Katia Chaton-Østlie’s research while affiliated with Norwegian University of Science and Technology and other places

Climate anxiety discourse focuses predominantly on individualised and potentially mentally disturbing aspects of emotional responses to the awareness of climate change which can silence the mobilising charge of strong emotions in response to climate change. We critically examine this perspective and explore the range, context, and perceived effects of emotions experienced in relation to climate change based on 33 in-depth interviews with people self-identified as highly concerned about this issue in the context of oil-wealthy Norway. Thematic analysis revealed that lived emotional experience of concern about climate change was characterised by a complex palette of co-occurring and dynamically linked emotions reported in relation to 16 evocative themes. We analyse the perceived effects of these emotions focusing on five areas: participants' mood and wellbeing, concerns about existing and hypothetical children, feelings of alienation, responsibility for the climate situation, and positive experience in the context of climate change. We discuss the psychological, social and political implications of participants' emotional experience, considering the Norwegian context, and we conclude that it goes beyond potentially debilitating and paralysing feelings, and includes politically charged moral anger and collective guilt, as well as love for nature, and a sense of community around collective climate action.

Climate anxiety discourse focuses predominantly on individualised and potentially mentally disturbing aspects of emotional responses to the awareness of climate change which can silence the mobilising charge of climate change emotions. We critically examine this perspective and explore the range, context, and perceived effects of emotions experienced in relation to climate change based on 33 in-depth interviews with people self-identified as highly concerned about this issue in the context of oil-wealthy Norway. Thematic analysis revealed that lived emotional experience of concern about climate change was characterised by a complex palette of co-occurring and dynamically linked emotions reported in relation to 16 evocative themes. We analyse the perceived effects of these emotions focusing on five areas: participants' mood and wellbeing, concerns about existing and hypothetical children, feelings of alienation, the responsibility for the climate situation, and positive experience in the context of climate change. We discuss the psychological, social and political implications of participants' emotional experience, considering the Norwegian context, and we conclude that it goes beyond potentially debilitating and paralysing feelings, and includes politically charged moral anger, and collective guilt, as well as love for nature, and a sense of community around collective climate action.

Increasingly more people consider climate change a global emergency and emotionally charged terms such as climate anxiety or climate depression have entered public discourse. At the same time, emotions lie at the core of many psychological processes and are thus a critical component of pro-environmental engagement, as well as human health and well-being. Systematic empirical evidence about the emotional experience of climate change and its effects for an individual’s functioning is lacking, however. In the present study, we address this gap in knowledge and conduct an exploratory qualitative study of the emotional experience behind concern for climate change and its impacts on mental and psychosocial functioning. Drawing from 33 in-depth interviews conducted in Norway with a diverse sample of people who self-identified as worried about climate change, we map and contextualise the complex palette of mostly strong negative emotions experienced in relation to the concern for climate change. These emotions affected the participants psychologically in a number of ways, including in terms of lowered mood, reproductive concerns, difficulties in social functioning, but also through feeling an urge and responsibility to engage in pro-environmental behaviour. Our findings empirically validate the view that people can be psychologically affected by the mere awareness of the scale and implications of climate change, and that the emotional labour behind feeling an individual responsibility for climate change can affect people’s psychological well-being.