Climate Silence, Moral Disengagement, and Self-Efficacy: How Albert Bandura's Theories Inform Our Climate-Change Predicament

The climate crisis poses a serious threat to the health and well-being of individuals. For many, climate change knowledge is derived from indirect exposure to information transmitted through the media. Such content can elicit a variety of emotional responses, including anger, sadness, despair, fear, and guilt. Worry and anxiety are especially common responses, usually referred to as “climate anxiety”. The main objectives of this study were to analyze how exposure to climate change through the media relates to climate anxiety and individual and collective self-efficacy, and to evaluate the relationship between climate anxiety and efficacy beliefs. A total of 312 Italian university students (aged 18–26 years) participated in the research by filling out an anonymous questionnaire. Participants reported being exposed several times per week to information about climate change, especially from social media, newspapers, and television programs. Moreover, the results showed that the attention paid to information about climate change was not only positively related to climate anxiety, but also to individual and collective self-efficacy. Most notably, participants’ efficacy beliefs were found to be positively related to climate anxiety. This somewhat controversial finding stresses that, in the context of pro-environmental behavior changes, a moderate level of anxiety could engender feelings of virtue, encouraging people to rethink actions with negative ecological impacts.

Download Full-text

So, We Meat Again...

The Maastricht Journal of Liberal Arts ◽

10.26481/mjla.2018.v10.605 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 10 ◽

pp. 7-19

Author(s):

Jesler Francesca Van Houdt ◽

Arthur Bribosia

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Food Insecurity ◽

Moral Disengagement ◽

Meat Consumption ◽

Developed Countries ◽

Global South ◽

Meat Production ◽

Meat Industry ◽

Negative Consequences ◽

Disengagement Theory

The meat industry is being blamed for its role regarding climate change, environmental degradations as well as food insecurity in the Global-South. Additionally, the conditions in which animals are being raised and slaughtered in industrial farms are often denounced as cruel and morally unacceptable. Assuming that most meat consumers in developed countries are to a certain extent aware of the negative consequences inherent to meat consumption, how can the increasing consumption of meat be explained? In an attempt to understand what Ricard (2014) describes as a “moral schizophrenia” (p.15), this paper applies Bandura’s Moral Disengagement Theory to industrial meat production in developed countries.

Download Full-text

Albert Bandura: December 4, 1925–July 26, 2021

Social Behavior and Personality An International Journal ◽

10.2224/sbp.11082 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 49 (9) ◽

pp. 1-2

Author(s):

Robert A. C. Stewart ◽

Sarah L. Krivan

Keyword(s):

Social Behavior ◽

Social Learning ◽

Human Behavior ◽

Self Efficacy ◽

Moral Disengagement ◽

Current Understanding ◽

Albert Bandura

We note, with sadness, the passing of Dr Albert Bandura, pioneer of the theories of social learning and of self-efficacy, and of the concept of moral disengagement, whose research contributions informed current understanding of human behavior. Since 1992, Dr Bandura was a member of the Board of Consulting Editors of Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal.

Download Full-text

Bystanders of bullying: Social-cognitive and affective reactions to school bullying and cyberbullying

Cyberpsychology Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace ◽

10.5817/cp2018-4-3 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 12 (4) ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Rhea-Katharina Knauf ◽

Heike Eschenbeck ◽

Michael Hock

Keyword(s):

Self Efficacy ◽

Moral Disengagement ◽

Social Cognitive ◽

School Context ◽

Outcome Expectations ◽

School Bullying ◽

Affective Reactions ◽

Intervention Model ◽

The Social ◽

Significant Difference

The Bystander Intervention Model by Latané and Darley (1970) describes the stages necessary for a bystander to intervene in an emergency and can be used to explain bystander behavior in the case of bullying. Social-cognitive and affective reactions to bullying such as empathy with the victim, moral disengagement, feelings of responsibility, defender self-efficacy and outcome expectancy are supposed to determine whether a bystander passes through all stages of the intervention model and are thereby crucial for the behavioral response. These mental reactions were compared between school bullying and cyberbullying in a sample of 486 German students (56% girls, age: M = 12.95) from 28 classes with a newly developed questionnaire covering the five Social-Cognitive and Affective Reactions to Bullying (SCARB) for school context and cyber context separately. Confirmatory factor analysis showed an acceptable fit and internal consistency coefficients were acceptable to good. In line with our hypotheses, for cyberbullying as compared to school bullying students reported higher moral disengagement and lower feelings of responsibility and self-efficacy. However, no significant difference was found for empathy. The level of negative outcome expectations was lower for cyberbullying than for school bullying. Results confirm that the context of bullying matters for the social-cognitive and affective reactions of bystanders.

Download Full-text

Communicating climate change: Improving the effectiveness of public campaigns

Escritos de Psicología / Psychological Writings ◽

10.24310/espsiescpsi.v7i2.13256 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

pp. 28-35

Author(s):

María del Carmen Hidalgo Villodres ◽

Fernando Casado Castro ◽

Patricia García-Leiva

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

University Students ◽

Perceived Control ◽

Self Efficacy ◽

Environmental Attitudes ◽

Willingness To Accept ◽

Motivational Variable ◽

Specific Behaviour ◽

Initial Hypothesis ◽

Intended Behaviour

Research on climate change highlights the need to develop more effective campaigns to increase citizens’ awareness of this issue, increase their willingness to accept the measures necessary to halt this phenomenon and change their behaviour. This paper describes a study which analyzed the effectiveness of an advertising message that combined informative and motivational variables on proenvironmental attitudes and intended behaviour. The study sample consisted of 180 university students, divided into two equivalent groups. The results supported the initial hypothesis,the participants in the group that received specific behaviour guidelines (to increase perceived control) together with information on economic savings (motivational variable) displayed more changes in self-efficacy, pro-environmental attitudes and intention of behaviour than the group that did not receive this information.

Download Full-text