Role of Personality, Self-Attitude and Climate Change Perception in Prevention of Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change is a global phenomenon which is likely to affect the man-kinds’ physical health; it is also likely to affect mental health. The purpose of the present study was to see how personality, self-attitude and climate change perception can play a role in prevention of climate change. This study examined the personality dimensions such as neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness; attitude domains as high standards, self-criticism and generalization and climate change perception as threatful or existential of people who are working for prevention of climate change and people who are not working for prevention of climate change (N = 60). The NEO-FFI, Attitude Towards Self (ATS) and Climate Change Perception Questionnaire (CCPQ) were administered. Correlation and t-ratio were used to analyze the data. Correlation analysis revealed that CCPQ has significant positive correlation with neuroticism, openness to experience and conscientiousness, and significant negative correlation with agreeableness. ATS has significant negative correlation with neuroticism, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and CCPQ, and significant positive correlation with agreeableness. The t-ratio findings denote that there is significant difference for personality domains and self-attitude domains between both the groups. The persons working for climate change perceives change in climate as threatful whereas non- working group perceives as existential.