At first glance, it may seem that empathy has little to do with our attitude towards climate change. Alas, research from the University of Michigan suggests that those of us who are empathic in general are also more likely to respond emotionally to climate change.

The researchers highlight how differences in our political ideology often play a crucial role in policies designed to address climate change, and that researchers often try to appeal to our empathy in order to raise concern for the matter. These appeals are somewhat less effective on some people, who appear emotionally immune to the destruction of our environment, with this particularly common among ideological conservatives.

Environmental empathy

The researchers conducted a number of experiments to gauge the emotional response of participants to a variety of issues. The results show that people who reacted impassively to images of things like oil spills and other environmentally harmful events, also didn’t seem to feel bad when shown other distressing images, such as crying babies or wounded soldiers.

What’s more, those people also said that they felt less empathy for such people in daily life and were both less awed by nature and less willing to protect it. This group also seemed to respond less to more positive images, such as ice cream and happy babies.

While concern for the environment has traditionally been thought to split along political lines, the researchers believe that the lack of empathetic response is perhaps more a feature of their emotional palette.

“Given that our sense of risk and decisions are strongly guided by emotions, more impassive people are less inclined to dedicate resources to this slowly building crisis,” they explain.

As a result, however, the researchers suggest that appeals to support the environment should consider the differences in our emotional make-up and come up with new approaches to help reach those who are unmoved by emotional appeals.