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The use of emotion in climate change appeals is a hotly debated topic. Warning about the perils of imminent mass extinction, climate change communicators are often accused of being unnecessarily 'doomsday' in their attempts to foster a sense of urgency and action among the public. Pessimistic messaging, the thinking goes, undermines engagement efforts, straining credulity and fostering a sense of helplessness, rather than concern. Widespread calls for more optimistic climate change messaging punctuate public discourse. This research puts these claims to the test, investigating how affective endings (optimistic vs. pessimistic vs. fatalistic) of climate change appeals impact individual risk perception and outcome efficacy (i.e., the sense that one's behavior matters). The findings of three online experiments presented in this paper suggest that climate change appeals with pessimistic affective endings increase risk perception (Studies 1 and 2) and outcome efficacy (Study 3), which is the result of heightened emotional arousal (Studies 1-3). Moreover, the results indicate that the mediating effect of emotional arousal is more prevalent among political moderates and conservatives, as well as those who hold either individualistic or hierarchical world views. Given that these audiences generally exhibit lower risk perception and outcome efficacy in relation to climate change, the results suggest that climate change appeals with pessimistic endings could trigger higher engagement with the issue than optimistic endings. These findings are interpreted in light of recent research findings, which suggest that differences in threat-reactivity and emotional arousal may be attributable to brain functions/anatomy mappable to basic motivations for safety and survival. Implications for scholars and practitioners are discussed.

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People feel committed to other individuals, groups, or organizations in many contexts in everyday life. Such social commitment can have many positive outcomes, related to job satisfaction or relationship longevity, but there might also be detrimental effects when feeling overly committed. Recent high-profile cases of fraud or corruption in companies such as Enron or Volkswagen are likely based to some degree on strong commitment to the organization or co-workers. While social commitment might increase dishonest behavior, there is little systematic cumulative knowledge on when and how this may occur. In the present project, we reviewed 19,544 articles, while focusing on studies experimentally manipulating social commitment and measuring actual dishonest behavior. We retained 226 effect sizes from 91 articles featuring a total of 40,972 participants across 23 countries. We found no evidence that social commitment increases or reduces dishonest behavior in general, but we did find evidence that the effect depended strongly on the target of the commitment. Feeling commitment to other individuals or groups reduced honest behavior (g = -.22 [-.29, -.14]), while feeling commitment to social norms via oaths or pledges increased honest behavior (g = .27 [.16, .38]). The analysis identified several moderating variables and found evidence for some degree of publication bias across effects. Our findings highlight the diverging effects of different forms of social commitment on dishonest behavior, and suggest a combination of the different forms of commitment as a possible means to combat corruption and dishonest behavior in the organizational context.