Psychological inoculation against climate doom

Abstract

Individuals encounter “climate doom,” extreme portrayals of climate change, on social media. While climate doom may be intended to motivate action, it may also be perceived as manipulative or elicit hopelessness. Yet, no research has examined whether psychological inoculation helps to improve recognition of climate doom or influences engagement with it on social media. In this preregistered study ( n = 521), we tested whether inoculation improves discernment of climate doom and influences engagement with it by collecting behavioral data using a social media simulator. We find that inoculation substantially improves discernment of climate doom and that this is due to increased perceived manipulation of doom messaging specifically ( d = 0.68). There was no interaction between the inoculation condition and political leaning and while higher perceived manipulation of doom content predicted lower behavioral intentions, inoculation did not moderate this relationship. Inoculation increased engagement, particularly disliking and flagging of doom content, and decreased sharing. Overall, our results should lead climate communicators to reconsider doom messaging as a mobilization strategy and demonstrate that inoculation is an effective tool for increasing recognition of, and critical engagement with, climate doom across the political spectrum.