See no evil? Only implicit attitudes predict unconscious eye movements towards images of climate change

Beattie, Geoffrey; McGuire, Laura

doi:10.1515/sem-2012-0066

Cited by 34 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…See Table 3. In other words, there seemed to be no systematic relationship between the measure of implicit attitude and the overall level of fixation on the carbon label, in direct contrast to what had been found with iconic images of climate change reported in Beattie and McGuire (2012). 9.1 9.0 9.8 9.2 14.9…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 72%

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Harnessing the unconscious mind of the consumer: How implicit attitudes predict pre-conscious visual attention to carbon footprint information on products

Beattie

McGuire

2015

Semiotica

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Consumers clearly have a role to play in the global fight against climate change since even relatively small changes in patterns of household consumption could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But what evidence is there that consumers do consider the environmental impacts of products when shopping? Indeed, how psychologically salient are the carbon footprint labels now appearing on a range of products in various countries?Here we test the psychological salience of this information using eye-tracking to identify, on a frame-by-frame basis, individual fixations on various features of the packaging, including carbon footprint. We found that the mean fixation level for carbon footprint was 12.2%, indicating it was indeed as salient as other important features. High or low levels of carbon footprint had no significant 2 effect on gaze fixation. We also found no significant relationship between selfreported attitudes to low carbon products and overall level of fixation, nor was there any significant relationship between implicit attitude and level of fixation.But implicit attitude did significantly impact on the point of first fixation, in that those with a strong positive implicit attitude were significantly more likely to fixate first on carbon footprint information. This suggests that carbon labelling could potentially be effective for some consumers, those with the right implicit attitude. Measures of explicit attitude, on the other hand, seemed to be largely irrelevant. The implications of this finding for sparking a 'green revolution' in consumer habits through the provision of carbon footprint information for consumers is discussed.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…This was highlighted in the study by Beattie and McGuire (2012). In that study there was an overall difference in level of gaze as a function of implicit attitude, The next most frequent fixation target was 'energy' with 4 cases (and 16.7 gaze points to arrive at this), and 'price' in just one case.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 89%

Harnessing the unconscious mind of the consumer: How implicit attitudes predict pre-conscious visual attention to carbon footprint information on products

Beattie

McGuire

2015

Semiotica

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“…Participants were also asked to complete a 'carbon footprint' Implicit Association Test or IAT (Beattie, 2010, Beattie and Sale, 2010, Beattie and McGuire, 2012, Beattie and McGuire 2015. This particular version of the IAT is designed to test people's implicit attitudes to the target categories (high/low carbon) by measuring the associative connection between these and the attribute IAT effect scores (D scores) were computed using the revised scoring algorithm devised by Greenwald, Nosek and Banaji (2003).…”

Section: Implicit Association Test (Iat)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We may even subconsciously avoid seeing images connected with climate change as we do with other sorts of negative images (Isaacowitz 2006(Isaacowitz , 2007Beattie and McGuire, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consumption and climate change: Why we say one thing but do another in the face of our greatest threat

Beattie

McGuire

2016

Semiotica

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There is clear evidence that human beings have contributed to climate change through their patterns of consumption, and since we are part of the problem then we must be part of the solution. People say that they are prepared to adapt their behaviour to ameliorate the effects of climate change, but numerous studies have found that little behaviour change actually occurs. This experimental study investigates this issue, by focussing on explicit (self report) attitudes, and implicit (automatic) attitudes to various consumer brands with differing environmental consequences in a behavioural choice task. We found firstly, in line with previous research, that human beings have reflective attitudes and more unconscious and automatic attitudes that are 'dissociated'.In terms of consumer choice of brands, we found that consumers were particularly sensitive to both big brand information and value in their selection of products, particularly under time pressure. Organic/eco brands were,

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“…This is designed to probe the associative connections between concepts (for example high/low carbon products and the evaluative concepts of good/bad) and it has been found repeatedly that in the domain of sustainability explicit (self-report) attitudes and implicit attitudes (measures using the IAT) do not correlate (Beattie 2010;Sale 2009, 2011;Beattie and McGuire 2015). Further, implicit attitudes seems to affect visual attention to climate change images in a way that self-report attitudes do not (Beattie and McGuire 2012), as well as visual attention to carbon footprint information on products, at least in the short time frames important in actual shopping (Beattie, McGuire and Sale 2011;Beattie and McGuire 2015). They also seem to predict behavioural choice when there is a degree of time pressure in that choice .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping our underlying cognitions and emotions about good environmental behavior: Why we fail to act despite the best of intentions

2017

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Despite the widespread recognition of climate change as the single biggest global threat, the willingness of people to change their behaviour to mitigate its effects is limited. Past research, often focussing on specific categories of behaviour, has highlighted a very significant gap between people's intentions to behave more sustainably and their actual behaviour. This paper presents a new approach to this issue, by using more open-ended questions to map a much broader range of cognitions and emotions about good environmental behaviour. Two key findings emerged. Firstly, participants were aware of the contradiction between their level of concern about the environment and their willingness to act in more sustainable ways. The qualitative analysis further revealed that this discrepancy often hinged on a lack of knowledge about how to act more sustainably; the analysis also revealed a desire for more information about genuinely green behaviour. Secondly, pro-environmental behaviour was often conceptualised by participants in essentially 'social' terms; anticipated emotions relating to sustainable/non-sustainable behaviour were as closely tied to the behaviour of one's peers as to one's own behaviour. This finding suggests that we must highlight the social dimension in any interventions to increase sustainable behaviours amongst the public.

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See no evil? Only implicit attitudes predict unconscious eye movements towards images of climate change

Cited by 34 publications

References 27 publications

Harnessing the unconscious mind of the consumer: How implicit attitudes predict pre-conscious visual attention to carbon footprint information on products

Harnessing the unconscious mind of the consumer: How implicit attitudes predict pre-conscious visual attention to carbon footprint information on products

Consumption and climate change: Why we say one thing but do another in the face of our greatest threat

Mapping our underlying cognitions and emotions about good environmental behavior: Why we fail to act despite the best of intentions

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