Cross-cultural evidence for temporal pessimism about climate change harm

Although people often exhibit temporal comparative optimism—expecting their own future to be better than others’—this pattern reverses when evaluating the natural environment. In this pre-registered brief empirical note, we provide further empirical support for temporal pessimism whereby people anticipate worsening environmental conditions over time, especially for future generations. Using a large cross-cultural sample (k = 110, N = 108,946), we confirmed that people consistently judge climate change as posing a significantly greater harm to future generations than to themselves—a pattern that remained robust after controlling for demographics and multiple comparisons. Exploratory analysis indicated that temporal pessimism was greater among individuals with higher levels of climate worry and in nations with higher GDP per capita, stronger environmental performance, and greater human development, but smaller in nations with higher economic inequality. We discuss the implications of these findings for motivated cognition and climate action.