Ideological underpinnings of climate change beliefs: A 13-year longitudinal study

Abstract

Research demonstrates that conservative political beliefs and ideologies underpin lower environmental concern, as well as climate scepticism and inaction. Our preregistered study extends this literature by examining the dynamic interplay between socio-ideological attitudes and climate change beliefs using longitudinal data spanning 13 years (2009-2022; N = 72,910). Specifically, we investigated potential gender differences in the temporal sequencing of Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), and the beliefs that climate change is real and caused by humans. Between-person results from a multi-group random intercepts crosslagged panel model reveal that individuals relatively high on both RWA and SDO across assessments reported lower levels of climate beliefs. Most importantly, withinperson increases in SDO predicted subsequent within-person decreases in climate beliefs for both men and women, while RWA only decreased climate beliefs for men. Moreover, SDO had a stronger influence than RWA on climate beliefs over time but a reciprocal association also emerged whereby within-person increases in climate beliefs preceded decreases in SDO for both men and women. Thus, support for hierarchical social structures fosters climate inaction, providing an important extension to the dual process model of ideology and prejudice.