Environmentally Engaged: Differences in Sustainability Beliefs, Nature Reflections, Emotions, and Nature–Self Representations

Interactions with people who are highly engaged in sustainability (e.g., zookeepers, environmental educators) can have a significant impact on motivating less-engaged individuals to adopt more pro-environmental beliefs and to act on them. The current work examined two groups, graduate students mainly in conservation careers (n = 35) and an undergraduate comparison group (n = 237), to observe how they differed on sustainability beliefs (e.g., reports of willingness to sacrifice for the environment, anthropogenic global warming beliefs), reports of emotional experiences, reflections on nature, and nature–self–humanity cognitive representations. In comparison to undergraduate students, a frequently studied population in sustainability research, the graduate students reported greater willingness to sacrifice for the environment, stronger belief in anthropogenic global warming, and weaker self-interested emotions. When spontaneously reflecting on nature, the graduate students expressed greater connection with nature and stronger negative feelings about how humanity treats the environment. Finally, the graduate students showed more sustainable nature–self representations (e.g., greater inclusion of nature in self, viewing nature as larger than the self). We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding groups that may vary in environmental engagement, for developing measures to assess qualitative and quantitative assessments of nature–self–humanity knowledge, and for providing observations that may spur future work on encouraging people to care more strongly about nature and for supporting people engaged in sustainability fields.