Telling people to feel hopeful about climate change may produce more creative solutions than telling them to be afraid, according to new research from the University of Nottingham.
The study, published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology and reported by Phys.org, was led by Professor Alexa Spence from the university's School of Psychology. Her team ran two experiments involving 160 and 334 participants respectively. The goal was to test whether hope, as a positive emotion, could drive a specific kind of thinking the researchers called climate creativity, meaning the ability to generate original ideas for living more sustainably.
To measure that, the team created a new assessment tool. Participants were asked to come up with ways to make their own lives more sustainable. They also completed word association tasks and environmental problem-solving exercises. The researchers designed the tool specifically because no existing creativity measure captured this climate-focused dimension.
The second experiment went further. Participants were randomly assigned to watch one of two videos designed to produce different emotional states. The hope video took an optimistic approach: it described potential solutions to climate change, used positive and cheerful language, and featured uplifting background music. The fear video took the opposite approach, expressing doubt about whether solutions would work, using alarming language, and pairing it with downbeat music and darkened imagery.
After watching their assigned video, participants completed general creativity measures and the new climate creativity task.
Professor Spence had set up the study with a clear theoretical expectation. "We wanted to explore the theory that positive emotions may have a broader impact on behavior, and be more likely to produce creative behavior," she said. "We all too often see negative emotions, such as fear, guilt, and anger used to try to influence sustainable behavior, and while they may create an initial short-term reaction, we propose that positive emotions may have different, wider-reaching and longer-lasting effects."
The results supported that hypothesis. Participants who watched the hope video showed higher levels of creativity overall and higher levels of climate creativity specifically.
The researchers described what they found as a potential starting point for a broader chain of effects. "The results of the study indicate that inspiring hope in climate change is related to increased levels of creativity, and specifically climate creativity. This is the first study of its kind to identify increases in climate creativity as a result of hope communications indicating that hope may be a resource to draw on in promoting problem solving and action on climate change. Theoretically, positive emotions are more likely to inspire social behavior and longer-lasting behavior change and therefore also have the potential to inspire positive feedback loops where further environmental actions are seen as a consequence," said Professor Spence.
The research adds to a growing body of work questioning the reliance on fear-based messaging in environmental communication. Fear and guilt have long been standard tools for campaigns trying to shift public behavior on climate. This study suggests that approach may produce short-term reactions while leaving longer-term motivation and creative thinking largely untouched.
The team's next steps were not specified in the published findings, but the development of the climate creativity measure itself opens the door to further research testing which types of messages, messengers, and settings produce the most durable changes in how people think about and respond to climate problems.
