The psychology of real-world collective climate action: A mixed-methods approach

This study aimed to understand why people join small-team action on the climate crisis and what makes them effective. Over 7 weeks, college students (Study 1: N = 34, Study 2: N = 45) received training, acted in small teams, and responded to open-ended questions about their plans, actions and reasoning alongside survey-based self-reported beliefs. At 6 months, follow-up interviews were conducted. From a rich set of results there were two main take-aways. First, to understand the psychology of collective action, it is critical to measure real-world action in addition to intentions and beliefs. Here we found that even these highly motivated participants only translated 54% of their intentions to verified action in Study 1 and 66% in Study 2; therefore, merely measuring intentions would provide an incomplete picture. And whereas self- and collective efficacy survey scales showed significant increases, these changes did not relate to verified action. Second, in the context of a real-world collective action study, this study shows that it is possible to derive psychological variables bottom-up, from the data, rather than only relying on psychological variables that are derived top-down from theories in the literature. Across both studies, a psychological construct which we term “social obligation” was significantly related to action. This construct, which also connotes commitment to one’s group or the norms by which one’s group works, is not readily featured in existing collective action research. These results may be useful for social movement organizers, and for advancing psychological theories of real-world collective action. • participants learned the skills of planning and performing collective climate action through a seven-week intervention • a new method was developed to assess verified collective climate action • self- and collective efficacy increased but did not relate to verified collective action • the psychological variable of social obligation related to verified collective action in both studies