The Moderating Role of Interest in Politics on the Relations between Conservative Political Orientation and Denial of Climate Change

Abstract

Although shared consensus in the scientific community confirms the reality of climate change and the likelihood of its anthropogenic causes, denial of this phenomenon, its anthropogenic causes, and its consequences still is widespread. This denial consistently has been associated with conservative ideology and related individual differences at the psychological level, but little is known about the mechanisms that explain this relationship. We aimed to understand how different components of conservative ideologies relate to climate change denial, and to investigate the moderating role of interest in politics on these relationships. We considered a representative sample of the U.S. electorate [American National Election Studies (ANES) 2012 database, N = 1525]. We assessed the ideological components of conservatism through measures of right wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO). Results showed a main effect for both RWA and SDO on climate change denial. Moderation analysis revealed that the RWA and SDO effects became stronger, moving from low to high levels of interest in politics.