COVID-19, climate change, and the finite pool of worry in 2019 to 2021 Twitter discussions

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Significance

According to Weber's psychological theory of the finite pool of worry, people avoid dealing with multiple negative events at the same time. Consistent with this theory, as people worry more about the COVID-19 pandemic, they tend to neglect the problem of climate change. Here, we examine the number and content of climate change discussions on Twitter from 2019 through 2021. We show that as COVID-19 cases and deaths increase, climate change tweets have a less negative sentiment. There is also less content associated with fear and anger, the emotions related to worry and anxiety. These results support the finite pool of worry hypothesis and imply that the pandemic redirects public attention from the important problem of climate change mitigation.

Abstract

Climate change mitigation has been one of the world's most salient issues for the past three decades. However, global policy attention has been partially diverted to address the COVID-19 pandemic for the past 2 y. Here, we explore the impact of the pandemic on the frequency and content of climate change discussions on Twitter for the period of 2019 to 2021. Consistent with the “finite pool of worry” hypothesis both at the annual level and on a daily basis, a larger number of COVID-19 cases and deaths is associated with a smaller number of “climate change” tweets. Climate change discussion on Twitter decreased, despite 1) a larger Twitter daily active usage in 2020 and 2021, 2) greater coverage of climate change in the traditional media in 2021, 3) a larger number of North Atlantic Ocean hurricanes, and 4) a larger wildland fires area in the United States in 2020 and 2021. Further evidence supporting the finite pool of worry is the significant relationship between daily COVID-19 cases/deaths on the one hand and the public sentiment and emotional content of climate change tweets on the other. In particular, increasing COVID-19 numbers decrease negative sentiment in climate change tweets and the emotions related to worry and anxiety, such as fear and anger.

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Most cited references 61

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Construal-level theory of psychological distance.

Yaacov Trope, Nira Liberman (2010)

People are capable of thinking about the future, the past, remote locations, another person's perspective, and counterfactual alternatives. Without denying the uniqueness of each process, it is proposed that they constitute different forms of traversing psychological distance. Psychological distance is egocentric: Its reference point is the self in the here and now, and the different ways in which an object might be removed from that point-in time, in space, in social distance, and in hypotheticality-constitute different distance dimensions. Transcending the self in the here and now entails mental construal, and the farther removed an object is from direct experience, the higher (more abstract) the level of construal of that object. Supporting this analysis, research shows (a) that the various distances are cognitively related to each other, (b) that they similarly influence and are influenced by level of mental construal, and (c) that they similarly affect prediction, preference, and action. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.