-month follow-up, compared with those who viewed a mismatched video or no video at all. However, young adults (18-24) showed stronger moderation by motivational orientation than by perceived susceptibility, in line with previous work largely conducted with young adult samples. CONCLUSION: Brief informational interventions can influence long-term health behavior, particularly when the gain- or loss-frame of the information matches the recipient's beliefs about their health outcome risks.

Association between sleep hygiene and sleep quality in medical students.

The aim of this study was to determine whether subjective sleep quality was reduced in medical students, and whether demographics and sleep hygiene behaviors were associated with sleep quality. A Web-based survey was completed by 314 medical students, containing questions about demographics, sleep habits, exercise habits, caffeine, tobacco and alcohol use, and subjective sleep quality (using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index). Correlation and regression analyses tested for associations among demographics, sleep hygiene behaviors, and sleep quality. As hypothesized, medical students' sleep quality was significantly worse than a healthy adult normative sample (t = 5.13, p < .001). Poor sleep quality in medical students was predicted by several demographic and sleep hygiene variables, and future research directions are proposed.