Suchergebnisse

Collective efforts of the world community are required to mitigate global climate change. Understanding oneself as part of this world community might be crucial for individual behavior change reducing carbon emissions. We examined whether a global identity (i.e., the identification with all humans and a concern for their well‐being) is related to self‐reported climate‐protective behavior in two studies. In a German quota sample (N = 498), global identity was positively related to the personal and societal relevance people attributed to the issue of climate change and self‐reported climate‐protective behavior directly and indirectly through personal and societal relevance attribution. In a U.K. quota sample (N = 400), global identity was positively related to the relevance people attributed to a received news text on climate change. Moreover, global identity was positively related to three observed indicators of climate‐protective behavioral intentions after reading the news text, either directly or indirectly through relevance attribution. These results affirm the importance of a social identity perspective on climate protection. We suggest that the causal effects of global identity and ways to promote its cultivation should be investigated in more depth in future research.

The political knowledge of citizens is regarded as an important basis of a democracy and has been studied extensively. However, no scale covers relevant theoretically derived dimensions of political knowledge and is accessible for academic research. Therefore, we developed the Hohenheim Inventory of Political Knowledge (HIP) based on the Rasch model. It covers the dimensions (a) general facts (political structures and historical facts) and (b) current issues (topics and actors of various political areas). A German-wide online survey (N = 1,082) revealed satisfactory weightedmean square (WMNSQ) infit values for the 85 items (0.82 <= x <= 1.24) and an expected-a-posteriori/plausible-values (EAP/PV) reliability of .92 for the one-dimensional model and of .91 for both dimensions. The scale was validated: Person scores correlated with political interest, political participation, political information use (criterion validity), and subjective knowledge of our participants (convergent construct validity). We discuss the challenge of adapting the dimension current issues to changing political circumstances and future steps of scale validation.

In the era of the Internet, political communication becomes increasingly complex due to an abundance of available information. Moreover, many people evaluate politics as complex in a globalized world. The present study examined whether the perceived complexity of political issues would be related to individuals' political Internet use and political knowledge. Further, we investigated the associations of three key psychological concepts with political Internet use and political knowledge acquisition in light of the potential perceived complexity of political issues: time affluence, informational self-efficacy, and need for cognition (NfC). Findings are based on a national online survey of 1082 German Internet users. The degree of perceived complexity was weakly associated with political knowledge but was not related to political Internet use. Political Internet use, time affluence, and NfC were positively related to political knowledge, and informational self-efficacy predicted political knowledge through an increase in political Internet use. The perceived complexity of politics did not moderate the relation between these psychological concepts and political Internet use. We discuss theoretical and practical implications and future research directions.