Ecological Anxiety and Pro-Environmental Behaviours: The Role of Attentional Biases

The aim of the current study is to investigate the relationship between climate change anxiety and engagement with pro-environmental behaviours by examining whether this relationship depends on degree of attentional bias to climate change-related information. Materials include a series of questionnaires assessing climate-change related beliefs, emotions, and behaviours, a dot-probe task assessing whether participants preferentially attend to either positive (i.e. climate change mitigation strategies) or negative images (i.e. causes and consequences of climate change), and a week-long diary kept on participant's mobile phones asking them to report their emotion states and engagement in pro-environmental behaviours each day. The present study will add to the limited empirical literature on attentional biases in relation to climate change and extend our current understanding of the adaptive or maladaptive nature of eco-anxiety by investigating how attentional biases may moderate the relationship between an individual’s level of eco-anxiety and engagement in pro-environmental behaviours.