Climate change anxiety selectively predicts implicit motor freezing during pro-environmental choices

Climate change helplessness is the perceived inability to mitigate environmental threats. Behavioral freezing is a classic hallmark response to perceived helplessness. Under the embodied cognition framework, motor inhibition during choices reflects cognitive processes, including hesitation and perceived agency. We used mouse-tracking to assess cognitive effort during pro-environmental decision-making and, most importantly, to assess whether climate change anxiety (CCA) and efficacy beliefs predicted implicit motor pauses, reflecting climate change helplessness on an implicit level. Sixty-one participants completed a counting Stroop task, where accuracy determined monetary gains for either themselves or an environmental organization. Motor pauses—reflecting decisional freezing—were selectively associated with CCA’s functional impairment dimension, particularly in pro-environmental choices. General anxiety did not predict freezing, supporting the specificity of climate-related distress. These findings provide evidence that helplessness toward climate change is embodied in implicit motor dynamics, with implications for interventions targeting action paralysis in sustainability efforts.