Discussion
affective valence
EVENTS, EVENT
The literature on affect-as-informationOur results suggest that on average positive affect decreased and risk perception of climate change increased when processing the environmental risk events. However, in line with our hypotheses, we specifically find that an increased level of mental imagery was related to a larger decrease in positive affective valence and a higher increase in perceived risk of climate change. These results are in line with previous research showing a link between mental imagery, affect, and risk perception outside the domain of climate changeWe find no evidence that the mental imagery manipulation changed the intention to act pro-environmentally or the perceived impact of these behaviors. These results are in contrast with a study that identified a link between mental imagery, perceived risk of climate change, and pro-environmental intentions and behaviorOur null finding suggests that there may be limitations to interventions aiming to increase pro-environmental behavior by increasing the perceived risk. However, previous research suggests that focusing on the consequences, particularly the health consequences of climate change, could help motivate pro-environmental behavior and policy supportAlthough the methodology in the current study allowed us to look at mental imagery processing at different levels, there are some limitations. One such limitation is that the conditions were not time matched. Future studies should control for this to make sure that the effects on valence and perceived risk are not due to the amount of processing time. However, our results indicate that the effect of the manipulations is not a result of the amount of processing time, since the control condition (shortest duration) had higher perceived risk and negative affective valence compared to the prevented condition (middle duration), which would not be the case if processing time drove the interaction effect. Also, previous research on mood and affect shows that most induced affect declines after a few minutes (e.g., 4–7), rendering it unlikely that the more time spent in the enhanced mental imagery condition to explain our main findingsOur control condition in which we allow for spontaneous imagery processing has benefits in that it increases the ecological validity of the results. However, there are potential confounding factors in the control condition such as the lower effort needed in this condition. However, we do not believe lower effort in the control condition could explain our results. Using mental rotation as visual-spatial interference allowed us to experimentally switch on and off mental imagery processing of environmental risk eventsLastly, one could argue that mental imagery is difficult to separate from general affect associated with the risk, thus suggesting that our results only further support that affect is used as information in risk judgments. However, our findings show that the mental imagery manipulation was successful in inducing differentially vivid mental images related to the same environmental risks. Hence, like others, we argue that mental imagery can amplify affectTo conclude, our findings strengthen the support for a causal relationship between mental imagery, affective experience, and risk perception, specifically here in the context of climate change. We argue that mental imagery increases the affect associated with the risk event by creating a perceptual experience that mimics seeing the environmental risk events, and then accordingly generating affective responses that can serve as information when making affect-laden risk judgments. However, we failed to find a relationship between mental imagery and pro-environmental intention and impact beliefs. Our findings increase our understanding of how affect impacts risk perception, but future studies should investigate the possible implications of how changing risk perception through affective manipulations might impact environmental values and behavior.