A new study shows how positive stories about characters whose actions match their intentions change the minds of readers
By Sarah DeWeerdt, Anthropocene, March 1, 2022
Stories in which characters take action with an intent to protect the climate make readers more likely to support climate policies and more likely to say they’ll take pro-environmental actions themselves, according to a new study.
The findings provide hints about how to construct climate-related stories—both fiction and nonfiction—to best reach readers. Fiction about climate change, or “cli-fi,” tends toward the dystopian, and nonfiction climate narratives often focus on victims of climate change. But that leaves out a whole set of potentially persuasive stories, the study suggests.
“Short, realistic, and personalized stories about commonplace heroes taking pro-environmental actions in their everyday lives—because they are motivated to address climate change—can resonate with people,” says study team member Ganga Shreedhar, a behavioral economist at the London School of Economics in the UK.