Political affiliation impacts climate attention and choice beyond extreme weather exposure

Abstract Political polarization and increasing exposure to extreme weather can shape public engagement with climate change, yet the underlying psychological mechanisms remain unclear. In this Registered Report, we examine how political affiliation, extreme weather exposure and subjective attribution influence climate-relevant information search and decision-making in a US sample ( N = 1,451). We combined a process-tracing paradigm within an incentivized decision task involving real carbon emissions with objective data on extreme weather exposure. Democrats attended more to carbon emission information and made more pro-climate choices than Republicans, with no evidence of moderation by objective extreme weather exposure. The subjective attribution of extreme weather to climate change was associated with greater attention to carbon information, more pro-climate choices and moderated the effects of exposure on both outcomes. These findings highlight the importance of political affiliation in climate-relevant decision-making and suggest that extreme weather effects depend less on exposure itself than on how these experiences are interpreted.