Date of Completion

2023

Document Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Psychological Science

Thesis Type

College of Arts and Science Honors, Honors College

First Advisor

Jamie Abaied

Keywords

news, hopelessness, optimism, climate change, future thinking

Abstract

This study investigates the way in which climate news framing impacts people’s hope and optimism for their future. Via an experimental design, participants read a news article that contained hopeless language (experimental condition) or neutral language (control condition) regarding climate change. They then completed a brief timed task capturing their conceptualizations of the future, where participants named events they were or were not looking forward to at various points in the future. Participants also completed some measures regarding their feelings of hopelessness and optimism. The results showed that news framing did not have a significant effect on participants feelings of hopelessness or optimism. However, the news framing had a marginal impact on the number of events that participants were not looking forward to 24 hours into the future. The results of this study contribute to the overall understanding of the role that the news plays in climate anxiety and climate hopelessness.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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