Construing Climate Change: Psychological Distance, Individual Difference, and Construal Level of Climate Change

ABSTRACT This study examines the influences of distance cues and individual characteristics, including trait empathy, time orientation, age, and gender, on people’s construal of climate change. A content analysis was utilized to investigate American adults’ mental construal of climate change after exposure to messages illustrating its impacts in close or distant locations and times. Results of an experiment show that far-distance messages led to increased distance perception and more abstract mental construal of the phenomenon. Further, people with lower trait empathy formed more abstract mental construals when climate change was portrayed or perceived as a distant issue. Concrete construal and close distance perception were also positively correlated with support for climate change mitigation policies. This study complements extant literature on the psychological distance of climate change by pinpointing its effects on people’s mental construal of the phenomenon and the moderating effects of individual characteristics such as trait empathy, gender, and age.