Many people believe the world will soon end, and these apocalyptic views shape how they react to real global threats like climate change and artificial intelligence. A new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology reveals that these narratives dictate whether individuals want to prevent or ignore looming global crises. By mapping the specific features of these doomsday beliefs, researchers can predict public responses to the major hazards of our time.
People from varying backgrounds hold ideas about the apocalypse. Some individuals expect a religious prophecy to unfold, while others anticipate an environmental collapse. To understand these perspectives, researchers must look at how humans evaluate danger.
Risk perception is the psychological study of how people judge the severity of a hazard. Past research has examined how personal experiences or community standards influence these judgments. Yet, experts have rarely examined how deeply held convictions about the ultimate fate of humanity affect reactions to immediate crises.
Historically, apocalyptic ideas were primarily religious, focusing on supernatural battles between good and evil. Today, these narratives also appear in secular contexts, driven by anxieties over nuclear weapons, ecological collapse, and advanced technology. The atomic science community has even maintained a doomsday clock since the mid-twentieth century to symbolize the proximity of global destruction.
Matthew I. Billet led the new research as a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of British Columbia. He is now a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Irvine. Billet and his colleagues wanted to understand the psychological structure of these apocalyptic narratives.
They noticed that previous studies usually treated doomsday beliefs as a single concept, mostly focusing on whether people thought the end was near. Billet’s team suspected that these views were more varied and contained multiple psychological dimensions. They hypothesized that the specific details of a person’s apocalyptic narrative would predict their willingness to tackle global problems.
A unidimensional approach might assume that anyone who thinks the world is ending will simply give up on the future. The researchers argued this view is incomplete, noting that historical doomsday movements have sometimes sparked political revolutions and other times encouraged passive waiting. They wanted to capture this variety in human behavior.
Understanding this dynamic is highly relevant today. Populations must coordinate across cultural divides to address shared problems like global pandemics or nuclear conflict. The researchers sought to uncover why different communities react with either urgency or indifference to the exact same global risks.
The research team began by conducting six pilot studies involving university students and the general public in Canada and the United States. These initial tests allowed the researchers to develop and validate a new psychological questionnaire. They called this tool the End of World Beliefs Scale.
The scale measures five distinct facets of how people view the apocalypse. The first facet is perceived closeness, which asks how soon the end will arrive. The second is anthropogenic causality, which asks whether human actions will bring about the destruction.
The third facet is theogenic causality, measuring whether people believe a divine or supernatural force is responsible. The fourth is personal control, which gauges how much influence an individual feels they have over the end times. The final facet is emotional valence, which captures whether a person believes the end of the world will ultimately be a good or bad thing.
After finalizing the scale, the researchers launched a large survey of 1,409 adults in the United States. This main study was pre-registered, meaning the scientists publicly documented their hypothesis and analysis plan before collecting the data. They recruited a sample with diverse religious affiliations to capture a wide range of perspectives.
The group included Catholics, Mainline Protestants, Evangelical Protestants, Jewish people, Muslims, and nonreligious individuals. The participants answered the End of World Beliefs Scale to outline their personal views. Then, they read about one of five global risk categories defined by the World Economic Forum.
These categories included economic dangers like supply chain collapses, as well as environmental threats like natural disasters. They also covered geopolitical risks like nuclear war, societal hazards like pandemics, and technological issues like unregulated artificial intelligence. Participants were randomly assigned to focus on just one of these areas.
Participants reported their perception of the assigned risk’s severity and their tolerance for its negative impacts. They also indicated their willingness to support extreme actions to address the threat. These extreme actions included devoting a massive portion of the national budget to the problem or instituting martial law.
The researchers found that apocalyptic expectations are incredibly common in the United States. Nearly one in three participants believed the world would end within their own lifetime. Most participants, regardless of their religious background, agreed that humans will play a role in the fate of our species.
However, the specific flavor of these beliefs varied widely among different religious groups. Evangelical Protestants and Muslims scored highly on the belief that a divine force will cause the end. They also tended to view the apocalypse with a more positive emotional valence, seeing it as a necessary step toward a better state.
Nonreligious participants scored very low on theogenic causality and emotional valence. They did not expect a divine entity to intervene, and they did not view the end of the world positively. They also felt the end was less imminent than the religious groups did.
When looking at the five facets, the researchers noticed clear patterns in how people responded to the global risks. People who felt the apocalypse was rapidly approaching perceived global threats as highly severe. They also supported extreme actions to address these looming disasters.
Belief in anthropogenic causality also predicted higher risk perception. When individuals believed human actions would cause the end, they took modern global threats very seriously. On the other hand, theogenic causality predicted lower support for extreme preventative actions.
“Someone who believes humans are causing the apocalypse through climate change will respond very differently to environmental policy than someone who believes the end times are controlled by divine prophecy,” Billet noted in a press release. Those expecting a divinely ordained conclusion were less willing to support measures meant to stop it.
Curiously, individuals who viewed the end of the world positively showed a high tolerance for risk. They also showed greater support for extreme actions to address the global threats. The researchers admitted this particular result is puzzling, as one might assume a positive view of the apocalypse would lead to total inaction.
To ensure their results were robust, the scientists controlled for other psychological traits, like neuroticism and general political conservatism. They even checked if general conspiratorial thinking or religious fundamentalism could explain the patterns. The specific facets of apocalyptic belief continued to predict risk responses independently of these other factors.
The study relies on observational survey data. This means the researchers cannot prove that apocalyptic views directly cause specific behaviors. The researchers also noted that their sample was limited to the United States and Canada.
Additionally, the religious groups surveyed were restricted to Abrahamic traditions and secular individuals. A fuller understanding of human psychology requires looking beyond these populations. Future studies should explore a wider array of global cultures and religious traditions.
For instance, researchers could examine societies that view time as cyclical rather than linear. They could also look at cultures with widespread beliefs in reincarnation, which might alter how people conceptualize the end of days. Exploring these alternative cultural frameworks would provide a broader understanding of how humans evaluate existential threats.
Additional research might also investigate why apocalyptic narratives spread so easily across different societies. Scientists could explore the specific psychological traits that make these ideas so appealing to the human mind. They could also use historical data to link the rise of doomsday movements with specific ecological shocks in the past.
Answering these questions could help policymakers bridge cultural divides when coordinating public responses to real global emergencies. Today, differing worldviews can create friction that stalls mass vaccination efforts or climate change mitigation. Recognizing the psychological roots of these disagreements is a necessary step for navigating the major hazards of the current century.
The study, “End of world beliefs are common, diverse, and predict how people perceive and respond to global risks,” was authored by Matthew I. Billet, Cindel J.M. White, Azim Shariff, and Ara Norenzayan.
