Overcoming Pluralistic Ignorance—Brief Exposure to Positive Thoughts and Actions of Others Can Enhance Social Norms Related to Climate Action and Support for Climate Policy

Abstract

Most U.S. residents are concerned about and support action on climate change. They also overwhelmingly underestimate the extent to which others are likewise concerned, a phenomenon known as pluralistic ignorance. This is a problem because when individuals perceive that others don’t care, they are less likely to take action themselves. We assessed whether brief exposure to positive thoughts and actions of others might make climate action more normative and increase support for climate policy. Specifically, we exposed people to “Community Voices” (CV), a form of social media designed to promote pro-environmental and pro-social norms. We hypothesized that exposure to CV content (related and unrelated to climate change) would enhance positive climate-related norms and increase climate policy support. We further hypothesized that this shift would be stronger when the content was directly related to climate change and when the content came from participants’ geographic region. Online recruits (N = 969) from national and regional (Northeast Ohio) samples were exposed to either no CV content (control), pro-social CV content (unrelated to climate) or CV content depicting climate action in NE Ohio. Brief exposure to both pro-social and climate action-focused CV content increased both descriptive and prescriptive climate action norms and significantly decreased participants’ psychological distance from climate change. As expected, exposure to climate-focused content increased descriptive norms more than exposure to pro-social content. Pro-social CV content increased policy support. That increase was explained by increased norms and decreased psychological distance. Pro-social CV content significantly increased positive emotions, while climate-focused CV content did not. NE Ohio participants who viewed regional climate-focused content exhibited lower positive emotions and had more difficulty imagining a positive future than those in the national sample. Results suggest that exposure to positive thoughts and actions of others can achieve the critical goals of elevating descriptive norms (thereby reducing pluralistic ignorance) and elevating support for climate policy. However, the psychological impact of exposing people to positive climate-action content is nuanced and complex.

Publisher

MDPI

Publication Date

11-18-2025

Publication Title

Sustainability

Department

Psychology

Additional Department

Environmental Studies

Document Type

Article

DOI

https://doi.org/10.3390/su172210318

Keywords

Climate change, Climate action, Norm perception, Pluralistic ignorance, Psychological distance, Social influence, Environmental communication, Social media, Climate policy, Theory of planned behavior

Language

English

Format

text

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