🌟 Warm congrats to Dr. Deidra Miniard on publishing another paper from her dissertation work. 🌟
Abstract: Social distance refers to the perceived psychological distance between the self and another person on dimensions such as race and class, and influences climate change attitudes and behavior. In two online experiments, we investigated the effect of manipulating social distance on donation to a climate organization, how soon participants want action on climate change, and psychological distance of climate change. Study 1 (N = 1150) asked participants to read a vignette which manipulated the race and income class of a climate victim, and Study 2 (N = 1248) changed only the race of the climate victim. Participants who reported feeling similar to the hypothetical climate victim were more likely to donate to a climate organization (Study 2; 46.6% who perceive themselves to be similar versus 34.0% who perceive themselves to be different). We also find that Republican participants who perceive the climate victim as similar want action sooner than Republican participants who view the victim as different. Finally, participants who perceive the victim as similar to themselves also view climate change as less psychologically distant. However, since perceived similarity was not randomly assigned, these relationships should not be interpreted as causal. Our findings suggest that feelings of similarity to climate victims may relate to climate attitudes and behaviors, though this connection requires further investigation.