Group processes and climate change: Rejecting intergroup calls for climate action

Excess human emissions, largely from industrialized nations, cause the climate crisis. Calls for climate action are thus inherently group-based (i.e., target people from industrialized nations) and often critical (i.e., challenging unsustainable lifestyles). Because group criticism by fellow ingroup members has been shown to be more acceptable than criticism by outsiders (intergroup sensitivity effect), we argue that critical calls for climate action across group-boundaries are ineffective as compared to the same calls by a messenger within that group. In the present work, American and European participants consistently rejected criticism of insufficient climate action in the U.S. and Europe (i.e., “the West”) from a Chinese participant (outgroup source) as compared to the same comments from participants from their own region (ingroup sources). Further, joint membership in the superordinate group “the West” was sufficient to make criticism acceptable; extended ingroup commenters (e.g., Europeans for American participants) were equally accepted as ingroup sources. Exploratory moderation analyses showed that the group-based rejection of criticism emerged only among participants with moderate-to-high beliefs in the existence of climate change but not among climate change deniers. We discuss how changing group processes can help master the climate crisis. • Unsustainable lifestyles among different groups cause the climate crisis • Different groups are thus a legitimate target for critical calls to climate action • Outgroup calls were consistently rejected as compared to the same ingroup calls • Responses to calls by full and extended ingroup (superordinate group) did not differ • Redefining group boundaries could be one key to mastering the climate crisis