Existential Threat as a Challenge for Individual and Collective Engagement: Climate Change and the Motivation to Act

The global climate crisis can be perceived as a threat to existential human needs like control, certainty, and personal existence. These threat appraisals elicit an affective state of individual anxiety – one of the strongest motivators of individual pro-environmental behavior and collective policies and activism. Direct action against a threat is associated with other affective approach-motivated states that help to overcome anxiety: Recent findings show collective emotions of anger, guilt, and ‘being moved’ increase collective engagement but also show a positive relationship between positive activation and individual behavior. Climate threat furthermore promotes palliative responses, such as ingroup defense, identification with nature, or salient common humanity. Here, collective responses seem to reduce anxiety, and when combined with pro-environmental norms, even promote pro-environmental action.