Publication details
Emotional, cognitive and social-psychological mechanisms underlying deliberate ignorance about climate change
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Peer-reviewed scientific article |
| Magazine / Source | CURRENT OPINION IN PSYCHOLOGY |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X25001289?dgcid=author |
| Doi | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2025.102115 |
| Keywords | deliberate ignorance; wilful ignorance; climate change; coping strategies; cognitive biases; socially motivated cognition; manufactured uncertainty |
| Attached files | |
| Description | Climate change is among the most pressing challenges hu- manity is currently facing. Despite the large majority of people globally acknowledging this as a fact, many neglect or actively seek to avoid information about it. The present contribution reviews the psychological motivations that may underlie the choice to remain uninformed, delves into associated emotional, cognitive, and social-psychological mechanisms, and offers systematic methodological solutions applicable to scholarly research on deliberate ignorance in the environ- mental domain. The paper thus lays the foundations for a comprehensive understanding and systematisation of the diverse functions that deliberate ignorance may have in the context of climate change and proposes a research agenda to empirically test its presence, frequency, and long-term consequences. |