Climate change is arguably the greatest crisis of our time. But despite great scientific consensus concerning its anthropogenic causes and expected consequences, measures to mitigate it still do not find sufficient support among the populations of Western democracies. One of the reasons for that is the rejection of pro-environmental behaviour by people with conservative attitudes. Relative to liberals, conservatives tend to report weaker engagement in environmentally friendly behaviours, less support for environmental regulation as well as less concern about environmental problems such as climate change (Wolsko et al., 2016). Following the theory of "motivated reasoning" (Jacquet et al., 2014) this negative correlation is mainly due to the environmental discourse being framed in liberal terms (Hart & Nisbet, 2012) which often contradicts conservative values. Subsequently scholars argue that framing demands for environmentally friendly behaviour in a more conservative fashion could help to break motivational barriers (Feinberg & Willer, 2013). Through a systematic literature review this paper gives an overview of studies investigating this hypothesis. In doing so, we focused on identifying the frames examined in the studies. Results showed that the main frames examined were moral-, (national) security, economic- and label frames. Less attention was given to religious- temporal- and psychological distance frames. Further the analysis of bibliographic data showed that the topic is of current scholarly interest, whereby the predominant share of studies is conducted in the US. Methodological analysis showed further that studies often apply attitude focussed effect measurements and fall short of real-world communication conditions through rarely investigating the combination of more than one frame. Moreover, little attention is paid to the study of message sources, repetition, and the use of contemporary media in the transmission of frames. ...
Abstract. At a broad level, the Konstanz Health Psychology research group aims at understanding the judgment and decision making processes underlying health-relevant behaviors. Towards this goal, several more specific research agendas are addressed. A primary aim is to understand the transition from knowing about risks to personally feeling at risk. In particular, we study the reception of relevant personalised health feedback such as feedback on cholesterol levels or blood pressure. Contrary to the dominant models of biased reasoning, our results on feedback reception suggest that people respond adaptively to health risk feedback. Furthermore, we study changes in the perception of health risk across time and their associated effects on the onset, maintenance, and cessation of health-relevant behaviors. In current research, we try to utilize methods from affective neuroscience for assessing affective and intuitive processes relevant to personal feelings of risk. These efforts are motivated by the broader goal of developing theoretical frameworks that can be applied across a range of behavioral domains.
Social and economic inequalities have been a concern in human societies throughout history. In recent years especially wealth and income inequality have been the focus of controversial public, political, and scientific debates. The present thesis seeks to contribute to the ongoing inequality debate by regarding economic inequality from a psychological point of view. Together with Detlef Fetchenhauer, Thomas Schlösser, and Daniel Ehlebracht, I experimentally investigated the psychological determinants and consequences of economic inequality in three different studies. Of the many aspects that inequality comprises, we particularly focused on the association between inequality and justice (Chapter 2 and Chapter 3) as well as its consequences for affects, emotions, and cooperation (Chapter 2 and Chapter 4). In this context, inequality as conceived in Chapter 2 might be most comparable to income inequality because it emerges as a consequence of individuals' performance in a working task. Inequality as conceived in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 might be most comparable to wealth inequality because it is the result of a random assignment to an advantageous or disadvantageous societal position, as is inheritance. Nevertheless, all inequalities examined within this research project are closely related, as they share an economic or monetary basis. In Chapter 2, we experimentally explored the emotional and affective consequences of inequality and their association to justice perceptions. In particular, our participants had to solve effort-based tasks and were assigned to compensation systems referred to as tournament system and equality system. Whereas tournament systems evoked high outcome disparities, equality systems, as they were applied, caused equal outcome distributions. In accordance with prior research (e.g., Schlösser & Fetchenhauer, 2015), we found that the equality system was perceived to be more just than the tournament system. Yet, the effect of the system's justice on affect and emotions was found to be small and both appeared, instead, to be crucially determined by the income and the status of a participant within a given system. For instance, those that benefited from the unequal tournament system perceived the system to be unjust but reported the highest positive affect and the lowest negative affect, anger, and guilt. A possible explanation might be that—within our research paradigm—beneficiaries cannot be hold accountable for the negative consequences of the exogenously determined compensation systems which might detach their justice perceptions and affects as well as emotions. In Chapter 3, we investigated whether a person's personal sensitivity towards justice (i.e., justice sensitivity) predicts equality preferences in democratic systems. Prior research found that unequal distributions are likely to be perceived as unjust (e.g., Deutsch, 1975), hence, we assumed that persons who are truly concerned about the just treatment of others (i.e., other-sensitive persons) hold a genuine preference for equal distributions and low inequality. Persons who show the tendency to predominantly care about a just treatment for themselves (i.e., victim-sensitive persons) were instead assumed to hold no genuine distributional preferences, but rather prefer the degree of inequality within their monetary self-interest. With the help of a so-called welfare state game (e.g., Biniossek & Fetchenhauer, 2007; Lotz & Fetchenhauer, 2012), we measured equality preferences in a democratic decision-making process. Indeed, other-sensitive persons displayed a general preference for low inequality irrespective of whether they financially gained or lost out on that decision. In contrast, victim-sensitive persons preferred either low inequality or high inequality depending on whether the one or the other was in their financial interest. In Chapter 4, we finally investigated the relationship between democratically determined economic inequality and cooperation. Based on previous research which found that in particular endogenously induced inequality harms preconditions for cooperative behavior, such as trust (e.g., Greiner et al., 2012), we assumed that democratically induced inequality hampers cooperation. In accordance with this assumption, we found that groups which previously implemented high inequality through a majority choice displayed relatively low levels of cooperation compared to groups which previously implemented low inequality. In addition, we found that the mechanism driving this effect is likely based on motivated reasoning rather than based on self-selection, similarity, risk, or inequality aversion. These findings suggest that high degrees of inequality harm cooperation in democratic systems. Chapter 5 provides an integrative discussion of the presented empirical research findings, while Chapter 6 suggests possible paths for future research.
Die EU-Kommission hat verschiedene Vorschläge für Reformen der Wirtschaft- und Währungsunion vorgelegt. Während manche Ideen mehr politisch motiviert zu sein scheinen oder anreizspezifische Probleme mit sich bringen, gibt es durchaus Reformvorschläge, die sich ökonomisch begründen lassen und zur gesamteuropäischen Risikominderung beitragen können. Eine Mittelaufstockung für technische Hilfen zur Umsetzung von Strukturreformen ist grundsätzlich zu begrüßen. Eine reine Subventionierung solcher Reformen - nach dem Prinzip "Geld gegen Reformen" - droht hingegen starke Mitnahmeeffekte zu erzeugen und das Subsidiaritätsprinzip zu missachten. Dass mit der Schaffung einer neuen Konvergenzfazilität bei der Förderung von Strukturreformen ein besonderer Fokus auf Nicht-Eurostaaten gelegt werden sollte, ist nicht zu rechtfertigen. Die geplante makroökonomische Stabilisierungsfunktion zur Abmilderung der Wirkung asymmetrischer Schocks entbehrt auf europäischer Ebene einer zwingenden ökonomischen Notwendigkeit. Zwar erscheint der Ansatz grundsätzlich nachvollziehbar, dass ein möglicher Fonds nur Kredite vergeben, bei staatlichen Investitionen ansetzen und im EU-Haushalt eng gedeckelt bleiben würde. Doch besteht die Gefahr, dass die Mittelbereitstellung letztlich politischem Druck folgt und die avisierte Ex-ante-Konditionalität aufgeweicht wird. Daher ist dieser Vorschlag abzulehnen. Eine strategische Koordinationsfunktion könnte die EU bei der Organisation der Finanzierung von grenzüberschreitenden Investitionsprojekten einnehmen. Unterfinanzierte Infrastruktur in Grenzgebieten stellt noch immer ein wesentliches Hemmnis für die europaweite Verflechtung von Wertschöpfungsketten dar. Über Projektbonds könnte die Europäische Entwicklungsbank hier einen wichtigen Beitrag zur realen Konvergenz in Europa leisten. ; The EU-Commission has proposed different reforms for the Economic and Monetary Union. Whereas some ideas seem to be politically motivated or entail problematic incentives for sound economic policy in the long-run, other reform propositions can potentially enhance the EU economic framework and contribute to a pan-European risk reduction.A budget increase for technical support for the implementation of structural reforms is a rea-sonable idea to be carried forward. In contrast, a simple reform subsidy - in terms of "money for reforms" - will trigger large deadweight effects and ignores the principle of subsidiarity. Reform subsidies are no reasonable amendment to the current framework. The creation of a new Convergence Facility that promotes structural reforms especially in non-Euro countries follows political motivation only and is also to be rejected. The planned macroeconomic stabilization instruments, in order to cushion asymmetric shocks on the supranational level, should neither be prioritized. The approach of a fund that tackles public investments during crisis and that faces a clear budget ceiling is comprehensive, however, there is a danger that the budget could rather be determined by political needs than by economic reasoning and that ex-ante conditionality would not be strictly applied in the end. The proposition of further macroeconomic stabilization instruments should be rejected. The EU should take a lead in strategic coordination of cross-border investment projects. Underfunded infrastructure in border regions still prevents pan-European value chain networks. The European Investment Bank could contribute to real convergence within the European Union through project bonds for cross-border infrastructure projects.
