| dc.description.abstract | The current thesis aimed to investigate how attitudes and intentions towards climate change, refugees and climate refugees may be modified using the cognitive and affective components of attitudes. This is interesting due to somewhat contradicting previous findings (Eagly, Mladinic & Otto, 1994; Pooley & Connor, 2000). The thesis consisted of two separate studies, with separate samples. Data for both studies were independently collected for this thesis using online questionnaires. The first study investigated how attitudes towards climate change and refugees may be altered using information about climate refugees as the mediator. Here, participants were recruited through the SONA student pool, e-mails and social media, providing a sample of 166 participants with a variety in age, gender and education. In this study, participants reported their attitudes towards climate change and refugees pre- and post-manipulation. Information about climate refugees were presented to participants through ‘true or false’-questions. This study found a non-significant effect of information on attitudes, where those in the experimental condition (compared to those in the control condition) did not report significantly more positive attitudes towards neither climate change nor refugees. In the second study, the affective component was examined, using a sound clip of a climate refugee story to evoke emotions. Here, participants were recruited through the SONA student pool, leaving a sample of 144 students. In this study, participants firstly reported their attitudes towards climate change and refugees, before being presented with the sound clip. Thereafter, participants’ emotional response and intentions to act upon climate change and climate refugees was measured. This study showed a non-significant effect of the sound clip on intentions. However, feelings of kama muta and anger did significantly predict participants’ intentions to act, and an indirect effect was detected. It is important to note that there was a ceiling effect in both studies pre-manipulation, which may explain why we did not find a significant effect of the cognitive or affective mediators. However, the emotional sound clip showed a tendency of greater intentions. The results may suggest that evoking emotions of kama muta and anger can contribute to improve intentions to act upon climate change and climate refugees, but this effect was not found to be significant in this study. Therefore, future research is encouraged to further investigate these relationships. | eng |