Research Overview

Climate change is often seen as a problem of technology or policy, but it is equally a problem of human psychology. My research asks: what actually motivates people to act? I use large-scale experiments to test how messages grounded in psychology can turn concern into meaningful climate advocacy.

Much of my work is driven by a simple but often overlooked insight: believing in climate change doesn’t always lead to action, and disbelief doesn’t always mean inaction. In a global study spanning more than 60 countries, we found that political ideology predicts climate belief and policy support, but not necessarily behavior. Conservatives who reject climate change may still engage in pro-environmental behaviors, while liberals who express strong concern often fall short in taking action. This belief-behavior disconnect reveals both risk and opportunity: climate interventions can misfire if they only aim to persuade, but they can succeed if they tap into motivations beyond belief. Since then, my research has focused on outcomes that matter for real change, including public visibility, political engagement, financial advocacy, and support for concrete policies.

To find scalable strategies, I led a U.S. “megastudy” testing seventeen theory-based messages with over thirty thousand people. Two patterns stood out. First, emphasizing collective efficacy (the sense that people, together, can change outcomes) consistently increased advocacy, especially when paired with the positive emotions people gain from acting with others. Second, moral appeals that speak to binding values like purity and sanctity effectively motivated financial engagement and reached conservatives without alienating liberals. Complementary work mapping messages to their “emotional signatures” shows that communications which evoke both negative and positive emotions (such as anger and hope) are most likely to spur action.