Carmen Lawrence

• The University of Western Australia

Research in social and cognitive sciences has used the construal-level theory (CLT) of psychological distance as a framework for understanding environmental challenges, such as climate change. This primer explains how psychological distance and construal level theory can help to understand responses to environmental challenges, from the perceptions...

Rationale: Childhood vaccination is a safe and effective way of reducing infectious diseases. Yet, public confidence in vaccination is waning, driven in part by the 'manufacture of doubt' by anti-vaccination activists and websites. However, there is little research examining the psychological underpinnings of anti-vaccination rhetoric among parent...

The public perception of climate change as abstract and distant may undermine climate action. According to construal level theory, whether a phenomenon is perceived as psychologically distant or close is associated with whether it is construed as abstract or concrete, respectively. Previous work has established a link between psychological distance...

Current research shows that emotions can motivate climate engagement and action, but precisely how has received scant attention. We propose that strong emotional responses to climate change result from perceiving one's "objects of care" as threatened by climate change, which motivates caring about climate change itself, and in turn predicts behavio...

What does it mean to feel close to climate change? We present two studies that focus specifically on people who feel close to climate change, the emotions they feel, compared to those who do not feel close. The notion of “feeling close” relates to psychological distance, a concept of growing importance to climate change research. Emotional intensit...

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ( UNFCCC ) is seeking to prepare for losses arising from climate change. This is an emerging issue that challenges climate science and policy to engage more deeply with values, places, and people's experiences. We first provide insight into the UNFCCC framing of loss and damage and current a...

WOMEN, SEXISM, AND POLITICS: DOES PSYCHOLOGY HELP?  When Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, there was, in some quarters at least, celebration that a woman had been accepted as qualified for the job; that we had no problems with a woman in the highest office in the country. Did we? We could say, could we not, that sexism was safel...

Childhood vaccination is widely considered to be one of the most successful public health interventions. Yet, the effective delivery of vaccination depends upon public willingness to vaccinate. Recently, many countries have faced problems with vaccine hesitancy, where a growing number of parents perceive vaccination to be unsafe or unnecessary, lea...

This study examined the relationships between place attachment, the theory of planned behaviour and place-protective action. Place attachment was higher in people who evaluated place change as negative. However, only half of the people who thought change would be negative reported protesting. The theory of planned behaviour was found to predict pro...

Previous research has shown that attitudes and behaviours can be filtered, enhanced or limited by those that we consider close to us, such as neighbors, who are spatially close, or friends, who are socially close. In Festinger's work, friendships have been shown to arise out of spatial proximity - those spatially close are likely to become socially...

Any investigation of public policy necessarily canvasses questions of what governments do, why they do it and what difference it makes. This means examining not only who and what influences government activity, but also who devises policies and on what evidence.It means asking how to collectively decide what problems are worth worrying about and wh...

Wildfires are a common occurrence in many countries and are predicted to increase as we experience the effects of climate change. As more people are expected to be affected by fires, it is important to increase people's wildfire mitigation and preparation. Place attachment has been theorized to be related to mitigation and preparation. The present...

Presentation: https://prezi.com/wjjrzvcpj1tx/sasp/ Disengagement with climate change has been attributed to public perception of the phenomenon as an abstract, distant one, and suggestions are that this may be remedied by making the issue more close and concrete. Whether a phenomenon is perceived as psychologically distant or close is thought to be...

This study explores the relationships between place of residence, living in a threatened place and the subsets of place attachment: place identity and place dependence. Six hundred participants living in south-west Western Australia in rural and urban areas with varying degrees of bushfire risk responded to surveys asking about their reasons for li...

The effects of the acoustic and structurai similarity of letters on the accuracy of report were studied using two partial report measures. Ss in Group 1 were required to compare two cued letter pairs on an eight-letter array, and to report whether they were the same or different (CJ), while Group 2, in addition to CJ, had also to report the names o...

This study, employing implicit and explicit measures, assessed dehumanization across three groups comprising undergraduate students aspiring to be: (1) clinical psychologists, (2) psychologists in other specialties, (3) working in non-psychology professions (NP: n = 25), with the aim of investigating whether would-be clinical psychology students we...

In the title of the fifth of his 2004 Reith Lectures, “Climate of fear,” Nigerian poet Wole Soyinka succinctly summarized the mind-set of the zealot: I am right; you are dead . Although such deadly dualism is rare in Australian political discourse, my two decades as an elected representative and my training in academic psychology have convinced me...

David Burchell and Andrew Leigh (eds), The Prince's New Clothes: Why Do Australians Dislike Their Politicians?, University of New South Wales Press, 2002, pp 191, pb $34.95. ISBN 086840604X.Don Watson, Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: a portrait of Paul Keating, Random House, 2002, hb $45.00. ISBN 0091835178.Warwick Anders, The Cultivation of Whi...

Much of the discussion about individual and group differences in illness and life expectancy has focused on the effects of individual characteristics, both status and behavioural. This is also characteristic of much of the literature, which attempts to explain why men have higher rates of disease and lower life expectancy than women. After a period...

Much of the discussion about individual and group differences in illness and life expectancy has focused on the effects of individual characteristics, both status and behavioural. This is also characteristic of much of the literature, which attempts to explain why men have higher rates of disease and lower life expectancy than women. After a period...

Of 2002 randomly selected pregnant women recruited prospectively over a three‐year period for an extensive questionnaire survey, a stratified subsample of 665 mothers was selected for mother‐infant follow‐up on the basis of pre‐pregnancy alcohol intake. Infant outcome was assessed by detailed clinical examination and application of a modified Einst...

It is not only bad people who are prejudiced, that would not have such a strong effect. Most people would not wish to imitate them – and so, such prejudices would not have much effect-except in exceptional times. It is the prejudices of good people that are so dangerous. Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy. London: Phoenix, 1993. Among the most universal a...