Authoritarian Reactive Climate Anger Displacement Effect (ARCADE) and its Consequences for Climate Obstruction and Authoritarianism

The impacts of climate change become increasingly tangible, including in high-income countries. Yet, political parties and leaders opposing effective climate change mitigation measures gain traction across countries, while polarization around climate policies increases. What is the reason for this seemingly maladaptive response to the escalating climate change? In this study, we conducted a YouGov-administered survey experiment (N=1967) to investigate how exposure to climate change threat couldresult in such a maladaptive response, with a focus on individuals with authoritarian predispositions. We confirm a previous finding that climate change threat exposure can lead to affect displacement in people with authoritarian predispositions, where climate anger (directed at those in power, who have failed to tackle climate change) is redirected at non-conforming groups rather than mobilizing climate action. We extend these results, showing that not only does climate anger displacement resultin lack of climate action and boosted authoritarianism, it can also lead to the reactive response of climate obstruction. Based on these outcomes we propose the Authoritarian Reactive Climate Anger Displacement Effect (ARCADE) model that lays out one possible underlying mechanism for a maladaptive response to climate change.