Psychologist Jay Van Bavel Argues Doom-Laden Climate Messaging Stifles Action

New York University psychology and neural science professor Jay Van Bavel argues that fear-based climate communication can produce paralysis rather than action. Writing for The Guardian, he traces the debate to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' 1947 "Doomsday Clock" cover, which began at seven minutes to midnight and now stands at 85 seconds. Van Bavel places himself in a third camp: those genuinely concerned about climate, AI and political threats but worried that dread immobilises people. Persuasion research, he notes, shows fear appeals work only as one-off prompts and only when paired with a sense of efficacy; repeated alarming messages cause audiences to tune out. He cites his team's analysis of 22,743 headline A/B tests on Upworthy.com, which found each additional negative word raised clicks by 2.3% — the negativity bias. A separate study of 59,440 participants across 63 countries tested 11 expert-crafted climate messages. A doom-heavy passage proved best at prompting sharing but worst at motivating mitigation such as planting trees, and it failed to raise belief in the climate emergency or support for policy. A sober message stressing that 99% of climate scientists agree outperformed negativity on every measure except sharing. Van Bavel also cites PhD student Danielle Goldwert's finding that describing emotional benefits of action — hope and connection — increases political participation, advocacy, donations and lifestyle change.