{"id":4132,"date":"2020-01-31T18:58:41","date_gmt":"2020-01-31T18:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/?p=4132"},"modified":"2020-01-31T18:58:47","modified_gmt":"2020-01-31T18:58:47","slug":"humor-helped-90-of-subjects-feel-more-hopeful-about-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/2020\/01\/31\/humor-helped-90-of-subjects-feel-more-hopeful-about-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Humor Helped 90% of Subjects Feel More Hopeful About Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Inverse<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The precarious state of Earth’s climate is getting harder to ignore. The seemingly constant influx of bad news has contributed to new forms\u00a0anxiety<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0depression<\/a>, and even coined new terms like \u201cclimate grief\u201d and \u201ceco-anxiety.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These new sources of stress demand new remedies \u2014 so how do we deal?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To start: Laugh about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No really. Research suggests that the power of humor to combat climate-induced anxiety goes beyond just temporary distraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A team of researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder has published several findings that get at how comedy can influence the way we feel about climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June 2019, they published a study<\/a> in the journal Comedy Studies<\/em> that looked at how \u201cgood-natured comedy\u201d \u2014 beyond satire \u2014 helps people \u201cpositively process negative emotions regarding global warming\u201d and \u201csustain hope.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study included 30 students at the university who studied environmental sciences. To gauge whether humor could influence their feelings about climate change, the researchers had them participate in a number of comedy workshops related to climate change, including coming up with their own skits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the workshops, 90 percent of the students said they felt more hopeful about climate change during the exercises. Importantly, 83 percent said they felt their commitment to taking action on climate change was stronger \u2014 and more likely to last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The students also said that reframing the climate change narrative from doom and gloom into comedy not only made them feel more hopeful about climate action \u2014 it could also help others feel more empowered to take meaningful action. All hope, it seemed, was no longer lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CHANGING THE CLIMATE CONVERSATION<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A 2018 study<\/a> by the same scientists examined how comedy can change the conversation about climate change. The researchers analyzed stand-up shows that focused on climate change \u2014 specifically, a video competition series at the University of Colorado called \u201cStand Up for Climate Change\u201d \u2014 and tracked how the audience responded over the three years the series took place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate comedy helps to make people more aware of climate change, brings an emotional element to the conversation, and highlights themes like problem solving and knowledge formation, they found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile science is often privileged as the dominant way by which climate change is articulated, comedic approaches can influence how meanings course through the veins of our social body, shaping our coping and survival practices in contemporary life,\u201d the researchers conclude in the paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this conversation isn\u2019t \u201ca given,” they note. Having an effective funny<\/em> conversation about climate change requires comedians \u2014 and communicators \u2014 to \u201cmeet people where they are.\u201d That means “emotional, tactile, visceral, and experiential communication,” Boykoff describes<\/a> in a piece for The Conversation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Rather than ‘dumbing down’ science for the public, this is a ‘smartening up’ approach that has been shown to bring people together around a highly divisive topic,” Boykoff writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humor doesn\u2019t\u00a0always<\/em>\u00a0lead to positive effects on climate perspective. A 2019\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0from a different group of researchers looked at how more than 1,200 people responded to late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s satirical approach (contrasting the \u201cgood-natured\u201d style examined in the first study) to talking about the climate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers edited a segment of Kimmel to highlight either humor or indignation, and tracked how participants reacted to the two approaches. The humor-only segments reduced participants’ anger about climate change \u2014 but they rated those segments as less informative. Overall, “avoiding humor helped close the partisan gap in risk perception between Republicans and Democrats,” the researchers found \u2014\u00a0suggesting a more sober approach may be better in some circumstances. Read more …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inverse The precarious state of Earth’s climate is getting harder to ignore. The seemingly constant influx of bad news has contributed to new forms\u00a0anxiety\u00a0and\u00a0depression, and even coined new terms like \u201cclimate grief\u201d and \u201ceco-anxiety.\u201d These new sources of stress demand … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-02 07:05:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4132"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4135,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4132\/revisions\/4135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/prometheus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}