Sustainability psychology focuses on the determinants of pro-environmental behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs. An important question is how emotions and morality lead to behavioral outcomes, as it provides insights on how to best promote pro-environmental behaviors. In this study, we focus on how exposure to awe-inducing stimuli and an individual’s moral ideology influences pro-environmental behavioral outcomes; of particular interest is a little-researched emotion called ‘negative awe,’ which stems from a feeling that one is small compared to a vast, overwhelming, and threatening stimulus, such as a natural disaster. Using a sample of N = 259 participants recruited online, we studied the effects of awe and moral ideology on pro-environmental behavioral intentions and self-nature representations. Participants completed pre-manipulation self-report measures, including the moral foundations questionnaire (MFQ) and a short political ideology measure. They were then randomly assigned to experience positive awe, negative awe, or neutral emotion via watching videos. Following the manipulation, participants completed short self-report measures checking for emotional response, a short survey on their feelings of control and certainty, and a measure of self-nature representations. Our results show that feelings of awe did not lead to behavioral intentions F(2, 245) = 1.70, p = .185; this was not moderated by political ideology (p > .10). However, there were novel findings correlating one’s moral foundations and their nature-self representations, with positive correlations between fairness and harm with nature and inclusion of nature in self; harm, ingroup, authority, and purity with self-size; and a positive correlation between fairness and negative correlations between ingroup, authority, and purity with nature-self size. Future research will explore how these relations with self-nature representations have implications for environmental decision-making.
Author: Antonio Vazquez Lim
Faculty Advisor: Allen R. McConnell, Psychology
Graduate Student Advisor: Tyler P. Jacobs, Psychology
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