Sixteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

Climate psychology research investigates the intersection of the transformations in technological and behavioural practices, and of social, political, and economic systems required to mitigate and to adapt to global warming. It also attends to the assessment and treatment of mental health impacts related to experience of climate change. As such, climate psychology research has interdisciplinary relevance, objectives, and implications. The variation in research aims and methods mobilized to study this interdisciplinarity poses challenges to the integration and communication of results. Attempts to universalize the evidence base have often led to the prioritization of positivist methodologies. However, there are limits to what can be quantified, and limitations to what quantification alone can reveal. Other approaches may permit the exploration of concepts, correlations, and dynamics essential to the formulation of innovative research questions, designs, experimentation, and productive communication across disciplines. This paper argues for a universalization of the climate psychology evidence base through the application of methodological interdisciplinarity to research efforts by prioritizing conceptual clarity and precision in research design, measurement, and communication rather than attempting to standardize methodology. This permits an accurate appraisal of findings within epistemological and methodological paradigms, and the situation of climate change as a whole. Using the example of recent empirical findings about effects of psychological defenses on individuals thinking about their mitigation and adaptation behaviours, this paper demonstrates how the rigorous contextualization of research questions, methods and results permits the generation and interpretation of data within a universal but methodologically heterogeneous evidence base.

Presenters

Jennifer Persmann
PhD Candidate; Psychotherapist/Psychologist, Clinical Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal; Private Practice, Quebec, Canada