Abstract
Abstract Nature is often portrayed in the environmental discourse as a mindful agent that has intentions, emotions, and other mental capacities. Built upon recent research on mind perception and mind attribution, the present research examines if this representation of nature bears any implications for environmental conservation. Studies 1 and 2 showed that participants who attributed a mind to nature exhibited more self-report and actual proenvironmental behavior than those who attributed fewer mental capacities to nature. This association held even when controlling for a range of well-documented predictors for proenvironmental behavior. Study 3 further revealed the psychological mechanism underlying this association. When thinking about environmental degradation, attribution of a mind to nature allowed participants to empathize with nature and act in a more proenvironmental manner. Theoretically, these findings offer a new angle to explicate recent research on the proenvironmental effects of anthropomorp...
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