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Fear motivates and dread stalls: the role of emotions in climate support

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: As the negative impacts of rapidly accelerating climate change increase in frequency and severity, widespread climate action in the population becomes increasingly urgent. The need for population-wide climate action and behavior change represents a significant psychological challenge that may be addressed through psychologically informed interventions. The current study investigates whether and how much 10 incidental state emotions (fear, dread, hope, anger, sadness, distress, worry, guilt, shame, and helplessness) contribute to climate change belief, climate policy support, and climate action in participants from the UK ( N = 418). We report that greater fear and lower dread predict greater climate policy support, with no other state emotions predicting climate policy support. State emotions did not predict climate change belief or climate action. Our findings indicate that feeling fear, but not dread, may be important for climate policy support, yet such emotions may not translate into climate action. We discuss possible explanations for non-significant findings, such as a ceiling effect in climate change belief. Overall, our study uniquely explores the contributions of multiple incidental state emotions to climate action, indicating that nuanced differences in state emotions (e.g., fear vs. dread) may lead to different impacts on climate policy support.

Source: Frontiers in Psychology

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1667470