Thematic Analysis of Online Articles
Title: According to online articles, what are the key contributions psychology can offer to help responses to climate change?
Thematic analysis is a powerful analytical tool that can be used to analyze qualitative datasets (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Thematic analysis is a flexible tool that allows a researcher to subdivide themes into sub-themes (Braun & Clarke, 2019). Thematic analysis is also unsupervised and thus allows for exploration of the unknown concepts in the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The aim of this study is to explore how psychology can contribute to the response to climate change using online articles. When data involves the opinions and views of different people thus thematic analysis is the most appropriate tool to us (Byrne, 2021). Following Clarke and Braun’s guidelines, the steps involved included reading through the articles, coding relevant points, finding themes, reviewing the identified themes and giving names to themes. The final step was analyzing the themes. These steps obey the guidelines adopted from Braun and Clarke.
In reviewing the online articles for the role of psychology in climate change, two major themes were identified throughout the text. The themes are presented below;
- Understanding and explaining human behaviour that affects climate change
- Developing and informing decisions and policies that influence climate change
The two themes are logical breakdowns of the complex human process towards climate change. The articles first present an understanding of the human behaviors (psychological habits) that influence climate change either positively or negatively. The other key thematic contribution of psychology is helping to develop and inform key decisions and policies that influence climate change. These themes were prominent in the data and they fit together to explain how understanding human behavior can drive responses to climate change. The thematic map is shown below;
Thematic Map
Theme1: Understanding and Explaining Human Behaviors that Affect Climate Change
This theme involves understanding the behavioral influencers of environmental degradation. In this theme, the role of psychology is to help us understand what factors influence people to either engage in positive climate change activities or negative climate change habits. From the following extract, the author explains the importance of psychology in studying the relationship between people and climate change.
“The goal of conservation psychology is not only to study the interdependence between humans and nature, but also to encourage a healthy and sustainable relationship. Conservation psychology includes contributions from all the subfields of psychology: e.g., clinical psychologists can explore the therapeutic effects of exposure to nature, in general and for troubled populations in particular; developmental psychologists look at the significance of early exposure to nature on the formation of an enduring environmental empathy and ethic; cognitive psychologists research the ways in which we perceive environmental changes and threats; physiological psychologists investigate the impact of environmental toxins on behavior and brain function; and social psychologists study the role of nature experiences within a social context, and ways in which social factors promote or inhibit pro-environmental behavior.” (Clayton, 2009).
The above extract shows the roles different types of psychologists play in explaining human interaction with climate change. The author also shows that such studies help promote ways of managing climate change through pro-environmental habits.
Understanding Human Behaviors that Affect Climate Change
Moreover, the author of the extract below shows how conservation psychology is important in understanding the complicated sources of environmental behaviors and attitudes. From the extract, the author also notes that behavioral science is critical in managing global climate change.
“Human behavior—how we reproduce, consume, and utilize geographical territory—has contributed to global climate change, desertification, pollution, and the loss of biodiversity, and human behavior will have to help us mitigate and adapt to these problems. Thus the involvement of behavioral science is critical. Attitudes that are insufficiently invested in nature are often suggested to be the reason why people don’t engage in the kinds of sustainable behaviors that are needed. But it would be wrong as well as simplistic to infer that people don’t care about nature. Indeed, surveys show that people place a very high value on nature and often accord it moral and/or spiritual significance.
Conservation psychology can help to understand the complex sources of environmental attitudes and behavior.” (Clayton, 2009)
In the extract shown below, the author restates the importance of conservation psychology in protecting the natural environment.
“Conservation psychology is not only concerned with the ways psychology can contribute to protecting the natural environment, but also with how attention to the natural environment can contribute to psychology. In particular, psychology has always had a goal of promoting research, and the applications of research, in order to enhance human welfare; to increase human welfare, we need to recognize how intimately connected it is to the natural environment.” (Clayton, 2009)
The author of the following extract shows how psychologists pledge to use their knowledge to combat and manage climate change as well as the impacts of climate change.
“Psychologists have now accepted climate change as a serious threat to the health of human life. The situation is so alarming that the leaders of psychological associations from more than 40 countries signed a proclamation on November 15, 2019 at a conference on psychology and global health in Lisbon. Here they pledge to use their expertise as psychologists to “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.”” (torres, 2020).
In the following extract, the author explains the role of psychology as explaining the complex human behavior. The author goes ahead to explain how psychology knowledge can be used to alleviate the barriers that hinder people from adopting behaviors that are sustainable to climate change.
“Albeit a challenging task, psychology’s inherent mandate is to decipher the complexities of human behavior. Therefore, instead of debating whether humans are naturally selfish or altruistic, we should use available tools to discover and reproduce the conditions under which individuals, groups, organizations, and nations manage to live sustainably. Psychological knowledge, in the form of evidence-informed and behavior-driven research and interventions, can help in recognizing and lifting the many contextual and individual barriers that are keeping people from adopting more environmentally sound lives.” (Hirneis, 2021).
The first theme therefore helps answer the research question by proving that psychologists can help the world understand human behaviors and their relationship with climate change. One of psychology’s key contributions to responses in climate change is to therefore offer insight and understanding between human behavior and climate change.
Informing Decisions and Policies that Influence Climate Change
Theme2: Informing and Developing Decisions and Policies that Affect Climate Change
The role of psychology in informing and developing decisions and policies that affect climate change seeks to tell how psychologists can give responses to climate change based on an understanding of human behaviors. The theme attempts to evaluate the importance of psychology in providing responses to climate change. The author of the following extract shows how human psychology has been used to study communication in climate change as well as developing recommendations on how to make the communication and policies stronger and effective.
“A new paper published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science helps explain why. The paper’s authors — Sander van der Linden, Edward Maibach, and Anthony Leiserowitz — review psychological research to identify key aspects of climate change and climate change communication that contribute to the mismatch between the urgency and severity of climate change, on the one hand, and widespread public disengagement, on the other. They highlight five features of human psychology that make climate change communication especially challenging, and they pair these with recommendations for how to make science communication and policy more effective.” (Lombrozo, 2015).
The author of the extract shown below shows how psychological research is important in understanding human race capacity to put aside their short term needs for the greater good. Furthermore, the author shows that the big decisions could be guided by psychology research processes to enhance trust and transparency as well as providing clear information.
“But there is also scope for appealing to the ideals of international cooperation. We should be optimistic in light of the above psychological research about the capacity of the human race to put the long-term needs of the many above the short-term needs of the few. Big decisions could be facilitated by many of the psychological processes we have described, that focus on global identity, long-term gain rather than short-term loss, intergroup competition and reputation, rewards, shared norms, providing sufficient and clear information, and instilling trust and transparency.” (Rachel and Faber, 2016)
The author of the following extract suggests that environmentalists should be non-partisan when pushing for environmental conservation measures;
“So environmentalists have to try to avoid taking positions that line up too closely with existing social divisions, and emphasize, instead, the shared values that can be agreed upon by all of the groups involved” (Clayton, 2009).
The author also suggests using shared values common to all groups as an effective measure. These suggestions are derived from a psychological understanding of the influence of political divisions on climate change.
In the extract shown below, the author suggests that ascribing social identities that have moral obligations on them influences people to act on climate change. The author suggests that such ascriptions affect our actions positively towards nature.
“Experiences with the natural environment shape our individual identities, telling us who we are as individuals and how we relate to other aspects of the natural world. This has implications for our individual actions, our perceived moral obligations toward nature. Am I a steward of nature? A child of Mother Earth? Or simply a consumer of natural resources? Identities describe roles or relationships toward others, and roles and relationships define responsibilities.” (Clayton, 2009).
In the following extract, the author shows that psychologists are supposed to work hand in hand with other disciplines to gain a more solid understanding of the specific factors that cause behavior that is unsustainable to climate change. The author suggests that psychology in conjunction with other disciplines can help create policies that better adapt to climate change.
“But I would take this further: psychologists now need to work with other disciplines, such as engineering, sociology etc. We need to have a much better understanding of the conditions which lead to unsustainable behaviour. It’s no good the government saying to us that for journeys less than a mile you should walk or use public transport because when you are trying to juggle demands, such as your job and children within limited time, you are probably going to take your car. We need to change the conditions rather than attack individual behaviours”. (Hickman, 2010)
In the extract presented below, the author shows that psychology is an essential tool for the design and execution of deep and shallow interventions that mitigate behaviors which negatively influence climate change. The author postulates that if psychology is used to inform and guide other means of rules and regulatory measures, then a lot of change can be made in global climate change issues.
“Alongside other drivers of bottom-up change, psychology is nonetheless suitable and arguably essential for the evidence-based design and implementation of shallow as well as deep interventions, while mitigating the risk for potential backlash through appropriate framing. If this is paired with the necessary top-down systemic change in forms of rules and regulations, I believe that we can steer humanity away from seemingly inevitable, self-inflicted collapse. Even, if it is just because we have no other choice.” (Hirneis, 2021)
This second theme therefore explains how psychology is important in informing decisions and policies that affect climate change. The theme presents psychology-driven insights as one of the critical contributions of psychology to help responses to climate change.
References
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research In Psychology, 3(2), 77-101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2019). Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis. Qualitative Research In Sport, Exercise And Health, 11(4), 589-597. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676x.2019.1628806
Byrne, D. (2021). A worked example of Braun and Clarke’s approach to reflexive thematic analysis. Quality & Quantity, 1-22.
Clayton, S. (2009). Can Psychology Help Save the World. Retrieved from Humans Nature: https://humansandnature.org/can-psychology-help-save-the-world/
Faber and Rachel (2016). How Psychology can Help us Solve Climate Change. Retrieved from The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/how-psychology-can-help-us-solve-climate-change-58957
Hickman, L. (2010). What psychology can teach us about our response to climate change. Retrieved from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/sep/23/climate-change-psychology-response-scepticism
Hirneis, V. (2021). Can Psychology Help us Solve the Climate Crisis? Retrieved from LSE Blog: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/psychologylse/2021/04/20/can-psychology-help-us-solve-the-climate-crisis/
Lombrozo, T. (2015). How Psychology can save the world from climate change. Retrieved from NPR: https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/11/30/457835780/how-psychology-can-save-the-world-from-climate-change?t=1640211519791
torres, l. (2020). The Role of Psychology in the Climate Change Discourse. Retrieved from @blurb: https://medium.com/hwudblurb/the-role-of-psychology-in-the-climate-change-discourse-200e602cf9d0
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