Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology suggests people are more likely to act on climate change if they are familiar with Greta Thunberg, though the authors admit it is possible the explanation is people who want to act on climate change seek out familiarity with Greta.
Greta Thunberg effect: people familiar with young climate activist may be more likely to act
February 5, 2021 2.19am AEDT
Anandita Sabherwal PhD Student in Psychological and Behavioural Science, London School of Economics and Political Science
Sander van der Linden Professor of Social Psychology in Society and Director, Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, University of Cambridge
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Based on a nationally representative survey of over 1,300 US adults, our studyfound that Americans who report being more familiar with Greta Thunberg also feel more confident that they can help mitigate climate change as part of a collective effort. They are also more willing to take action themselves, by contacting elected officials or giving time and money to campaigns. We call this the Greta Thunberg effect.
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But what if the Greta Thunberg effect is actually operating the other way? Did we instead find that people who are already more likely to act on climate change are just more familiar with Greta Thunberg? We canāt be certain because this type of study canāt prove cause and effect, it can only show associations. But statistical tests showed that this reverse explanation did not explain the data as well as our original one. Of course, reality may be more complex than what our models can capture. A positive feedback loop ā where both explanations operate in tandem to inspire climate action ā is also possible.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/greta-thunberg-effect-people-familiar-with-young-climate-activist-may-be-more-likely-to-act-154146
The abstract of the study;
The Greta Thunberg Effect: Familiarity with Greta Thunberg predicts intentions to engage in climate activism in the United States
Anandita Sabherwal, Matthew T. Ballew, Sander van der Linden, Abel Gustafson, Matthew H. Goldberg, Edward W. MaibachJohn E. Kotcher, Janet K. Swim, Seth A. Rosenthal, Anthony Leiserowitz
Despite Greta Thunberg’s popularity, research has yet to investigate her impact on the public’s willingness to take collective action on climate change. Using crossāsectional data from a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults (N = 1,303), we investigate the āGreta Thunberg Effect,ā or whether exposure to Greta Thunberg predicts collective efficacy and intentions to engage in collective action. We find that those who are more familiar with Greta Thunberg have higher intentions of taking collective actions to reduce global warming and that stronger collective efficacy beliefs mediate this relationship. This association between familiarity with Greta Thunberg, collective efficacy beliefs, and collective action intentions is present even after accounting for respondentsā overall support for climate activism. Moderated mediation models testing age and political ideology as moderators of the āGreta Thunberg Effectā indicate that although the indirect effect of familiarity with Greta Thunberg via collective efficacy is present across all ageāgroups, and across the political spectrum, it may be stronger among those who identify as more liberal (than conservative). Our findings suggest that young public figures like Greta Thunberg may motivate collective action across the U.S. public, but their effect may be stronger among those with a shared political ideology. Implications for future research and for broadening climate activistsā appeals across the political spectrum are discussed.
Read more: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jasp.12737
For what it is worth I think Greta has galvanised lots of young people to protest – but I suspect she mostly only appeals to people who are already believers.
I tried watching Greta’s speeches a few times, it was not a pleasant experience – like watching a toddler in a store throw a public temper tantrum, except with more words.
Climate activists from what I have seen walk a fine line between anger and despair; they are just as nasty towards fellow activists who who have lost all hope as they are towards unbelievers.
Greta is likely a real asset to leaders trying to manage climate extremists dancing on the edge of despair, because Greta seems to push them towards activism.
What a weird wold we live in now…people are actually paid to do research on something called The Greta Thunberg Effect!
and some take it seriously…no doubt there’ll be PhDs granted in this exciting new field soon.
We’re doomed I tell you! /sarc
Don’t panic!
And don’t forget your towel….
The answer is 42… To the meaning of life, the universe and everything.
And scientists have indeed discovered an “Infinite Improbability Drive” – they use one for all the climate models! Douglas Adams was prophetic!
Here’s a saying Douglas Adams coined, which applies to the Cult of Thermageddon, and equally applies to the Church of Wokism in the form of a prayer:
“Protect me from knowing what I donāt need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I donāt know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.”
Compared to our current situation, the universe of Doug Adams seems saner every day.
The downside of the productivity of fossil fuels is the volume of navel gazing useless idiots it has spawned. Pol Pot and Co attempted to fix that downside an irony that shouldn’t be lost on said useless idiots looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Apologies observa, but you have the useless idiots looking in the wrong end of the horse.
They shove their visual/thinking parts at least head deep where the sun’s TSI does not shine. Some, e.g. manniacal, have been known to submerge up to their ankles.
Somewhere, there is a committee reviewing research proposals and they voted to support Greta groupies acting out their ignorance.
These committee members should be publicly named and shamed for their waste of research funding.
Especially, for their accepting such a contrary nebulous result.
Some in the Indian government are not happy with Greta.
https://www.dw.com/en/greta-thunberg-under-fire-for-tweeting-about-indian-farmers-toolkit/a-56458306
I saw that too, it’s so obvious she’s a puppet.
This is not the first time that we’ve seen her handlers’ grubby little fingerprints all over “her” tweets.
Personally I always take what petulant teenagers have to say very seriously.
Being disgusted with activists exploiting a girl with Asperger’s syndrome fits being familiar with Greta Thunberg, but not in the way the study means.
So they are unable to distinguish cause and effect but get to publish their inconclusive, meaningless non-result anyway. You gotta love psychology.
To their credit they admitted it.
Yeah, right, they admit what they believe isn’t worth a hill of beans, but what else can one do with a PhD in psychology and a six figure salary … especially when all the money is going to fund climate papers?
Your comment Eric, implies that the soft science pseudo scientists did not realize they were wasting everyone’s time until they typed up their results…
They should return the funds they wasted, plus interest.
And rooster crowing causes sunrise just as increasing CO2 causes warming?
Wait, maybe moonbatsā obsession with the climate non-emergency causes them to become familiar with Grrrrrrrrrrreta, and warming causes increasing CO2. But the rooster obviously does cause the sun to riseāsettled science!
Meanwhile Europe came close to a South Australia style grid collapse as network frequency rose by 0.6Hz in Croatia. France and Italy had to cut off all major industrial users to prevent the whole grid collapsing !!
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Europes-Unforeseen-Renewables-Problem.html
MSM seems to have hidden this event almost as well as Hunter Bidens laptop.
“unforeseen”
Euope may come close again to a blackout with the extreme weather that is currently heading their way (and our way, too).
I’m sure glad I don’t have to depend on windmills and /or solar panels for my heating needs. I’m confident I will have all the warmth i need regardless of how cold it gets.
I bet a lot of Europeans can’t say that. And they aren’t even close to running their whole economies on windmills and solar. They can’t run their grid now with the amount of unreliables they are currently using. And it’s just going to get worse for them the more they head down the unreliable road.
The more familiar I am with Greta, the more familiar I am with climate alarmism.
I am familiar enough with Greta to laugh at the āscienceā of CAGW
For me, familiarity with Greta drives me to drink.
That reminds me, a couple if weeks ago I invented a new drink called The Biden.
You know those big bottles of booze they sell at Costco?
Yeah. ONE of those.
You drink the whole bottle as quickly as you can. Soon you’ll be as coherent as POTUS.
Biden can’t read a paragraph on his monitor without making major gaffes and you imply President Trump is incoherent?
Trump did all of this while fighting flagrant abuse, slanderous lies, scorched Earth tactics by democrats and bogus impeachment charges.
More accomplishments in four years than most Presidents since Theodore Roosevelt have managed to achieve over their entire time in office.
Yet, you falsely slight president Trump with another libelous insinuation.
Most published research findings are false. Most of the time the researchers get away with it because nobody tries to replicate their work.
There is one field where replication is routinely attempted. That’s because, when drug companies find research they think they can turn into drugs, the first thing they do is try to replicate the work. They fail as much as nine times out of ten. link
There’s no reason to think medical research is particularly bad when compared with other fields. It’s actually a kind of corruption endemic in all of academia. link
Given the widespread knowledge of the problem, I’m not optimistic that the problem will be seriously addressed any time soon. It should have happened already if it were going to happen at all.
My new mantra: Defund the universities.
I’ll hazard a guess that there is a high likelihood that much of the failure is due to the over use of computers, statistics and no funding for courses in logic.
When I was a young man, the brightest people I knew would become PhD candidates. With my children’s generation, it seems that many of the mediocre students now have a PhD. I can’t believe that all of them are bright enough to do original research and add to mankind’s knowledge. There is too much funding and there are too many graduate student positions available.
The colleges have become PhD mills. The govenment pays all the costs through student loans, so the colleges make room for as many students as they can get in the door, with not nearly enough focus on qualifications.
Notice how the fees have increased in relation to the increased admissions. Now kids are leaving college with a greater debt burden than their parents had after years of marriage, a mortgage, a car and a house full of furniture.
Yeah, the colleges are getting over like bandits. I think Harvard has something like $50 billion in the bank. Unbelievable! A lot of that $50 billon is taxpayer money.
Since the government is so willing to fork over those loans, the schools simply take advantage of the situation and JACK up the tuition. This, alone, is the reason the tuition’s are so high! Many of us old timers WORKED our way through college and owed NOTHING once we graduated! Now, kids think that when they earn that shiny new degree they will be able to get a job that earns as much as the company president makes! Even if it’s something like ‘liberal arts’! We already have far TOO MANY ‘liberals’!
I’ve observed the same thing. Odd how that seems to work.
“Defund the universities.”
I agree. We are going to have to have a major reform of our education systems, if our personal freedoms are to survive.
Currently, the schools are teaching divisiveness, and sedition toward the United States.
The Left has taken over the schools, and we are paying the price now for allowing it to go on for so long.
I found this article that has an interesting except:
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-evolutionary-mystery-of-left-handedness
“The Anglo-Saxon lyft means weak or broken, and even modern dictionaries include such meanings for left as ādefective,ā ācrippled,ā āawkward,ā āclumsy,ā āinept,ā and āmaladroit,ā the latter one borrowed from French, translated literally as ābad right.ā Most definitions of left reduce to an image of doubtful sincerity and clumsiness, and the Latin word for left, sinister, is a well-known beauty.”
I found that very amusing. Sounds like the Left I know. š
Yep.
And by the same token, people familiar with Jim Jones were more likely to drink KoolAid.
(Griff, what flavors are in vogue now?)
Griff takes it intravenously……. no flavor needed.
giffiepoo prefers mauve.
My familiarity with Greta seems to have driven me in the opposite direction to the lemmings. Oh well, itās tough being a contrarian.
Lucky guy – you’ve been selected for free camping this summer. There’s even a new Tee-shirt just waiting for you to go pick up!
In my youth Esso had a slogan: ‘put a tiger in your tank’.
It didn’t do much for my 1956 beetle.
The equivalent nowadays is: ‘put a monster in your tank’:
Excellent sales gimmick…
…. just decided to FILL UP THE TANK !!
I drive a V8. š
A 30 horsepower, tops, bug?
And that horsepower is likely measured at the engine, not the wheels.
What kind of miracle were you expecting from Esso gasoline? 31 horsepower?
https://twitter.com/aDissentient/status/1357987643393466370
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EtiKfXgXcAAGU9Y?format=jpg&name=900×900
This is insane, I cannot believe it:
Birds Of A Feather Flock Together
wow, Modern Science is truly fantastic. We’re almost certain of inventing The Square Wheel inside the next century at this rate!
Seriously though, it explains Tribalism and the polarised nature of this whole thing and, truly bless her, Greta is showing that up.
Thus, if the folks extended their thinking/research they might be onto something.
It will not be a solution directly for Climate Change (such as emission reduction or carbon capture) but it will be an insight into Magical Thinking.
That is what’s powering this thing.
If they or someone took another small step to find out the root cause of Magical Thinking (its very simple, been known about for decades **) THEN Climate Change will be fixed.
** Ancell Keys was The Father of Magical Thinking
Something about Aspergers and Autistics is that they don’t hardly ever drink alcohol
I’m sure everyone will agree that that gives you A Very Clear Head at all times.
Also a very a good memory/recall function linked to an extremely agile and inventive mind.
In my experience of such people, they are really very special.
Where it all unravels for them, is that they also find it quite impossible to engage in mendacity. They simply don’t see the point of it.
Thus, they will come out with things that a lot of people will find hurtful
A small sample of such deleicate flowers=
bleeding hearts
political correctees
Grauniad readers
climate scientists
socialists in general
BBC
IOW, folks whose Stock-in-Trade is the passing of ‘Little White Untruths’
Antarctic Explorers not least – hence why the place is melting. when its not
Thus, folks really do want to be careful sidling up to Greta, she is certainly guaranteed to say something that will hurt them mightily.
Trust me, I do have the T-Shirt
Have I described anyone even remotely (haha) familiar here?
2 people and possibly with brutal honesty, 3 with self included but with BIG proviso
(Possibly also Weepy Bill. I would put Bill and myself into the same bracket, we’re victims of Emotional Lability= what happens to survivors of Severe Brain Trauma events
One might include car/motorcycle crashes in that but the most oft occurring cause is simple ‘Stroke’. That was me 17 years ago)
Whaddya reckon, was Mr Spock based on an Autistic?
I can’t see how he wasn’t
And the pointy ears were put there for muppets.
viz: childish types who engage in Tribalism and enjoy picking fights on matters of mind-numbing triviality. CO2 not least.
But the ears also as a bit of a ‘warning’ that you might just be venturing into a place you find hard to handle, especially if you’re prone to conclusion jumping and magical thinking.
These being the very sorts who lack Empathy and find it hard to read Body Language.
They will over-react and panic when the penny drops, such as when when the Autistic says as they surely will, something they find hurtful but the Autistic finds trivial.
Hence the goings-on in the recent election?
As people across the world are forced into mental health trauma by Covid induced draconian state diktats, that are driving the vulnerable into ever lonelier existence. Some one thought, it was a good time to study an emotional pubescent late developer. Not just a random emotional late developer but someone who has documented mental health issues. They wanted to see if the condition is influencing others.
A study!! Case proven then, I would say she does.
I played a video of Greta to my 12 y.o. who does not fully understand English and this is what she commented:
-“Like XXX (a somehow challenged classmate) when he forgets to take his 10’o clock medication.”
97% of scientists agree that exposure to Greta causes climate alarmism.
Well slap my arse and call me Sally
They’ve discovered the Amazon effect – you know the one: “Because you watched “Renewables for Dummies” we think you’ll like Greta Thunberg”.
Dipsticks.
Hi Sally !!
The Greta Effect. How ignorance and pushy parents make fruitcakes appear important.
The shutdown of learning in our primary and secondary schools, especially 6-10 grade is going to create an Army of illiterates in 4 years with no skills other than being anarchists and Antifa thugs. Can you say āRed Army?ā
This should read: People are more likely to act like a moron on climate change if they are familiar with Greta Thunberg.
On YouTube: “His Holiness the Dalai Lama In Conversation with Greta Thunberg and Leading Scientists”
Studies show that 99.9999% of people who aren’t familiar with Gerta “Thunderpants” Thornburg live under rocks or in caves.
And people who do studies about familiarity with Greta Thunderpants are the most likely to believe climate Armageddon is only a few days away, all magical beings voted for Biden, and Al Gorical is only trying to help the little people.
Must be a very weird kink that attracts them to Greta. She must be one of the least attractive human beings in existence.
She would look a lot better if she would quit scowling.
Smile, Greta. You know just putting your lips in a smile pose, even if you don’t feel like smiling, will make you feel better. It’s personal psychological manipulation, but in a good way.
I worry about Greta’s health. The last time I saw her speak (last week) she looked like she was in “panic mode”. She was berating the Biden administraton for not doing enough about reducig CO2!
The alarmists have scarred Greta to the point she appears to be losing control of herself.
It’s child abuse, what the alarmists have done to Greta and all the other gullible folks in the world who are suffering mental disorders because of what they think is about to happen to the Earth’s climate.
Greta, go check out the regional surface temperature chart for Sweden. I bet Sweden has been cooling since the 1930’s.
The Earth isn’t warming Greta, it’s cooling. That’s not suppose to happen if CO2 is driving the temperatures. Yet it is happening. What should that tell us? Well, perhaps CO2 is not really the control knob of the Earth’s climate.
So stop worrying so much and look into things a little deeper and you will find there is nothing to fear from CO2.
“authors admit it is possible the explanation is people who want to act on climate change seek out familiarity with Greta.” 100% correct. Without a doubt Greta is not the brains behind it. She is the social hub that all committed climate hoaxers gravitate to.
Lack of science knowledge is best for “driving” activism.
See. The left knows how to communicate, even thought they don’t have any actual facts on their side. They’ve given their cause a face and sympathy
People are not interested in facts, just a good story.
Soft science pseudo scientists make assumptions and leap to conclusions even as they admit ignorance…
In other words, ‘read this article and lose knowledge while increasing prejudicial bias’.
i.e., A complete waste of time.
So the new leader of environmental activism is an ignorant, chronically truant, mentally ill teenager who tells the adults “how dare you” burn fossil fuels to generate power, drive to work, heat our homes, or run snowplows. Why doesn’t she tell John Kerry “how dare” he take a private jet to Iceland to receive a climate science award?
But we should still dedicate a song to Greta: “Teenage Wasteland”.