TY - JOUR
T1 - Examining evidence for the Finite Pool of Worry and Finite Pool of Attention hypotheses
AU - Sisco, Matthew R.
AU - Constantino, Sara M.
AU - Gao, Yu
AU - Tavoni, Massimo
AU - Cooperman, Alicia D.
AU - Bosetti, Valentina
AU - Weber, Elke U.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by 1) the European Research Council under the European Community's Programme “Ideas”—Call identifier: ERC-2013-StG/ERC grant agreement no. 336703 —project RISICO “Risk and uncertainty in developing and implementing climate change policies”, 2) the cooperative agreement NSF SES-1463122 awarded to the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions , 3) NSF Grant, SES-2030800 “RAPID: Public Responses to Personal and Societal Risk: Attitudes and Behavior on COVID-19 and Global Change” and 4) generous support from the Global Thinking Foundation .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022
PY - 2023/1
Y1 - 2023/1
N2 - The Finite Pool of Worry (FPW) hypothesis states that humans have finite emotional resources for worry, so that when we become more worried about one threat, worry about other threats decreases. Despite its relevance, no conclusive empirical evidence for the hypothesis exists. We leverage the sudden onset of new worries introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment to test the FPW hypothesis and a related hypothesis, the Finite Pool of Attention (FPA) hypothesis. The FPA hypothesis proposes that when we pay more attention to one threat, our attention to other threats decreases. To test these two hypotheses, we assessed self-reported attention, self-reported worries, and Twitter/news attention to various threats (climate change, terrorism, economic problems, and others) throughout the pandemic in three countries (USA, Italy, and China). We find that as attention to and worry about COVID-19 increases, attention to climate change decreases, but worry does not. Our results are confirmed by further analysis of a large, longitudinal U.S. sample. We find that public perceptions that COVID-19 and climate change are related do not fully explain the positive relationship in worry between the two hazards. In summary, our findings suggest that while there may be a Finite Pool of Attention to threats, there is limited evidence for a Finite Pool of Worry.
AB - The Finite Pool of Worry (FPW) hypothesis states that humans have finite emotional resources for worry, so that when we become more worried about one threat, worry about other threats decreases. Despite its relevance, no conclusive empirical evidence for the hypothesis exists. We leverage the sudden onset of new worries introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic as a natural experiment to test the FPW hypothesis and a related hypothesis, the Finite Pool of Attention (FPA) hypothesis. The FPA hypothesis proposes that when we pay more attention to one threat, our attention to other threats decreases. To test these two hypotheses, we assessed self-reported attention, self-reported worries, and Twitter/news attention to various threats (climate change, terrorism, economic problems, and others) throughout the pandemic in three countries (USA, Italy, and China). We find that as attention to and worry about COVID-19 increases, attention to climate change decreases, but worry does not. Our results are confirmed by further analysis of a large, longitudinal U.S. sample. We find that public perceptions that COVID-19 and climate change are related do not fully explain the positive relationship in worry between the two hazards. In summary, our findings suggest that while there may be a Finite Pool of Attention to threats, there is limited evidence for a Finite Pool of Worry.
KW - Affect Generalization
KW - Climate Change
KW - COVID-19
KW - Finite Pool of Attention
KW - Finite Pool of Worry
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U2 - 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102622
DO - 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102622
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85143690291
SN - 0959-3780
VL - 78
JO - Global Environmental Change
JF - Global Environmental Change
M1 - 102622
ER -