INSTITUT FÜR PSYCHOLOGIE

Neue Publikation!

Urban, J. & Kaiser, F. G. (2022). Environmental attitudes in 28 European countries de­rived from atheoretically compiled opinions and self-reports of behavior. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 875419.

Available free of charge at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.875419

Abstract:

People differ in their personal commitment to fighting climate change and protecting the environment. The question is, can we validly measure people’s commitment by what they say and what they claim they do in opinion polls? In our research, we demonstrate that opinions and reports of past behavior can be aggregated into comparable depictions of people’s personal commitment to fighting climate change and protecting the environment (i.e., their environmental attitudes). In contrast to the commonly used operational scaling approaches, we ground our measure of people’s environmental attitudes in a mathematically formalized psychological theory of the response process—the Campbell paradigm. This theory of the response process has already been extensively validated, and its relevance for manifest behavior has repeatedly been shown as well. In our secondary analysis of Eurobarometer data (N = 27,998) from 28 European countries, we apply the Campbell paradigm to a set of indicators that was not originally collected to be aggregated into a single scale. With our research, we propose a distinct way to measure behavior-relevant environmental attitudes that can be used even with a set of indicators that was originally atheoretically compiled. Overall, our study suggests that the Campbell paradigm provides a sound psychological measurement theory that can be applied to cross-cultural comparisons in the environmental protection domain.

In seinem Vortrag as Invited keynote am Leuven Institute of Advanced Study in Löwen, Belgien, spricht Prof. Florian Kaiser über umweltfreundliches verhalten und wie es gefördert werden kann. Die komplette Keynote kann hier angesehen werden.

Prof. Florian Kaiser sprach mit Kathrin Kühn vom Deutschlandfunk über die derzeitige, symbolische Wirkung von Masken in der Corona-Pandemie. Sein Kommentar ist aufbereitet in einem kurzen Beitrag, der hier angehört werden kann.

Neue Publikation!

Bauske, E., Kibbe, A. & Kaiser, F. G. (2022). Opinion polls as measures of commitment to goals: Environmental attitude in Germany from 1996 to 2018. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 81, 101805.

Available free of charge until June, 16th 2022: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1e%7EG8zzKDEWDq

Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2022.101805

Abstract:

Can opinion polls be used to measure people's personal commitment to protecting the environment over the years, even with data that were not originally compiled from a longitudinal perspective? In a secondary analysis of 12 data sets collected over the course of 22 years and containing more than 28,000 person records, we demonstrate that opinions and reports of behavior can be aggregated into valid depictions of people's personal commitment to protecting the environment (i.e., their environmental attitudes). In contrast to traditional scaling approaches that define such measures by the item sets used for measurement, we grounded our measure in a psychological measurement theory of the response process—the Campbell paradigm. We found that the average level of environmental attitude in Germany has increased slightly since 1996. With a new sample of 1,689 respondents, we validated our estimates of people's environmental attitudes with estimates of the same people's annual CO₂ emissions.

Highlights:

• People's environmental attitudes reveal commitment to environmental protection.

• Commitment to protecting the environment can be measured with opinion polls.

• Fragmented data from distinct samples can form a comparable commitment measure.

• People committed to environmental protection leave smaller carbon footprints behind.

• Since 1996, environmental attitude has been on a slow but steady rise in Germany.

Neue Publikation!

Kaiser, F. G., Kibbe, A. & Hentschke, L. (2021). Offsetting behavioral costs with per­so­nal atti­tude: A slightly more complex view of the attitude-behavior relation. Per­so­na­li­ty and Indi­vi­du­al Differences, 183, 111158.

Available free of charge for the next 50 days: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1dUlWheKdmtb1

Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.111158

Abstract:

In this research, we propose that the notorious attitude-behavior gap—the notion that people profess attitudes without taking real actions—might also stem from ignoring the fact that manifest behavior typically involves costs (i.e., personal resources such as time, money, exertion). In two quasi-field experiments with convenience samples (N₁ = 396; N₂ = 252), we demonstrate that the people who performed increasingly costly behavior professed progressively stronger attitudes. Our findings suggest that the costs that obstruct behavior must be offset by attitudes before behavior can manifest itself. Thus, there is a need to stop confusing weak attitude-behavior correlations with the behavioral irrelevance of attitudes. To avoid underestimating the importance of people's attitudes concerning environmental protection, the strength of attitudes relative to the associated behavioral costs must be considered.

Highlights:

• A too simplistic view of the attitude-behavior relation makes it appear inconsistent.

• Attitudes reflect the occurrence probabilities of attitude-relevant behavior.

• Progressively stronger attitudes compensate for increasingly costly behavior.

• Surmounted behavioral costs coincide with the strength of environmental attitudes.

• Undemanding opinions must not be confused with behavior-relevant attitudes.