Kirsti M. Jylhä

Institute for Futures Studies

Climate change evokes different emotions in people. Recently, climate emotions have become a matter of normative scrutiny in the public debate. This phenomenon, which we refer to as the normativization of climate emotions, manifests at two levels. At the individual level, people are faced with affective dilemmas, situations where they are genuinely...

Science denial has adverse consequences at individual and societal levels and even for the future of our planet. The present article aimed to answer the question: What leads people to deny even the strongest evidence and distrust the scientific method? The article provides a narrative review of research on the underpinnings of science denial, with...

Climate-friendly food choices are still relatively rarely addressed in studies investigating climate engagement, particularly among young people. To address this research gap, we conducted a questionnaire study with senior high school students (N = 474). Our overarching theoretical framework is the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), which we extende...

Feygina and colleagues (2010, Study 3) reported that people who prefer the status quo can be encouraged towards pro-environmental responses when environmental protection is framed as protecting the current way of life. We report a preregistered close replication and extension of this work (N = 567). When all participants are made to feel dependent...

Earth is on a catastrophic trajectory towards severe ecological destruction, and yet, there is little sign of halting the rise of global greenhouse gas emissions or stopping the extraction of fossil fuels. Against this background, in this article we re-engage with a recently proposed typology supposed to cover three modes through which effective cl...

Throughout the literature, there are assertions that those endorsing conservative ideologies reject the science and solutions of climate change due to perceived threat. That is, they fear that accepting climate change means accepting problems with a favoured socioeconomic system and supporting action on climate change threatens to disrupt these sys...

Resilience is often presented as a championing solution for tackling the multi-level environmental, security, health, and financial threats facing the whole humanity or specific ecosystems, communities, institutions, or individuals. However, the popularity of the concept is not proof of its usefulness. Perhaps the greatest problem is that many of t...

Tidskrift för politisk filosofi, No 1, 2023, årgång 27 (s. 38 - 57): På senare tid har frågor väckts om hur man borde känna inför klimatförändringarna, en utveckling som kan kallas för normativiseringen av klimatkänslor. Denna artikel kombinerar normativa kriterier från filosofi och psykologi i syfte att undersöka de normativa övervägandena som är...

This chapter concludes 'Climate Obstruction. How Denial, Delay and Inaction are Heating the Planet' and summarises our main findings. Drawing on our conceptualisation of primary, secondary and tertiary climate obstruction as a three-layered, intertwined activity, we discuss the way denial, delay and inaction have limited our possibility to counter...

After decades of lobbying and disinformation campaigns, it is not surprising that climate change denial and opposition to climate mitigation exist among the public. However, people are not just passive receivers of information. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of climate obstruction requires knowledge of why individuals interpret climate me...

This chapter discusses how the contemporary far right, both political parties and non-party actors, engages with the issue of climate obstruction. After providing a definition of “the far right” and why this political spectrum needs to be considered too when trying to understand denial and delay today, the chapter discusses primary obstruction by v...

This chapter outlines the history of climate science and the different responses that this science, as well as the actors invoking this science, have met up until the late 1980s. It specifically focuses on the rise of the environment as a global political problem in the 1960s and 1970s and the countermovement of anti-environmentalism. It argues tha...

This chapter provides an overview of the historical legacies of vested interests for climate poli6tics since the late 1980s. We retrace both the funding and lobbying against the science proving climate change, and the proposed alternative policies, looking especially at the establishment of the climate change denial machine in the early 1990s. Orga...

In 'Climate Obstruction: How Denial, Delay and Inaction are Heating the Planet', Kristoffer Ekberg, Bernhard Forchtner, Martin Hultman and Kirsti Jylhä bring together crucial insights from environmental history, sociology, media and communication studies and psychology to help us understand why we are failing to take necessary measures to avert the...

Science denial has adverse consequences at individual and societal levels, and even for the future of our planet. The present article aimed to answer the question: What leads people to deny even the strongest evidence and distrust the scientific method? The article provides a narrative review of research on underpinnings of science denial, with the...

Climate anxiety is a phenomenon which raises growing attention. Based on a national survey of climate-related feelings and behaviors (N =2070) in Finland, we analyzed and discussed the concept of climate anxiety and its relationship with hope and action. We found that all our measures for climate anxiety (including worry and some stronger manifesta...

Considering the current political relevance of anti-immigration sentiments, we examined preference to avoid interacting with immigrants – conceptualized here as a manifestation of xenophobia – among radical (Sweden Democrats, Sverigedemokraterna, N = 2216) and mainstream (Conservative Party, Moderaterna, N = 634) right-wing voters in Sweden. Correl...

Tämä artikkeli tarkastelee nuorten kokemia ympäristötunteita ja niin kutsuttua ilmastoahdistuksen ilmiötä Nuorisobarometrin 2021 tuloksia peilaten. Tunteiden joukosta artikkelissa keskitytään erityisesti suruun, riittämättömyyteen ja mielihyvään. Ilmastoahdistuksesta keskustellaan sekä tuoreen kansainvälisen että suomalaisen tutkimuksen valossa. Er...

Tipping Point is an artistic research project conducted through mutual exchanges between art and science: "The exhibition produced by Rikstolvan features the performance/installation Tipping Point, which was supported by the FORMAS Foundation and it has been developed as a collaboration between Bigert & Bergström and researchers from the Institute...

The linkage between political right-wing orientation and climate change denial is extensively studied. However, previous research has almost exclusively focused on the mainstream right, which differs from the far right (radical and extreme) in some important domains. Thus, we investigated correlates of climate change denial among supporters of a ra...

Despite the importance of overcoming the persistent delay in climate action, almost no research has investigated the psychological underpinnings of climate change denial in Asian countries. Addressing this research gap, our study compares results obtained in Hong Kong with those of samples from New Zealand and Sweden regarding correlations of clima...

Tässä artikkelissa käsittelemme monipuolisesti lasten ilmastoahdistusta ja sen kohtaamiskeinoja. Kokoamme monitieteisen kirjoittajajoukon voimin yhteenvedon tutkitusta tiedosta ja teemme suosituksia ilmastokeskustelun kehittämiseksi ja lasten osallisuuden parantamiseksi. Keskitymme erityisesti ilmastoviestinnän, ympäristökasvatuksen ja psykologian...

Populist right‐wing politicians and voters tend to dismiss climate change. To investigate possible reasons for this, we tested correlations between climate change denial and variables linked to right‐wing populism (Study 1: N = 1,587; Study 2: N = 909). The strongest predictor of climate change denial was an index capturing exclusionary and anti‐eg...

As in many other European countries, the political system has undergone rapid changes in Sweden while a radical right‐wing party – The Sweden Democrats (SD) – has grown from a negligible position into one of the country's largest parties. SD has been winning voters from both the right and the left sides of the political spectrum, and particularly f...

Ethnonationalism and anti-immigration sentiments are increasingly influencing voting behavior in Western countries. This study investigated the role of xenophobia in explaining support for right-wing parties and whether xenophobia correlates with the same psychological variables among voters of a radical right-wing party (Sweden Democrats, Sveriged...

Europe has experienced major political changes over recent decades, with new political parties having emerged and become established in many countries. The same development has also been seen in Sweden, where the Sweden Democrats has rapidly grown from a once marginal position to become one of the country’s largest parliamentary parties. This repo...

Like in many other European countries, the political system has undergone rapid changes in Sweden as a radical right-wing party – The Sweden Democrats (SD) – has grown from a negligible position into one of the country’s largest parties. SD has been winning voters from both the right and the left sides of the political spectrum, and particularly fr...

Sverigedemokraterna har på kort tid blivit ett av Sveriges största riksdagspartier. Det är också ett av flera liknande partier som på senare tid har fått ett växande väljarstöd i Europa, och därför kunnat flytta fram sina positioner i respektive lands partisystem. Den här rapporten söker svar på en mängd olika frågor om Sverigedemokraternas väljar...

Ambivalent sexism is a two-dimensional framework that assesses sexist and misogynous attitudes. The current corpus of research on such attitudes suggest that they are predicted by numerous variables, including religious beliefs, ideological variables, and men's facial hair. Most studies, however, have treated such predictors as if they are independ...

Despite the extensive scientific evidence for human induced climate change, many still question or deny it. Previous research has shown that individuals who support right-wing populist parties tend to deny climate change to a higher degree than individuals supporting established parties. However, populism combines different views, and from the curr...

Despite the extensive supportive evidence for climate change, there still exists doubt and denial about the topic among the public. One reason for this is that misinformation about climate science is widespread in the society. It should be noted, however, that some individuals are more prone to denying climate change than others. As reviewed in thi...

To read and download my thesis online, follow this link: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-297879 Abstract: Climate change denial has been found to correlate with sociopolitical ideology. The general aim of the present thesis was to investigate this relation, and more specifically to 1) test the unique effects of intercorrelated ideo...

Political conservatives and males are more likely to deny human influence on climate change. In this paper we examine the role of social dominance orientation (SDO) in explaining this “conservative male effect” by testing whether SDO mediates the influence of both political conservatism and gender on anthropogenic climate change denial. We use cros...

This presentation evaluates the role of SDO on climate change denial.

In the chapter, I discuss the psychological mechanisms behind climate change denial, with a particular focus on conservative political ideology. To read this open access book and my chapter, follow the link: http://www.e-ir.info/2016/06/13/refusing-to-acknowledge-the-problem-of-climate-change-denial/ Thank you for reading!

Extending previous research, we examined whether the relation between social dominance orientation (SDO) and climate change denial reflects group-based dominance (SDO and nature dominance) or general system justification. Moreover, we examined whether the relation between personality (domineering and empathy) and denial is mediated by group-based d...

Examining the relation between ideological variables and climate change denial, we found social dominance orientation (SDO) to outperform right-wing authoritarianism and left–right political orientation in predicting denial (Study 1 and 2). In Study 2, where we experimentally altered the level of denial by a newscast communicating supporting eviden...