Some Don’t Like It Hot: Climate Change Anxiety Influences Symptom Perception In A Heated Environment

Awareness about climate change can lead to psychological distress and somatic symptoms despite not being exposed to a harmful agent (‘nocebo effect’). Thus, we wanted to test whether watching a media piece about climate change effects could induce somatic symptoms. We recruited 46 participants who watched media pieces about climate change or a control video (randomized order) and were then exposed to a heated environment (33° C). After watching the videos, participants were asked about state climate change anxiety, and during the heat exposure, somatic symptoms and temperature estimates were assessed. We also collected state general anxiety and trait climate change anxiety. Both anxiety related to climate change (between r=.33, p=.02 for state anxiety, experimental condition, and r=.51, p=.004 for trait anxiety, control condition) and general anxiety (r=.38, p<.001) were associated with reporting symptoms in the heated environment. While the video about climate change did not modify symptoms reports in an ANOVA, adding video condition improved a multilevel model of symptoms in the heated environment (chi²=13.239, df =2, p=.001). Perceived temperature was not predicted by climate change anxiety or video condition. Thus, somatic symptoms experienced in hot environments are modulated by affective processes and fit the predictive processing framework.