Climate emotions and affective dilemmas: A psychological and philosophical study of their normative principles and the public perceptions

Climate emotions have recently become a matter of normative scrutiny, including questions about how oneself or others ought to feel in the face of climate change (as opposed to how we and others actually feel) – a phenomenon we refer to as the normativization of climate emotions. As the climate crisis continues new emotional reactions, affective dilemmas, and emotional disagreements may emerge.

The normativity of climate emotions remains understudied.

The first aim of this project is to conduct novel interdisciplinary theoretical research to examine the normative standards that seem to apply to climate emotions from the psychological and philosophical normativity literature.

The second aim is to conduct empirical analyses to study how the public engages in and perceives the normativity of climate emotions, climate affective dilemmas and other affective disagreements.

These analyses will also examine how climate affective dilemmas may influence wellbeing, social relationships (e.g. trust, blame), and engagement in climate action.

Based on the findings, concrete guidelines will be developed for how to reason through and solve affective dilemmas, relying on philosophical methodology of critical analysis and ethical principles, combined with applied settings methods from psychology.

These guidelines are expected to benefit the public and professions involved in climate communication with the highest potential to influence people’s climate emotions (e.g. journalism or education).