Work done in collaboration with Friedrich Götz (@ubcpsych.bsky.social), Andrés Gvirtz (@kingscollegelondon.bsky.social), @stephaniekramer.bsky.social (@pewresearch.org) , and Ara Norenzayan (UBC)

We outline some work done by our team and by others on the topic. We cover things like, why ecospirituality might be so prevalent around the world; how it might shape sustainable behavior through activating moral cognitions; and how being particularly connected with nature might benefit well-being.

how this ideational response to external threats (compared to others, like seeing the threat as part of an apocalyptic prophecy) mediates the kinds of responses a cultural group will have to those threats. 2/2

...We haven't treated childhood experiences as a separate psychological construct - maybe it could help build empathy and good faith across the political divide, especially given that liberals and conservatives both care about leaving a better world for future generations. 13/13

One interesting finding of this analysis is that childhood experiences in nature come out as an empirically distinct factor from other positive experiences in nature (instrumental benefits factor)... 12/n

...I suspect other processes are directly polarizing environmental attitudes. Other research suggests partisan news media is likely a major factor here. Pure speculation - I think partisan news media less so affects environmental motives than specific attitudes about climate change and policy. 11/n

These results seem to suggest that liberals and conservatives differ to a small degree in their environmental motives and that these differences account for some of the broader political differences observed in the literature, but... 10/n

To some extent they did. When including our environmental motives in a regression predicting preservation and utilization attitudes, it reduced the relationship between political affiliation and attitudes by about half (β=−0.96 to −0.64 for preservation and β = 0.65 to 0.32 for utilization). 9/n

We wanted to know if differences in these environmental motives might explain some of the broader political differences in environmental attitudes found in the literature. Primarily in preservation and utilization attitudes (see Milfont & Duckitt, 2010). 8/n