Abstract

BERTOLDO, Raquel Bohn  and  BOUSFIELD, Andréa Barbará S. Climate change social representations: context and implication effects. Temas psicol. [online]. 2011, vol.19, n.1, pp. 121-137. ISSN 1413-389X.

Being carbon emitting human activities at the origin of climate change, in order to attenuate this phenomenon our society would have change its behavior in what regards the environment. Another central issue is the individual implication with climate change, which is currently secondary in relation to other current issues. The aim of this study is to observe the impact of climate change enunciation context (an academic or an official one), and of the implication 'induced' upon the participant (strong or weak) on the 'felt' implication as well as on the structure the representation of this object. Results: the representation is structured around the elements 'heating', 'ice sheet melting' and 'sea level rise'. The object enunciation context affects the organization of the connections between elements: in the official context, the elements 'pollution' and 'human action result' are more important. This structure reorganization is heightened by the 'induced' implication. Effects on the 'felt' implication were not found. Conclusion: a modification on the frame of the representation, what is possibly made stronger by a higher implication, would probably affect the collective engagement and, consequently, the actions at both the individual and social levels to diminish, among other environmentally important issues, climate change

Keywords : Social representations; Structural analysis; Climate change.

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