Lilla Nóra Kovács is a PhD candidate at the Doctoral School of Psychology at Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE), Budapest, Hungary, where she is a research fellow in the Personality, Health and Emotion Regulation Research Group led by Dr. Gyöngyi Kökönyei. Lilla’s research focuses on the maladaptive emotion regulation strategies of healthy adults and clinical populations. Being concerned about climate crisis, her novel research interest is emotional reactions in response to climate crisis.  In her free time, Lilla enjoys traveling, getting to know other cultures, and visiting music festivals.

Project description:

The path of climate crisis is determined by human actions and decisions. Our behavior and decisions are motivated by our emotions, thus the emotional reaction we give to climate crisis may define whether we take climate action or not. There is evidence that worry about climate crisis leads to climate action, however, little is known about other emotional responses. Thus, we aim to explore which emotion regulation strategies in response to climate crisis can motivate climate action? Although emotion regulation (ER) strategies that increase anxiety are usually considered maladaptive, in case of climate crisis, being too optimistic may result in inaction. Therefore, it is important to understand the level of anxiety and related ER strategies that could promote climate action.