Pre-manipulation measures
EVENTS, EVENT, POSITIVE
After giving consent and completing demographic variables, all participants rated the three dependent variables, perceived risk of climate change, and their affective experience in the form of valence, and arousal.The main dependent variable is the perceived risk of climate change posed to oneself (two items), to others (two items), and to non-human populations on earth (two items), with six items in total on a visual analogues scale (VAS scale) ranging from 0 (Climate change does not present any risk) to 100 (Climate change presents an extreme risk).Valence was measured using a single item assessing the participants' level of pleasantness. Arousal was also measured with a single item assessing their level of activation. Participants first read a text explaining both the valence scale and arousal scale and then answered the question, “How do you feel right now?” For valence, participants answered on a VAS scale ranging from 0 (Negative) to 100 (Positive), for arousal they answered on a VAS scale ranging from 0 (Low activation) to 100 (High activation).After the pre-manipulation ratings, the participants were randomized to one of three conditions: (1) spontaneous mental imagery (control), (2) enhanced mental imagery, and (3) prevented mental imagery (the time spent on the experiment varied between conditions, Participants in the spontaneous mental imagery condition (control) first read “On the coming pages you will be presented with environmental events that could happen. Please read each environmental event carefully and then move to the next page and answer the questions.” Following this they were presented with an environmental risk event (i.e., water pollution increasing), but received no further instruction on how to process it and were then asked to rate their, valence, arousal, and vividness of their mental images of the environmental risk event. The vividness of mental imagery measure read “How clearly did you see the The spontaneous mental imagery condition (control) was designed to simulate turning people’s attention towards an environmental risk in day-to-day life. Even though we did not specify how to process the environmental risk events, we expect that the manipulation would activate some mental imagery processes. Although the prevalence and intensity of spontaneous mental imagery varies in the population