Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new article, “The role of emotion in climate change communication” in the journal Environmental Communication.

To understand the role of emotion in climate change communication, researchers often study the effects of messages that attempt to evoke different emotional responses — for example, comparing the message effects of a humorous vs. a fearful or hopeful message. These types of studies, however, do not isolate emotional content from emotional delivery. For example, if we test different videos explaining the effects of climate change on extreme weather and one is humorous and one is fearful, the messages will differ in content (i.e., the words and information included) and delivery (i.e., how the message is communicated), so it is often unclear which factors make the message emotionally compelling.

To investigate this, we designed a study (N = 3,463) where we independently varied emotional content and emotional delivery. We wrote a script about the impacts of climate change on extreme weather that was strictly factual and non-emotional (neutral condition). Then we edited the script to include more emotional content (semi-emotional condition). Then we further edited the script to be even more emotional (emotional condition). This process led to three different scripts with the same factual information but different emotional content.

We then hired a voice actor to record an audio clip for each script, once in a neutral tone and once in an emotional tone, where we instructed the voice actor to emphasize the words and phrases with emotional connotations. You can find the recordings for each message here. We randomly assigned study respondents to one of the six message conditions, or a control message about the speed of cheetahs. We found that all messages significantly increased people’s understanding that climate change is impacting extreme weather. However, all of the messages performed similarly to one another, regardless of their emotional content or delivery (see figure below). Further, effects on people’s beliefs about the relationship between climate change and extreme weather were the same regardless of people’s reported personal experience with extreme weather, reported media exposure to extreme weather, political affiliation, or baseline climate change beliefs.

These findings suggest that the factual information in the messages was the primary factor in increasing people’s understanding of the effects of climate change on extreme weather, and that emotional content and emotional delivery played a minimal role in the effects of these messages.

It is important to note, however, that we designed the study for one particular topic, with this specific information, and executed it in one particular way. Our results do not mean that emotion does not matter in climate change communication, but rather that it did not make a significant difference in this particular set of messages. Our prior research, for example, has found that emotions like worry and compassion can play a significant role in climate change communication. But at least for this particular message about the impacts of climate change on extreme weather, this experiment found that neither emotional content nor delivery increased the message effects.

The full article with many other findings is available here to those with a subscription to Environmental Communication. If you would like to request a copy of the published paper, please send an email to climatechange@yale.edu with the subject line: Request Emotions paper. Or, a preprint version is available here. 

View Data Tables for Accessibility.