Laura Mcguire

Laura Mcguire
  • PhD
  • Lecturer in Psychology at Edge Hill University

About

29
Publications
26,466
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
358
Citations
Current institution
Edge Hill University
Current position
  • Lecturer in Psychology
Additional affiliations
December 2014 - March 2017
Edge Hill University
Position
  • PhD Student

Publications

Publications (29)
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Book
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
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...

Network

Cited By