When the future looms bright, not dark: A positive vision of the futures increases collective action support through feelings of being moved

Making people aware of climate change often puts a spotlight on negative consequences that increase feelings of anxiety. While anxiety can motivate pro-environmental behavior, it can also lead to defensiveness, such as denial and avoidance. However, crises and negative life events also have the potential to elicit a state of “being moved” together with negative affective states. In a series of four experimental studies (total N = 819), we investigated the possibility that climate change salience can be experienced as aversive and moving, thereby making people feel anxious and overwhelmed, with different consequences for collective action support. In Study 1 (N = 353), providing participants with a video about negative consequences of climate change increased feelings of being moved (similar to a collective efficacy video) and anxiety (different from a collective efficacy video). This mixed affective state also emerged for other threats, such as terrorism, anti-democratic movements, and gender inequality (Study 2, N = 105). While emphasizing the negative consequences of climate change increased collective action support indirectly through heightened feelings of being moved, direct effects were still negative (Study 3, N = 213). However, imagining a positive vision of a sustainable future also elicited feelings of being moved, which in turn increased support of environmental action (Study 3 and 4, N = 148), but negative direct effects did not emerge. Thus, a positive future vision may help to channel the positive effects of being moved for environmental action and to avoid the downsides of climate threat salience.