Research recently published in Global Environmental Change revealed that while anger often spurs activism and supports policy change, it does not necessarily lead to personal actions to mitigate climate change.
Climate change has long been a subject of emotional debate. Prior studies have focused on emotions like fear and hope, but the role of anger in driving climate change engagement has been less explored. Anger, as this study reveals, is not a monolithic emotion — but varies in its source and target. In many cases, the emotion itself is caused by moral outrage over perceived injustices — or, in the case of this study, empathy towards those unfairly affected by climate change.
The motivation behind this research was to delve deeper into the specific nature of climate anger among the public, and its relationship with various forms of climate change engagement. The driving force behind this study was the recognition that anger, evident in movements like Greta Thunberg’s speeches and the Yellow Vests protests, might play a significant role in shaping public response to climate change.
The methodology of the study involved a detailed survey asking 10,160 participants, drawn from the National Population Registry of Norway, about their emotions related to climate change, with a particular focus on anger. Participants rated the intensity of their feelings and provided open-ended responses on what aspects of climate change triggered their anger, which allowed researchers to quantify the strength of climate anger and to understand its qualitative aspects.
The findings were multifaceted. Results found that climate anger, especially when directed at human actions and behaviors, is a powerful motivator for climate activism and somewhat positively influences support for climate policies. However, this anger does not significantly predict individual efforts to reduce carbon footprint.
The study also identified a subset of responses, about 10%, expressing ‘contrarian’ anger, which reflects skepticism about climate change severity, or dissatisfaction with mitigation measures. This discovery is crucial as it points to the diverse, and sometimes contradictory, nature of climate-related emotions. In other words, people who are angry about climate change are not always angry for the same reasons or motivated towards the same goals.
“The current study supports that climate anger is related to climate change engagement, but that its effect depends on the specific outcome,” the researchers wrote. “While anger was the strongest emotional predictor of activism and positively related to policy support, other emotions, such as sadness or fear, were more relevant for individual behaviors.”
“We also find that climate anger can stem from various sources – not all equally motivating. Anger directed at human qualities or (the lack of) human actions was consistently related to climate change engagement, while referring to responsible (external) actors did not have a unique effect on any of the outcomes. Further, differences in anger content can relate to different types of engagement: anger directed at climate change denial, or the prioritization of money was related to climate activism, but not to the other outcomes.”
“Overall, our results support that ‘even ‘basic’ human emotions such as anger do not generally operate as simple mechanisms that reflexively turn specific responses on or off’ (Chapman et al., 2017, p. 851). Not all types of anger correlate positively with engagement, and the strength of the effects varies.”
Crucially, this study’s cross-sectional design only captures a snapshot moment that does not establish causality between climate anger and engagement. The focus on a Norwegian cohort limits the generalizability of the findings to other cultural contexts, and the use of self-reported data could introduce biases. Still, this study provides a nuanced understanding of how climate-related anger influences different types of climate change engagement.
The study, “The strength and content of climate anger,” was authored by Thea Gregersen, Gisle Andersen, and Endre Tvinnereim at the Norwegian Research Centre and the University of Bergen.
