Dr Jennifer Cole is a social psychology postdoctoral researcher at Vanderbilt University, working with the Climate Change Research Network to study political polarization of climate change. She completed her PhD in 2021 from the University of Colorado Boulder. Her interest in environmental psychology comes from her love of nature, particularly of trail running in the mountains in Colorado!

Project description:

The Covid-19 pandemic and climate change both require wide-scale coordination and cooperation to successfully mitigate significant damage to society. Such collective action is only possible if people feel collective efficacy: the sense that by working together we can achieve our collective goals. This project will explore whether communication about examples of successful collective action during the Covid-19 pandemic (e.g., New Zealanders’ adherence to strict lockdowns to virtually eliminate the virus from their country) can instill collective efficacy, and whether this collective efficacy in turn can motivate collective action toward climate change.