Psychology of Climate Change Denial

The psychology of climate change denial is the study of why people reject or minimize the scientific consensus on climate change despite the strength of the evidence supporting it. Researchers have identified psychological barriers that stand in the way of the mitigation, adaptation, and environmental stewardship that acceptance of the evidence would otherwise support, including how the issue is cognitively processed, a person's broader ideological worldview, comparisons to other people whose behavior seems to excuse inaction, the perceived costs of changing behavior and existing momentum against change, distrust of experts and authorities, the perceived risks of changing established habits, and the sense that individual behavioral change is inadequate to the scale of the problem. Distance in time, physical space, and personal influence over the problem further weakens people's motivation to accept and act on the evidence. The field sits within climate psychology, itself a sub-discipline of environmental psychology.