As TVs throughout Florida broadcast the all-too-familiar photographs of a powerful hurricane headed for the coast in early October 2024, individuals whose homes had been damaged lower than two weeks earlier by Hurricane Helene watched anxiously. Hurricane Milton was rapidly intensifying right into a harmful storm, fueled by the Gulf of Mexico’s record-breaking temperatures.
Many residents scrambled to evacuate, clogging roads away from the area. Officers urged these close to the coast who ignored evacuation warnings to scrawl their names on their arms with indelible ink so their corpses could possibly be recognized.
The 2 hurricanes have been among the many most harmful in latest reminiscence. They’re additionally stark reminders of the more and more excessive climate occasions that scientists have lengthy warned could be the consequence of human-driven climate change.
Nonetheless, many individuals deny that climate change is a worsening risk, or that it exists in any respect. As its impacts develop extra seen and harmful, how is that this attainable?
One reply lies in a novel aspect of human psychology—particularly, in how individuals handle the concern aroused by existential threats. For many individuals, denying the existence of a local weather disaster just isn’t solely handy, however could really feel psychologically crucial.
Terror administration principle
The Pulitzer Prize-winning anthropologist Ernest Becker put it this way: “The concept of demise, the concern of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else . . . to beat it by denying it indirectly is the ultimate future for man.”
In plain phrases, he was saying that most individuals wrestle to simply accept their mortality and take pains to distort their notion of actuality to keep away from confronting it.
Within the Eighties, social psychologists developed “terror management theory,” displaying the lengths individuals go to disclaim demise. A whole bunch of experiments have examined its implications. In a common method, individuals replicate on their very own demise, whereas management teams contemplate much less threatening subjects, like dental ache. The important thing query: What does demise consciousness do to individuals?
After writing about demise, individuals are likely to shortly transfer on, pushing ideas of it from consciousness with distractions, rationalizations, and different techniques. Healthcare professionals see this every day. For instance, individuals typically dodge screenings and diagnostic checks to keep away from the scary risk of discovering most cancers.
However right here’s the rub: Terror administration principle means that when persons are not excited about demise, it nevertheless holds influence. The unconscious thoughts lingers on the issue even after individuals have used methods to quiet the concern by pushing it from consciousness.
Social psychology experiments present that folks typically deal with the specter of demise by attaching themselves to cultural ideologies, reminiscent of spiritual, political, or even sports fandom. These worldviews imbue life with which means, values, and goal. And that may ease the fear of mortality by connecting individuals to a permanent and comforting net of concepts and beliefs that transcend one’s personal existence.
When persons are made conscious of demise, these programs of which means become even more critical to their psychological functioning. Existential threats make us cling even tighter to the which means programs that maintain us.
Local weather denial as a protection mechanism
Very like a terror administration lab experiment—or the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic—pure disasters like hurricanes Helene and Milton trigger death anxiety.
Rising sea levels, warming oceans, and intensifying storms—all tied to world warming fueled by human actions—symbolize an existential risk.
From our perspective, it’s not stunning that climate-related disasters disappear from the general public consciousness nearly as quickly as they’ve handed. Google Traits knowledge exemplifies this: Incoming storms instigated an uptick in searches for “climate change” and “global warming” within the days earlier than Hurricane Helene made landfall on September 26, and Hurricane Milton on October 9. Then these searches shortly declined as individuals shifted their focus away from the risk.
Sadly, local weather change isn’t going away, regardless of how arduous anybody tries to disclaim it.
Whereas local weather denial permits individuals to guard themselves from emotions of misery, terror administration principle means that denying demise is simply the tip of the iceberg. For some individuals, accepting the fact of local weather change would necessitate reevaluating their ideologies.
Terror administration principle predicts that people whose ideologies battle with environmental considerations could paradoxically double down on these beliefs to psychologically handle the existential risk posed by climate-related disasters. It’s much like how mortality reminders can lead individuals to have interaction in dangerous conduct, such as smoking or tanning. Hurricanes could reinforce denial and dedication to a worldview that rejects local weather change.
A path ahead: Constructing new worldviews
Though denial could also be a pure psychological response to existential threats, the U.S. could also be getting to a degree the place even deniers can’t ignore the existential risk related to local weather change.
Time and again, Individuals are gobsmacked by the devastation—from hurricanes to severe flooding, wildfires, and extra.
A terror administration evaluation means that overcoming this disaster requires weaving a solutions-focused narrative into the ideologies that folks depend on for consolation. As psychologists who work on terror management, we imagine the struggle in opposition to local weather change ought to be framed not as an apocalyptic battle that humanity is destined to lose, however as an ethical and sensible problem that humanity can collectively overcome.
Tampa, Florida, meteorologist Denis Phillips had the fitting thought as the 2 hurricanes headed for his neighborhood: His fact-based social media updates eschew partisan critique, encourage neighbors to assist each other, and emphasize preparedness and resilience within the face of incoming storms.
As Milton approached, Phillips informed residents to recollect his Rule #7: Don’t freak out. That doesn’t imply do nothing; it means consider dangers with out letting emotion intrude, and take motion.
Shifting the narrative from helplessness to collective empowerment and motion may help individuals confront local weather change with out triggering the existential anxieties that result in denial—providing a imaginative and prescient for a future that’s each safe and personally significant.
Jamie Goldenberg is a professor of psychology and space director of Cognitive, Neuroscience and Social Psychology on the University of South Florida.
Emily P. Courtney is an assistant professor of instruction on the University of South Florida.
Joshua Hart is a professor of psychology at Union College.
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