Dorothea Metzen

Non-technical summary: Efforts to tackle climate change are increasingly delayed not through denial but through subtler arguments that emphasize costs, shift blame, or promote weak solutions. We created a tool to measure how much individuals agree with these ‘climate delay’ narratives. Across two studies conducted in Germany, we found that people who endorse these views are less likely to support climate-friendly behaviors or policies. Understanding and countering these arguments could help build public support for stronger climate action. Technical summary: Opponents of climate action have shifted from outright denial of climate change to strategies that delay mitigation efforts. The framework for discourses of climate delay (DOCD) identified 12 distinct discourses, categorizing them into four broader themes: emphasize the downsides, redirect responsibility, surrender, and push for non-transformative solutions. These discourses frequently appear in advertisements, media coverage, and political debates. However, no validated questionnaire exists to measure agreement with these discourses, and little is known about how they are perceived in the general population or how they relate to pro-environmental behavior. Across two studies ( n = 403, n = 966) in Germany, we developed a questionnaire to assess agreement with climate delay discourses and examined their associations with pro-environmental behaviors and attitudes (private-sphere behavior, collective climate action, social influence, and policy support). Contrary to the original four-factor framework, confirmatory factor analysis did not support a four-factor structure. Instead, exploratory factor analysis suggested a unidimensional scale consisting of nine items reflecting support of the status quo. Overall, endorsement of climate delay discourses was negatively associated with pro-environmental behaviors, with the strongest relationship observed for policy support. The scale offers a useful tool for identifying and addressing delay-based opposition in climate communication and policy advocacy. Social media summary: DOCD undermine climate action – new research shows how to measure their influence.

The confrontation with the consequences of the climate crisis can elicit strong emotions. These so-called climate emotions are important drivers behind pro-environmental behavior. However, they have also been associated with impaired mental health. In the light of the huge challenges we face, understanding the complex mechanisms behind emotions, behavior and mental health is crucial. The Inventory of Climate Emotions (ICE) presents the first validated scale to assess a multitude of different emotional responses (anger, contempt, enthusiasm, powerlessness, guilt, isolation, anxiety and sorrow) to the climate crisis. In this study, we translated and validated the ICE in a representative German sample (N = 966). We replicated the 8-factor structure and all subscales showed acceptable to good internal consistency. Furthermore, we replicated a positive association between multiple climate emotions (powerlessness, guilt, isolation, anxiety, sorrow) and general depressive and anxiety symptoms. Climate emotions were generally positively associated with pro-environmental behavior, the only exception being climate contempt, which was negatively associated with pro-environmental behavior. In conclusion, we present a validated German translation of the ICE and provide evidence for a negative association of specific climate emotions and mental health as well as a positive association of specific climate emotions and pro-environmental behavior.

Opponents of climate action have shifted from outright denial of climate change to strategies that delay mitigation efforts. The framework for discourses of climate delay identified 12 distinct discourses, categorizing them into four broader themes: emphasize the downsides, redirect responsibility, surrender, and push for non-transformative solutions. These discourses frequently appear in advertisements, media coverage, and political debates. However, no standardized questionnaire exists to measure agreement with these discourses, and little is known about how they are perceived in the general population or how they relate to pro-environmental behavior. Across two studies (n = 403, n = 966), we developed a questionnaire to assess agreement with climate delay discourses and examined their associations with pro-environmental behaviors and attitudes (private-sphere behavior, collective climate action, social influence, and policy support). Contrary to the original four-factor framework, confirmatory factor analysis did not support a four-factor structure. Instead, exploratory factor analysis suggested a unidimensional scale consisting of nine items reflecting support of the status quo. Overall, endorsement of climate delay discourses was negatively associated with pro-environmental behaviors, with the strongest negative relationship observed for policy support. The new scale offers a useful tool for identifying and addressing delay-based opposition in climate communication and policy advocacy.

The climate crisis requires urgent societal transformation, yet dominant discourses of climate delay hinder effective action by portraying systemic change as unfeasible or unnecessary. Drawing on discourse theory, we propose a novel theoretical account centered on collective prospection —the shared ability to imagine possible societal futures. We posit that societal crises create a window for change by eroding the legitimacy of the status quo and traditional discourses. Adopting a psychological interindividual-differences perspective, we argue that dystopian thinking and utopian thinking are two psychological processes jointly contributing to societal change motivation. We describe three elements of dystopian thinking (dystopian hopelessness, dystopian worries, apocalyptic wish). Dystopian thinking may express people’s worries about undesirable futures and wishes for a new societal beginning possibly inducing deconstructive processes in people regarding their internalized status quo beliefs. In turn, utopian thinking serves a reconstructive function, viewing societal crises as a window of opportunity to re-negotiate societal rules and build collective hope for a positive future alternative. These processes may synergistically fuel discourses of transformation – a conceptual counterpart challenging climate delay discourses and expanding our collective imagination towards the possibility of reaching a social-ecologically just future. We propose five recommendations for future research on collective prospection.

The confrontation with the catastrophic consequences of the climate crisis can elicit strong emotions in individuals. These so-called climate emotions are an important driver behind pro-environmental behavior. However, they have also been associated with impaired mental health. In the light of the huge challenges we face, understanding the complex mechanisms behind emotions, behavior and mental health is crucial. The Inventory of Climate Emotions (ICE) presents the first validated scale to assess a multitude of different emotional responses (anger, contempt, enthusiasm, powerlessness, guilt, isolation, anxiety and sorrow) to the climate crisis. This pre-registered study aimed to translate and validate the ICE in a representative German sample (N = 966). We replicated the 8-factor structure and all subscales showed acceptable to good internal consistency. Furthermore, we replicate a positive association between multiple climate emotions (powerlessness, guilt, isolation, anxiety, sorrow) with general depressive and anxiety symptoms. We also show that climate emotions are generally positively associated with pro-environmental behavior, the only exception being climate contempt, which was negatively associated with pro-environmental behavior. In conclusion, we present a validated German translation of the ICE and provide evidence for a negative association of climate emotions and mental health as well as a positive association of climate emotions and pro-environmental behavior.

White matter is fundamental for efficient and accurate information transfer throughout the human brain and thus crucial for intelligence. Previous studies often demonstrated associations between fractional anisotropy (FA) as a metric of white matter “microstructural integrity” and intelligence, but it is still unclear, whether this relation is due to greater axon density, parallel, homogenous fiber orientation distributions, or greater myelination since all of these measures influence FA. Using neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI) and myelin water fraction (MWF) imaging data, we analyzed the microstructural architecture of intelligence in more detail in a sample of 500 healthy young adults. Furthermore, we were interested whether specific white matter microstructural indices play intermediary roles in the pathway that links genetic disposition for intelligence to phenotype. Thus, we conducted for the first time mediation analyses investigating whether neurite density (NDI), orientation dispersion (ODI), and MWF of 64 white matter fiber tracts mediate the effects of polygenic scores for intelligence (PGS _GI ) on general intelligence. By doing so, we showed that NDI, but not ODI or MWF of white matter fiber tracts was significantly associated with general intelligence and that the NDI of six fiber tracts mediated the relation between genetic variability and g . These findings are a crucial step forward in decoding the neurogenetic underpinnings of general intelligence, as they identify that neurite density of specific fiber tracts relates polygenic variation to g , whereas orientation dispersion and myelination did not.

Previous research investigating relations between general intelligence and graph-theoretical properties of the brain’s intrinsic functional network has yielded contradictory results. A promising approach to tackle such mixed findings is multi-center analysis. For this study, we analyzed data from four independent data sets (total N > 2000) to identify robust associations amongst samples between g factor scores and global as well as node-specific graph metrics. On the global level, g showed no significant associations with global efficiency or small-world propensity in any sample, but significant positive associations with global clustering coefficient in two samples. On the node-specific level, elastic-net regressions for nodal efficiency and local clustering yielded no brain areas that exhibited consistent associations amongst data sets. Using the areas identified via elastic-net regression in one sample to predict g in other samples was not successful for local clustering and only led to one significant, one-way prediction across data sets for nodal efficiency. Thus, using conventional graph theoretical measures based on resting-state imaging did not result in replicable associations between functional connectivity and general intelligence.

Previous research investigating relations between general intelligence and graph-theoretical properties of the brain’s intrinsic functional network has yielded contradictory results. A promising approach to tackle such mixed findings is multi-center analysis. For this study, we analyzed data from four independent data sets (total N > 2000) to identify robust associations amongst samples between g factor scores and global as well as node-specific graph metrics. On the global level, g showed no significant associations with global efficiency in any sample, but significant positive associations with global clustering coefficient and small-world propensity in two samples. On the node-specific level, elastic-net regressions for nodal efficiency and local clustering yielded no brain areas that exhibited consistent associations amongst data sets. Using the areas identified via elastic-net regression in one sample to predict g in other samples was not successful for nodal efficiency and only led to significant predictions between two data sets for local clustering. Thus, using conventional graph theoretical measures based on resting-state imaging did not result in replicable associations between functional connectivity and general intelligence.

Intelligence is highly heritable. Genome‐wide association studies (GWAS) have shown that thousands of alleles contribute to variation in intelligence with small effect sizes. Polygenic scores (PGS), which combine these effects into one genetic summary measure, are increasingly used to investigate polygenic effects in independent samples. Whereas PGS explain a considerable amount of variance in intelligence, it is largely unknown how brain structure and function mediate this relationship. Here, we show that individuals with higher PGS for educational attainment and intelligence had higher scores on cognitive tests, larger surface area, and more efficient fiber connectivity derived by graph theory. Fiber network efficiency as well as the surface of brain areas partly located in parieto‐frontal regions were found to mediate the relationship between PGS and cognitive performance. These findings are a crucial step forward in decoding the neurogenetic underpinnings of intelligence, as they identify specific regional networks that link polygenic predisposition to intelligence.

EEG resting-state alpha asymmetry is one of the most widely investigated forms of functional hemispheric asymmetries in both basic and clinical neuroscience. However, studies yield inconsistent results. One crucial prerequisite to obtain reproducible results is the reliability of the index of interest. There is a body of research suggesting a moderate-to-good reliability of EEG resting-state alpha asymmetry, but unfortunately sample sizes in these studies are typically small. This study presents the first large-scale short-term reliability study of frontal and parietal EEG resting-state alpha asymmetry. We used the Dortmund Vital Study data set containing 370 participants. In each participant, EEG resting state was recorded eight times, twice with their eyes opened, twice with their eyes-closed, each on two different EEG systems. We found good reliability of EEG alpha power and alpha asymmetry on both systems for electrode pairs. We also found that alpha power asymmetry reliability is higher in the eyes-closed condition than in the eyes-open condition. The frontomedial electrode pair showed weaker reliability than the frontolateral and parietal electrode pairs. Interestingly, we found no population-level alpha asymmetry in frontal electrodes, one of the most investigated electrode sites in alpha asymmetry research. In conclusion, our results suggest that while EEG alpha asymmetry is an overall reliable measure, frontal alpha asymmetry should be assessed using multiple electrode pairs.