WSU researcher finds future-oriented women most likely to fight global warming
PULLMAN, Wash. – Politicians who discredit global warming risk losing a big chunk of the female vote. A new study found women who consider the long-term consequences of their actions are more likely to adopt a liberal political orientation and take consumer and political steps to reduce global warming.
Jeff Joireman, associate professor of marketing at Washington State University, demonstrated that “future-oriented” women are the voting bloc most strongly motivated to invest money, time and taxes toward reducing global warming.
Previous studies have shown that women and those with liberal viewpoints are more likely to act to protect the environment than men and conservatives. Joireman’s model helps explain why this occurs and is the first to document the combined influence of gender and concern for the future.
The findings were published this month online in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.
Joireman (YOUR-man) said belief in global warming is positively linked to outdoor temperatures, so in light of recent record-breaking heat, people may have climate change on their minds during next week’s midterm elections, especially future-oriented women.
It just so happens that September was the hottest on record in 135 years, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects 2014 will likely break the record for hottest year.
This year’s political contests are also heated, with environmental ads surging to record levels. More than 125,000 political spots cite energy, climate change and the environment – more than all other issues except health care and jobs – according to an analysis by Kantar Media/CMAG.
Social dilemma
Motivating the wider populace to engage and take action on global warming, however, is an ongoing challenge, said Joireman.
“Decisions that affect global warming pose a dilemma between what is good for individuals in the ‘here and now’ versus what is good for society and the environment ‘in the distant future,'” he said.
“Unfortunately, it can take several decades for the lay public and lawmakers to realize there is a problem that needs fixing. This is clearly the case with global warming, as the consequences of our current lifestyle are not likely to be fully realized for another 25 to 50 years.”
Live for today or tomorrow?
Hoping to clarify another piece of the global warming psyche, Joireman investigated how the time element contributes to people’s willingness to address climate change.
For the study, he focused on the personality trait called “consideration of future consequences.”
Those who score high on the trait scale tend to be very worried about the future impacts of their actions, while those with lower scores are more concerned with immediate consequences.
Joireman and his team polled 299 U.S. residents, with an age range from 18 to 75. Forty-eight percent of the respondents were female and 80 percent were Caucasian.
Women scored higher than men on liberal political orientation, environmental values, belief in global warming, and willingness to pay to reduce global warming when their concern with future consequences was high.
But, it wasn’t a simple gender difference. Women scored lower than men on liberal political orientation and willingness to pay when their concern with future consequences was low.
Future-oriented women step up
Joireman said a specific chain of influences makes future-oriented women more likely to take action. First, they are more politically liberal and liberals are more likely to value the environment, which makes them more likely to believe in global warming. All together, these effects lead to a willingness to pay more in goods, services and extra taxes to help mitigate climate change.
“Future-oriented women, for example, might be more willing to pay higher prices for fuel-efficient cars, alternative forms of transportation and energy efficient appliances. They might also eat less meat, all to help lower greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.
Appealing
The question for environmental advocates now, said Joireman, is to “figure out how to motivate all people to engage in behaviors that reduce global warming. To be effective, we will likely need to tailor persuasive messages to appeal to the consequences people value.”
“If people are not worried about future consequences, we have to try to appeal to their more immediate concerns – like encouraging them to buy a fuel efficient vehicle so they can instantly start saving money on gas.”
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how does he know they are “future oriented” now?
Ive recently had 2 women separately remark they can feel the effects of Global Warming.
This is in San Francisco where temps are cool most of the time.
My thought is that both of these women are feeling the effect of being menopausal.
Next time my response will be
“Global Warming doesnt cause hot flashes.”
Politicians who push global warming propaganda risk losing an even bigger chunk of the thinking vote and Independents, regardless of gender.
I’ll withhold judgement on this topic until The Lewandowsky weighs in.
Now we have a misogynist marketeer telling us that women are less smart than men. That only happens when the man on the other side is cute…
People – men as well as women – who are concerned about the future are likely to vote for policies that they think will bring about the future they desire. It is perfectly rational behaviour, even for those of us who know there is little chance of any politician or party delivering on the promises.
Since the overwhelming weight of the propaganda has been on the dangers of CO2 production, it is not surprising that people who are concerned about the future tend to want a reduction in CO2 production. They are not irrational, merely misinformed.
The “study” does not seem to establish that women are, in general, more likely to be “future oriented” than men. It does seem to swallow the AGW story holus bolus.
There is nothing important here. Just the usual ventilating about American parochial politics and the American paranoia about “liberals” and socialism.
I think after this and no shortage of other things that Susie-B and EKStanton would be for the repeal of the 19th Amendment.
299 US residents, stratified by gender, age and political orientation.
This survey samples 350 million people?
You gotta be joking!
And libertarian, ineffectual, middle aged males with dubious social skills are less likely to?
Moderators, this poster needs to be kicked off of this forum.
Second the motion.
Garymount,
Why?
John
John asks why. Because you haven’t seen this persons other worthless posts that add no value, but I have.
garymount,
Thank you for offering your reason to have her/him blocked.
I have seen many of her/his comments and recall seeing them largely because of the catchy handle ‘Siberian_Husky’ and do recall somewhat that he/she has quite a bit of edginess to his/her comment style and starkly differing content. Does she/he violate site rules? I sincerely ask.
The article that is the subject of this post stated “WSU researcher finds future-oriented women most likely to fight global warming”. As to Siberian_Husky’s rejoinder “And libertarian, ineffectual, middle aged males with dubious social skills are less likely to?”, she/he offers a different collective to consider than the article’s collective. Both are stereotyping, so there is noteworthy irony to posit a conversely different and controversial stereotype.
How does that comment justify blocking her/him?
John
…paint with the same broad brush you do. Stereotype much?
M Courtney
October 28, 2014 at 8:36 am
says…
“Journal of Environmental Psychology – amazing that such a thing exists.”
Should be Environmental Psychiatry, or perhaps Pathology.
They are sick, you know.
Liberal women are lousy at science, but they are very good at conforming to cultural marxism.
I am socially liberal, fiscally conservative. And am not very good at conforming to cultural Marxism. Explain me.
This is a political check list of groups and message targets and not real research.
What!!! You mean Liberal women are more likely to believe dogma that that encourages government control of everything? You don’t say!
The only common denominator is Liberalism. Liberals will buy in to anything that spends other peoples money, and allows them to gain social control over the rest of us. There is zero evidence of measurable AGW. Everything we have seen to date is within the range of natural variability. Computer models have gone snake-eyes, and are predisposed to show massive warming where none occurred. It is not science, it is politics.
Reads article…
http://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/6851863/3/stock-photo-6851863-woman-looking-over-her-glasses.jpg
Is that Gail? Check in…Happy Halloween Gail, wherever you are?
Maybe leading the werewolves and zombies to the truth in this world of mythology
Based upon what I have been reading, climate change polls at the bottom of most issues as a concern for voters, both men AND women. Consequently, I doubt that a candidate’s being anti-AGW will be a decisive issue for many women.
This is what I have learned so far. The horse was let out of the barn before daylight. More to come from the wicked pen of said Pamela Gray. The rest below are in quotes.
Abstract
The present work addresses calls to clarify the role of gender in climate change mitigation and adaptation by testing a theoretical model linking gender and concern with future and immediate consequences to mitigation actions through political orientation, environmental values, and belief in global warming (gender x time orientation → liberal political orientation → environmental values → belief in global warming → willingness to pay to reduce global warming). Drawing on a sample of 299 U.S. residents, structural equation modeling and bootstrapped indirect effects testing revealed support for the model. Interaction analyses further revealed that women scored higher than men on model variables among respondents who routinely consider the future consequences of their actions, but the gender difference was reversed among those low in concern with future consequences (on liberal political orientation and willingness to pay to reduce global warming). Practical and theoretical implications are considered.
Keywords
global warming;
climate change;
concern with future consequences;
environmental values;
political orientation;
gender
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 (509) 335 0191.1
Tel.: +1 (509) 339 4144.
Copyright © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Note to users: Accepted manuscripts are Articles in Press that have been peer reviewed and accepted for publication by the Editorial Board of this publication. They have not yet been copy edited and/or formatted in the publication house style, and may not yet have the full ScienceDirect functionality, e.g., supplementary files may still need to be added, links to references may not resolve yet etc. The text could still change before final publication.
Although accepted manuscripts do not have all bibliographic details available yet, they can already be cited using the year of online publication and the DOI, as follows: author(s), article title, Publication (year), DOI. Please consult the journal’s reference style for the exact appearance of these elements, abbreviation of journal names and use of punctuation.
When the final article is assigned to an volumes/issues of the Publication, the Article in Press version will be removed and the final version will appear in the associated published volumes/issues of the Publication. The date the article was first made available online will be carried over.
These are functionally equivalent statements:
As stated above:
The article does not show skill for guessing what women of any stripe might do.
As soon as this article actually gets published instead of just accepted, I will compare it against his own recommendations on how to get high quality research published. Should be interesting. Why? His number of surveys completed defies the number of variable involved. Surveys often need thousands of responses to be valid. His survey has less than 300 responders. Must not have budgeted for a statistician in that grant. Funny that. These surveys often do not have that in the budget. I soooo wonder why. Maybe Lewandowski can answer that question.
http://www.cb.wsu.edu/~jjoireman/How%20to%20Publish%20High-Quality%20Research%20-%20Workshop%20PPT%20-%20for%20web.ppt.pdf
Call me fricken unimpressed.
And to be forewarned, I just fixed my sis’ computer issue, had a hand in a few academic leaps and strides today, and am in love. Not to mention that I have had two hot toddies. You had better bring your A game.
Pam…You don’t make any sense, you call yourself ‘fiscally conservative’ but you say you vote for the people who burned the house down… and will again and again.
My votes have been with regard to individual equal rights and freedoms under the law. Those freedoms have been restricted from both sides of the political divide in the past, now, and likely in the future, and I WILL vote my conscience on those issues. Thankfully we are finally beginning to see scientific sense over-ride religious dogma about such things. As for fiscal responsibility, I will vote for whoever wants me to keep more of my hard-earned paycheck. And let’s hope that person, if put into office, will NOT roll back the individual rights and freedoms that are in place and gaining ground.
I would prefer to see the test done on technological education not gender as unfortunately retarded social attitudes also correlate this gender difference. Like so many statistics they are rubbish because the people, often deliberately, ask the wrong question or divide the sample on the wrong basis.
Would the study have the same impact if it said techno retards believe in AGW? I know in the women we know this is 100% true. Those who I know and understand the use of Fourier have 100% contempt for climate scientists.