Laura Mcguire

• PhD
• Lecturer in Psychology at Edge Hill University

Summary Background New global crises are emerging, while existing global crises remain unabated. Coping with climate change, the radioactive water released into the Pacific Ocean subsequent to the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East (hereafter referred to as the wars) as individual crises can negatively...

Climate change is an anthropogenic existential threat that provokes extreme concern among climate scientists, but not, it seems, among all member of the public. Here, there is considerably more variability in level of concern and, it appears, in everyday sustainable behavior. But how does personality affect this variability in behavior? And how are...

We tested whether selected film clips can be used to change implicit as well as explicit attitudes to carbon footprint to promote low carbon choice. We found that carbon choice could be influenced by film, with clips with a strong emotional content being particularly effective. There was also a significant change in both explicit and implicit attit...

What explains our attitudes towards the environment? Why do so many climate change initiatives fail? How can we do more to prevent humans damaging the environment? The Psychology of Climate Change explores the evidence for our changing environment, and suggests that there are significant cognitive biases in how we think about, and act on climate ch...

One major assumption in the climate change debate is that because respondents report positive attitudes to the environment and to low carbon lifestyles that they will subsequently engage in environmentally friendly/low carbon behaviours given the right guidance or information. Many governmental agencies have based their climate change strategy on t...

There is considerable concern that the public are not getting the message about climate change. One possible explanation is ‘optimism bias’, where individuals overestimate the likelihood of positive events happening to them and underestimate the likelihood of negative events. Evidence from behavioural neuroscience suggest that this bias is underpin...

Despite the widespread recognition of climate change as the single biggest global threat, the willingness of people to change their behavior to mitigate its effects is limited. Past research, often focusing on specific categories of behavior, has highlighted a very significant gap between people’s intentions to behave more sustainably and their act...

There is clear evidence that human beings have contributed to climate change through their patterns of consumption, and, it could be argued that, since we are part of the problem then we must be part of the solution. The apparently good news is that people report that they have very positive attitudes to environmentally-friendly products and they a...

The IPCC have identified a number of aspects of human activity that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and thereby affect climate change. These include such things as population size and patterns of land use that are difficult or impossible to change, especially in the short-term. However, they have also identified “lifestyle” as a major contri...

Consumers clearly have a role to play in the global fight against climate change, since even relatively small changes in patterns of household consumption could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But what evidence is there that consumers do consider the environmental impacts of products when shopping? Indeed, how psychologically salient...

Despite efforts to deal with the underrepresentation of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) staff in higher education, progress to date has been limited. We investigate the role of possible implicit attitudes towards ethnic diversity among staff and students at a leading British university. Ninety-six participants (48 White and 48 non-White) were prese...

This paper examines how measures of both explicit and implicit attitudes to the environment relate to unconscious patterns of eye movements towards or away from iconic images of environmental damage and climate change. It found that those with a strong positive implicit attitude towards low carbon products spent significantly more time attending to...

Previous research has claimed that providing people with information about global warming may have a negative (and unanticipated) effect on their explicit attitudes towards climate change. One study found that more informed respondents felt less personally responsible for global warming and also showed less concern for the problem as a whole. This...

This study represents the first investigation of the relationship between level of dispositional optimism and gaze preferences towards or away from negative images of climate change. It has been claimed by Isaacowitz that optimists wear ‘rose-tinted glasses’ in their processing of information about the world. This study tested whether level of opti...

Previous research has claimed that providing people with information about global warming may have a negative (and unanticipated) effect on their explicit attitudes towards climate change. One study found that more informed respondents felt less personally responsible for global warming and also showed less concern for the problem as a whole. This...

Abstract: One way of tackling climate change is by providing consumers with information about carbon footprint so that they can make informed ‘green’ choices in their everyday patterns of consumption. Certain products are now appearing with carbon footprint information included. But this information has to compete with other information, which may...