Author
Listed:
- Joanna Y Guan
- Ethan G Dutcher
- Philippe Goldin
- Sarah E Ahmadi
- Elena Fromer
- Sheri D Weiser
- Edward Maibach
- Aric A Prather
- Elissa S Epel
Abstract
Extreme worry about climate change can lead to maladaptive climate distress, defined as avoiding negative thoughts and feelings about climate. Avoiding negative thoughts and feelings (“experiential avoidance”) is a risk factor for clinical depression and anxiety. Greater ability for mindful metacognition may lead to greater tolerance of negative feelings and thus less maladaptive climate distress. To test this hypothesis, we assessed climate distress in a community sample of adults (n = 501) from the San Francisco Bay Area, before and after the severe wildfire season in 2021. Specifically, we measured experiential avoidance of distress about climate at baseline and 6 months later after the wildfire season. At baseline, climate distress was higher in women, and among people with lower trait mindfulness, higher generalized anxiety, and more liberal political ideology. Climate distress significantly increased across the sample after the wildfire season. However, this increase occurred in individuals with low mindfulness, but not high mindfulness, at baseline. As climate disasters become more frequent and severe, the ability to face the existential threat without severe distress will be an important adaptive ability and is hypothesized to help people stay engaged in climate actions. Here, we show that mindfulness may be a useful aid in maintaining lower climate distress over time, despite wildfire exposure.
Suggested Citation
Joanna Y Guan & Ethan G Dutcher & Philippe Goldin & Sarah E Ahmadi & Elena Fromer & Sheri D Weiser & Edward Maibach & Aric A Prather & Elissa S Epel, 2024.
"The role of trait mindfulness in moderating climate distress during wildfire season,"
PLOS Climate, Public Library of Science, vol. 3(12), pages 1-18, December.
Handle:
RePEc:plo:pclm00:0000524
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000524
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pclm00:0000524. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: climate (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/climate .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.