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We extend social identity models of pro-environmental collective action by expanding on the plausible role of access to cognitive alternatives to the environmental status quo (i.e., the ability of people to imagine what a sustainable relationship with nature would look like). Using a representative Canadian survey on age, gender, and ethnicity (N = 1029) we evaluate the associations between access to environmental cognitive alternatives and politicized environmental identity and willingness to engage in pro-environmental activist behavior. Additionally, we extend research using exclusively self-reported outcomes by giving participants the opportunity to write and sign a pro-environmental letter to the Canadian Minister of the Environment and Climate Change. Our results suggest that envisioning specific ways in which the status quo can be changed is associated with stronger politicized environmental identity, greater willingness to engage in pro-environmental activist behavior, and increased likelihood of writing and signing a pro-environmental letter to the Canadian Minister of the Environment and Climate Change. All methods and analyses follow our preregistration (https://osf.io/b56ry) and all materials and data are openly available (https://osf.io/24yeq/).

The judgements of academic experts on the personalities of political figures are affected by ideological homogeneity of raters and the use of measures hindered by embedded political content. As long as these problems persist, the academic expert personality profiling of political figures is a futile enterprise. Editors and reviewers would be wise to require authors to provide evidence of ideological heterogeneity in samples of raters, evidence of objectivity in ratings, and evidence that measures do not have embedded political content.

In two preregistered studies we examine correlates of support for Confederate symbols among White Southerners (Study 1: N = 559) and examine potential negative effects of the widespread removal of Confederate symbols (Study 2: N = 139). In Study 1 we determine that support for Confederate symbols is largely a function of a traditional Southern worldview where cultural notions of industriousness, fairness, discipline, obedience, loyalty, and honor are central. Furthermore, we identify four distinct types of Southerners, including two types that equally support Confederate symbols: Traditionalists and Supremacists. While these groups equally support Confederate symbols, Traditionalists hold non-prejudicial attitudes that do not differ from those who do not support Confederate symbols, whereas Supremacists hold relatively more negative attitudes toward Blacks. These Supremacists are also more willing to engage in activist and radical behavior in support of Confederate monuments relative to Traditionalists. In Study 2 we show that when Traditionalists and Supremacists are exposed to the removal of Confederate symbols, they demonstrate an increased willingness to engage in activist, but not radical, behaviors in support of Confederate monuments, and they display more anger, disgust, and upset emotions. Supremacists, but not Traditionalists, also display hostility in response to the removal of Confederate symbols.