Are we attending to climate change? A systematic review of the cognitive science literature

Climate change poses immense global challenges. To meet these challenges, there has been increased research interest in climate change psychology. An emerging field of research has studied the degree to which attention is captured by different types of climate change relevant information. The current review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the research that focuses on the capture of attention by climate change relevant information and the factors that moderate this capture of attention. We thoroughly examined 12 empirical studies (18 experiments, 2164 participants) from the literature that investigated the relationship between attention and various types of climate-relevant information. The results revealed that climate change information is captured by attention in the majority of the experiments included in the review. This finding is consistent across different types of stimuli (such as images, text, and graphs) and measurements (such as reaction time, eye movement, and accuracy). Moreover, individual differences, such as implicit climate attitudes, liberal political orientation, and dispositional optimism may moderate the level of attentional capture by climate-relevant information. The review also provides insight and directions for future research and calls for action to translate the current findings at the cognitive level into impactful changes at the public level.