Whose house is on fire; when will we fail? Psychological distance of climate change inconsistently responds to social and temporal proximization

Psychological distance (PD) has been widely assumed as a barrier to public awareness of climate change, thus encouraging climate communication to focus on local and imminent climate change impacts that affect people similar to the recipient. In two experiments, we attempted to manipulate temporal PD by varying the year by which forecasted climate change impacts will occur, and hypothetical PD by varying the predicted impact severity as a proxy. In two further experiments, we manipulated social PD by using episodic versus thematic framing of news messages covering a climate change-related disaster. PD responded inconsistently to experimental manipulations, depending on its dimensions and measurement methods. Climate emotions and public climate action intentions were not affected by the timing and severity manipulations, nor did they show robust intercorrelations with measured PD. Similarly, episodic framing did not affect emotions and intentions either directly or mediated via PD. Our results suggest that the usefulness of egocentric PD concepts in climate communication is limited. We discuss alternative approaches that focus on people's affective proximity to other people and things. • Proximizing climate change does not increase climate action intentions • Proximizing corresponds inconsistently with measured psychological distance • Proximizing and psychological distance are barely related to climate emotions • Climate communication should shift its focus toward affective proximity