Investigating Connections between Need for Cognitive Closure and Climate Change Concern in College Students
1
Department of Communication, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA
2
Department of Counseling and Human Services, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA
3
Department of Geography, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17(15), 5619; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17155619
Received: 23 June 2020 / Revised: 27 July 2020 / Accepted: 29 July 2020 / Published: 4 August 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Psychological Impacts of Global Climate Change)
Understanding how people’s worldviews and individual personality differences affect their thinking about anthropogenic climate change is critical to communication efforts regarding this issue. This study surveyed University of Georgia students to investigate the role that need for cognitive closure plays in level of climate change worry. The relationship between these two was found to involve suppression—a subset of mediation—by the social dimension of political conservatism. Political conservatism was also found to play a mediating role in the relationship between need for cognitive closure and support for governmental and personal climate solutions. However, social conservatism played this mediator role in women, and functioned as a suppressor for men. These findings help inform audience segmentation and creation of climate-related messages based on audience worldview and personality.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
climate change; psychology; communication; need for cognitive closure
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
- Supplementary File 1:
PDF-Document (PDF, 175 KB)
MDPI and ACS Style
Orr, M.; Stewart, A.; Grundstein, A. Investigating Connections between Need for Cognitive Closure and Climate Change Concern in College Students. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 5619.
Show more citation formats
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
Search more from Scilit
