5  The psychology of time, climate change, and human behavior

Anaïs Voşki

Stanford University

5.1 Context

This chapter aims to provide an overview of the psychological concepts relevant to climate change and human behavior from the perspective of time. By understanding how individuals perceive and prioritize time in relation to climate change, we can develop effective strategies to reduce temporal gaps and foster the kinds of individual and collective pro-environmental mitigation behaviors that are urgently needed to limit catastrophic climate and ecological breakdown (IPCC, 2022). The broader psychological literature on time and human behavior is extensive (Roeckelein, 2000); it includes people’s temporal perceptions, awareness, construal, experience, decisions, gratifications, and intertemporal choices within the cognitive, affective, and behavioral structures humans use to make sense of time (Strathman & Joireman, 2005, p. 4). While this chapter narrows the scope of inquiry to the specific context of climate change, it is not intended as an exhaustive literature review, but rather as a starting point for the most relevant concepts—in the current absence of other such systematic material, other than Pahl et al.’s (2014) selective review—that the reader is invited to further explore on their own. Each section first introduces the relevant concept within the general psychological literature and then contextualizes it within the climate change-specific literature.

Climate change, by its very nature, is a ‘wicked problem’ (Rittel & Webber, 1973), and especially a temporal ‘wicked problem’ for a species—Homo sapiens—whose average lifespan is around 73.4 years (WHO, 2019). The time scales of its negative effects are delayed by the phenomenon’s “extension into the future” (Pahl et al., 2014, p. 376): i.e., the time between carbon dioxide emission and its full warming effect may be decades or even centuries (Zickfeld & Herrington, 2015). Even within a single human lifespan, there are significant evolutionary mechanisms that constrain our understanding and interaction with these long-term temporal dynamics, confronting our “ancient brain [that] has not evolved much in thousands of years” (Gifford, 2011, p. 291) with unprecedented, planetary-level environmental deterioration. Even modern societal time horizons, such as four or five year election cycles, clash with the nature of climate change (Pahl et al., 2014). As such, with these physical and societal dynamics in mind, we now turn to the range of psychological concepts that aim to capture these uniquely human temporal attributes in the context of climate change behavior.

5.2 Temporal perspective and temporal orientation

The psychological concepts of temporal perspective and temporal orientation are closely related, and together they address individuals’ attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, and behaviors concerning time. More specifically, they help us understand how individuals (1) relate to time and (2) make decisions in the context of their relation to time. However, because these two concepts focus on slightly different aspects of individuals’ relationship with time, they also have different meanings and applications. In the context of this chapter, they capture different temporal influences on an individual’s climate change behavior, and it is thus important to explore this nuance for the potentially unique insights each concept may offer.

Temporal perspective or time perspective is understood as “the composite cognitive structures that characterize the way an individual projects, collects, accesses, values, and organizes events that reside in distinct temporal loci” (Lasane & O’Donnell, 2005, p. 12). Put more simply, these temporal loci refer to the past, present, and future, and using this temporal categorization helps us make sense of the world by giving order and coherence to events (Boyd & Zimbardo, 2005, p. 88). Numerous studies confirm these three temporal loci are indeed distinct (Joireman et al., 2008; Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999): we live in the present, but have stored and recalled past events, and can form plans and hopes for the future. Indeed, “between the abstract, psychological constructions of prior past and anticipated future events lies the concrete, empirically centered representation of the present action moment” (Boyd & Zimbardo, 2005, p. 88). While not expanded upon further in this chapter due to length, it is important to mention that within this framework, past, present, and future each contain the distinct dimensions of extension, density, valence, accessibility, content, and structural organization (Jones, 1993). The most widely used validated measurement tool is the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI), developed to measure individual variation and biases in time perspective, meaning an individual’s dominant perspective bias towards either the past, present, or future (Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999). Its five subscales consist of (1) Past-Negative, (2) Present-Hedonistic, (3) Future, (4) Past-Positive, and (5) Present-Fatalistic. A meta-analysis of 19 studies, representing over 6,000 participants, found associations between these five temporal perspectives and pro-environmental behaviors, and especially so for those higher in the third future time perspective, thus implicating this temporal perspective dimension as important in climate change behavioral outcomes (Milfont et al., 2012).

Relatedly, Kooji et al. (2018) have advanced the concept of Future Time Perspective (FTP), from previous disparate and cross-disciplinary conceptualizations to a common understanding of FTP that “focuses on an individual’s tendency to anticipate and structure one’s future and […] capture how an individual tends to experience situations and respond to them affectively and behaviorally”, with major consequences on a wide array of life domains, including health and risk behavior (p. 867). Humans, on average, struggle to envision the future further than 10-20 years (Tonn et al., 2006), and as such, mapping the determinant characteristics of those high on FTP, and even further, studying how to increase individuals’ FTP, is crucial.

Temporal orientation or time orientation can be understood as a cognitive bias, or if chronically elicited, an individual difference variable, toward being personally more past, present, or future oriented. It is “characteristic and predictive of how the individual will respond across a host of daily life choice situations” and “may include either habitual over- or underuse of one or more of these temporal frames” (Boyd & Zimbardo, 2005, p. 88-89). The most widely used measurement tool for mapping stable individual differences in temporal orientation, meaning the different importance people attach to the immediate vs. delayed consequences of their actions, is the Considerations of Future Consequences (CFC) scale (Strathman et al., 1994). The authors conceptualize this as “an intrapersonal struggle […] than an interpersonal struggle between benefit to self and others (i.e. social value orientation)” (Joireman et al., 2001, p. 137). Among the earliest evidence, Joireman and colleagues (2001) found people that are high in CFCs have stronger pro-environmental intentions, behaviors, and beliefs. In a more recent study, using a sample size of n=798 and with 81% power to detect a “small” regression effect, Geiger et al. (2021) found temporal orientation, and especially future orientation, to moderate the relationship between climate engagement and age, with higher CFCs indeed being more engaged with climate change.

5.3 The temporal dimension of psychological distance

The three most discussed psychological aspects of time are temporal perception, temporal orientation, and temporal construal (Strathman & Joireman, 2005, p. 5)—as such, following an overview of the previous two, we now turn to construal level theory (CLT) and the concept of psychological distance (PD) that is built upon it. CLT posits that we form “abstract mental construals of distal objects” (Trope & Liberman, 2010, p. 440), meaning that we make mental constructions of the past and present that are distinct from the present and its direct, immediate experiences. These mental constructions, representing the past and/or present, give rise to psychologically distant objects that translate into the subjective experience of PD (Trope & Liberman, 2010). In essence, PD encapsulates the idea that we respond differently when an object, event, or issue is perceived as close or far away (Maiella et al., 2020). It is conceptualized alongside the four dimensions of temporal distance (present versus future), spatial distance (near versus far), social distance (close others versus distant others), and hypothetical distance (real versus imaginary scenarios) (Trope & Liberman, 2010). While the focus here is on temporal distance for obvious reasons, it is worth noting that the dimensions of PD are often interrelated and mentally associated (Trope & Liberman, 2010), and this is especially the case for time and space. Indeed, spatial metaphors are often used to refer to time in everyday language and reasoning (Boroditsky, 2007), but even beyond that, time and space are both spacetime dimensions in physics theories (Lasane & O’Donnell, 2005, p. 12).

Nonetheless, the temporal dimension of PD plays a crucial role in the context of climate change. Study participants who noted not seeing climate change effects said they saw little reason to react but could still better visualize its effects when they were made personally relevant (Nicholson-Cole, 2005). While the world, including more geographically fortunate regions to-date, is undoubtedly warming, and increasingly and more visibly so in the most recent years, many people still either perceive climate change as a distant or future problem, or perceive it as being more severe in the future (Leiserowitz, 2005). These, at the very least, contribute to a temporal psychological disconnect between present actions and long-term climate consequences. Furthermore, this perception of temporal distance can result in reduced engagement and motivation to take immediate action.

While research to date has found a relation between PD and pro-environmental behaviors in the context of climate change, findings are not exactly consistent. A systematic review of 19 studies shows some people do not perform climate change mitigation behaviors despite perceiving climate change as real and psychologically proximal, while others do despite their PD to climate change, indicating that other psychological factors may also be at play (Maiella et al., 2020). Among the reviewed studies, 12 investigated temporal distance alongside other PD dimensions, with two focusing exclusively on the temporal dimension. Both used undergraduate student sample populations; the first examined temporal message framing in environmental advertising and its effect on pro-environmental behavioral intentions (Kim & Ahn, 2019), while the second more directly explored the relationship between temporal distance, actual behavior, and social norms (Soliman et al., 2018). The former found lower temporal distance associated with higher pro-environmental behavioral intention, but the latter, which also measured actual behavior and not just intent, only found this effect in combination with social norms (i.e., pro-environmental behavior as normative).

The most recent 30-study systematic review not only confirms these mixed findings, but argues that the PD of climate change, especially in terms of its effect on behavior, is categorically overestimated (van Valkengoed et al., 2023). One of the pillars the authors build this overall argument upon, based on 12 different opinion polls, is the premise that the temporal distance of climate change itself is hyperbolized. They posit that a “consistent majority of respondents indicated that they believed that the consequences of climate change are already occurring now or will occur within the next few years” (van Valkengoed et al., 2023, p. 363). However, a closer examination of this language reveals a potential conflation of present and future despite these being distinct theoretical temporal constructs, and indeed, within the ZTPI, “an individual’s score on one construct is unrelated to his or her score on the other construct” (Boyd & Zimbardo, 2005, p. 94). Nonetheless, van Valkengoed and colleagues’ (2023) work demonstrates that most studies (25 out of 30) failed to show that decreased PD to climate increases pro-environmental behaviors, although it could not comment on specific PD dimensions due to most experiments manipulating numerous dimensions simultaneously. They recommend that future research build on their finding that climate change is perceived as happening here and now by most people (Ibid., 2023). However, an important note here is the earlier observation by Pahl (2010) that a simple question-framing difference about behavior—i.e., asking study participants how instead of why to reduce plastic bag usage led them to estimate reducing this behavior quicker—and as such, it is suggested that this ‘how effect’ in psychological construals be further disentangled in future studies and systematic reviews.

Strategies to reduce the temporal distance of climate change include (1) the general umbrella approach of temporally framing it as more proximal, as well as (2) increased future self-continuity approaches. This latter posits that “when the future self shares similarities with the present self, when it is viewed in vivid and realistic terms, […] people are more willing to make choices today that may benefit them at some point in the years to come.” (Hershfield, 2011). Further, in a series of studies to reduce the environmental attitude-behavior gap, the saliency of the distant-future perspective mattered more when study participants conceptualized their country’s environmental situation a decade later (Rabinovich et al., 2010). Overall, much remains to be understood about the PD concept in relation to climate change, and specifically its temporal dimension.

5.4 Temporal discounting, preference, and intertemporal choice

Finally, the psychological concept of temporal preference or time preference, and the behavioral economics concept of temporal discounting or time discounting, is reviewed. While some may posit that the latter is essentially a manifestation of the former, Frederick et al. (2002) provide the following nuanced definitions: “We use the term time discounting broadly to encompass any reason for caring less about a future consequence, including factors that diminish the expected utility generated by a future consequence, such as uncertainty or changing tastes. We use the term time preference to refer, more specifically, to the preference for immediate utility over delayed utility” (p. 352). As such, time discounting may be seen as the reason, while time preference may be the preference. Like temporal preferences and orientations, there is individual variation in discount rates and the degree of bias towards the present (Sawe & Chawla, 2021). Perhaps more surprisingly, however, there also appears to be domain-specific discounting, with temporal discounting being less pronounced for environmental issues than for personal health or financial risks (Gattig & Henrickx, 2007), thus being “partly immune to time perspective” (Böhm & Pfister, 2005, p. 461), the concept discussed in Section 2. The evidence remains mixed: on the one hand, numerous studies show the more delayed environmental consequences are, or are perceived to be, the less importance people attribute to these consequences (Hardisty & Weber, 2009; Pahl et al., 2014). On the other hand, some studies show the opposite effect, with increased temporal and spatial distance (as part of PD concept) leading to more worrying and perceived probability for environmental problems (Pahl et al. 2014).

Providing further nuance, thanks to more recent psychological and neuroeconomic advances, the concept of intertemporal choice has emerged as the decision between smaller, sooner rewards versus larger, later ones, which better accounts for “decisions with consequences that play out over time” (Berns et al., 2007, p. 482). Given the complexities of the delayed climate impacts detailed earlier, as well as the more upfront costs of individual and collective climate mitigation behaviors, the function of intertemporal choice is therefore to provide insight within a more economic conceptual framework into why individuals and societies struggle to take effective action on climate change. Indeed, viewed through this lens, environmental decisions are trade-offs between uncertain future benefits and certain present sacrifices. In such a priming study, the longer past a country was perceived to have, the longer its perceived future was, thus motivating participants to donate more to an environmental organization (Hershfield et al., 2014). Sawe and Chawla (2021) interpret this finding as the longer future priming increasing the potential impact and salience of environmental action, thus explaining the discounting of climate change risks and helping to reduce this discounting, thereby increasing pro-environmental behavior.

Within the realm of intertemporal choice, two closely related concepts—(1) hyperbolic discounting, championed in the context of climate change by Karp (2005), and (2) intra- and intergenerational discounting—aim to further contextualize our ongoing temporal struggles with climate change mitigation. Hyperbolic discounting, a cognitive bias within the individual intertemporal decision-making process, may perhaps sound more familiar as ‘instant gratification’ and deserves mention, but essentially encapsulates the same idea as temporal discounting with only minor modification (Rubinstein, 2003). Instead, the concept of intergenerational discounting, which operates beyond individual-level decision-making, better captures the indeed intergenerational nature of climate change, as “the present generation bears the costs of cooperation, whereas future generations accrue the benefits if present cooperation succeeds or suffer if present cooperation fails” (Jacquet et al., 2013). A recent study identified lack of knowledge and information for high intergenerational discounting outcomes, counterintuitively finding that higher awareness, and not monetary incentives, were key to incentivizing climate change behaviors (Alvi et al., 2023).

5.5 Conclusion

Most of the concepts and studies reviewed above, akin to complexities in human sense-making of time and behavior, are closely interrelated. Therefore, we briefly turn to overarching approaches and intervention strategies that seem the most promising for specifically reducing these temporal challenges in the context of climate change behavior. The overarching approach emerging from the literature is the importance of targeting individuals’ personal and social associations through more salient temporal framings. For example, with recent technological advancements, such as Virtual Reality (VR), individuals can see their own future selves in the more climate-impacted world (Hershfield, 2011) or their local community (Sheppard et al., 2011), thus increasing CFC, individual future perspective, and reducing PD and discounting. This personalization approach, along with perspective-taking approaches on how those similar to us might be affected as well (Pahl et al., 2014), increase the saliency of impacts and thus the concreteness and immediacy in peoples’ minds. Significantly more future psychological research, especially with higher effect sizes and external validity, is needed to continue disentangling the temporal dimension of climate change behavior.

5.6 References

Alvi, S., Salman, V., Bibi, F. U. N., & Sarwar, N. (2023). Intergenerational and intragenerational preferences in a developing country to avoid climate change. Frontiers in Psychology, 14.

Berns, G. S., Laibson, D., & Loewenstein, G. (2007). Intertemporal choice–toward an integrative framework. Trends in cognitive sciences, 11(11), 482-488.

Böhm, G., & Pfister, H. R. (2005). Consequences, morality, and time in environmental risk evaluation. Journal of Risk Research, 8(6), 461-479.

Boroditsky, L. (2007). Comparison and the development of knowledge. Cognition, 102(1), 118-128.

Boyd, J. & P. Zimbardo. (2005). Time perspective, health, and risk taking. In Understanding behavior in the context of time: Theory, research, and application. Strathman, A., & Joireman, J. (Eds.). Psychology Press.

Gattig, A., & Hendrickx, L. (2007). Judgmental discounting and environmental risk perception: Dimensional similarities, domain differences, and implications for sustainability. Journal of Social Issues, 63(1), 21-39.

Geiger, N., McLaughlin, B., & Velez, J. (2021). Not all boomers: temporal orientation explains inter-and intra-cultural variability in the link between age and climate engagement. Climatic Change, 166(1-2), 12.

Gifford, R. (2011). The dragons of inaction: psychological barriers that limit climate change mitigation and adaptation. American psychologist, 66(4), 290.

IPCC (2022). Climate change 2022: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Summary for Policymakers. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/

Jacquet, J., Hagel, K., Hauert, C., Marotzke, J., Röhl, T., & Milinski, M. (2013). Intra-and intergenerational discounting in the climate game. Nature climate change, 3(12), 1025-1028.

Joireman, J. A., Lasane, T. P., Bennett, J., Richards, D., & Solaimani, S. (2001). Integrating social value orientation and the consideration of future consequences within the extended norm activation model of proenvironmental behaviour. British journal of social psychology, 40(1), 133-155.

Joireman, J., Balliet, D., Sprott, D., Spangenberg, E., & Schultz, J. (2008). Consideration of future consequences, ego-depletion, and self-control: Support for distinguishing between CFC-Immediate and CFC-Future sub-scales. Personality and Individual Differences, 45(1), 15-21.

Jones, J. M. (1993). An exploration of temporality in human behavior. In Beliefs, reasoning, and decision making: Psycho-logic in honor of Bob Abelson. Eds. R. Schank & E. Langer. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Hardisty, D. J., & Weber, E. U. (2009). Discounting future green: money versus the environment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 138(3), 329.

Hershfield, H. E. (2011). Future self‐continuity: How conceptions of the future self transform intertemporal choice. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1235(1), 30-43.

Hershfield, H. E., Bang, H. M., & Weber, E. U. (2014). National differences in environmental concern and performance are predicted by country age. Psychological Science, 25(1), 152-160.

Karp, L. (2005). Global warming and hyperbolic discounting. Journal of public economics, 89(2-3), 261-282.

Kim, K., & Ahn, S. J. (2019). The moderating role of cultural background in temporal framing: focusing on climate change awareness advertising. Asian Journal of Communication, 29(4), 363-385.

Kooij, D. T., Kanfer, R., Betts, M., & Rudolph, C. W. (2018). Future time perspective: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 103(8), 867.

Lasane, T. & D. O’Donnell. (2005). Time orientation measurement: A conceptual approach. In Understanding behavior in the context of time: Theory, research, and application. Strathman, A., & Joireman, J. (Eds.). Psychology Press.

Leiserowitz, A. A. (2005). American risk perceptions: Is climate change dangerous?. Risk Analysis: An International Journal, 25(6), 1433-1442.

Maiella, R., La Malva, P., Marchetti, D., Pomarico, E., Di Crosta, A., Palumbo, R., ... & Verrocchio, M. C. (2020). The psychological distance and climate change: A systematic review on the mitigation and adaptation behaviors. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 568899.

Milfont, T. L., Wilson, J., & Diniz, P. (2012). Time perspective and environmental engagement: A meta-analysis. International journal of psychology, 47(5), 325-334.

Nicholson-Cole, S. A. (2005). Representing climate change futures: a critique on the use of images for visual communication. Computers, environment and urban systems, 29(3), 255-273.

Pahl, S. (2010, September). Psychological distance: exploring construal level theory in the context of sustainability. In BPS Seminar Series Psychology of Sustainability.

Pahl, S., Sheppard, S., Boomsma, C., & Groves, C. (2014). Perceptions of time in relation to climate change. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 5(3), 375-388.

Rabinovich, A., Morton, T., & Postmes, T. (2010). Time perspective and attitude‐behaviour consistency in future‐oriented behaviours. British Journal of Social Psychology, 49(1), 69-89.

Rittel, H. W., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy sciences, 4(2), 155-169.

Roeckelein, J. E. (2000). The concept of time in psychology: A resource book and annotated bibliography. Greenwood Publishing Group.

Rubinstein, A. (2003). “Economics and psychology”? The case of hyperbolic discounting. International Economic Review, 44(4), 1207-1216.

Sawe, N., & Chawla, K. (2021). Environmental neuroeconomics: how neuroscience can inform our understanding of human responses to climate change. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 42, 147-154.

Sheppard, S. R., Shaw, A., Flanders, D., Burch, S., Wiek, A., Carmichael, J., ... & Cohen, S. (2011). Future visioning of local climate change: a framework for community engagement and planning with scenarios and visualisation. Futures, 43(4), 400-412.

Shome, D., & Marx, S. M. (2009). The psychology of climate change communication: A guide for scientists, journalists, educators, political aides, and the interested public.

Soliman, M., Alisat, S., Bashir, N. Y., & Wilson, A. E. (2018). Wrinkles in time and drops in the bucket: Circumventing temporal and social barriers to pro-environmental behavior. Sage Open, 8(2), 2158244018774826.

Strathman, A. & J. Joireman. (2005). A brief history of time (research). In Understanding behavior in the context of time: Theory, research, and application. Strathman, A., & Joireman, J. (Eds.). Psychology Press.

Tonn, B., Hemrick, A., & Conrad, F. (2006). Cognitive representations of the future: Survey results. Futures, 38(7), 810-829.

Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2010). Construal level theory of psychological distance. Psychological Review, 117, 440–463.

van Valkengoed, A. M., Steg, L., & Perlaviciute, G. (2023). The psychological distance of climate change is overestimated. One Earth, 6(4), 362-391.

WHO. (2019). GHE: Life expectancy and healthy life expectancy. Accessed June 9, 2023. URL: https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/mortality-and-global-health-estimates/ghe-life-expectancy-and-healthy-life-expectancy

Zickfeld, K., & Herrington, T. (2015). The time lag between a carbon dioxide emission and maximum warming increases with the size of the emission. Environmental Research Letters, 10(3), 031001.