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Fear, anger and responsibility: the emotional content of historical speeches about water and water policy

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Abstract

Cognitive-affective science research shows that rational cold cognition and irrational hot cognition are causally integrated in the human brain. Sub-conscious and conscious emotions powerfully affect supposedly rational decisions, including those decisions we make about water resources management and governance. Through this research, I: (1) evaluated whether implicit and explicit emotions can be identified in historical documents through text analysis; (2) determined emotions’ ranges and frequencies; and (3) assessed the merits of Terror Management Theory as an explanation of the influence of mortality salience on receptivity to water-resource information. Nine famous speeches (1960–2004) relating to water were coded against 17 indicator emotions. The analysis indicates that, compared to more positive emotions, negative emotions and mortality primes are more prevalent in environmental speeches, as predicted by TMT. This result is not surprising given the state of the world’s water resources. But TMT also suggests that negative emotions could prompt individual mortality defenses that powerfully influence decision-making. Once triggered, these defenses may interfere with the desired behavioral changes required to address water concerns or crises. The results suggest that if we are to influence society’s water policy decisions, we must understand the complex and underlying emotions that individuals and groups attribute to water problems and priorities.

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Notes

  1. And yet, the story is never simple. Research from Pyszczynski et al. (2012) found in a series of three studies that “reminders of global climate change short-circuit the increased support for violence that often occurs in response to existential threat and increase support for peaceful reconciliation.” Similarly, unrelated research on rural women farmers in South Africa were more successful and had greater self esteem when they had access to the emotional resource of hope (Goldin 2015).

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Canada’s Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) through their Insight Development Grant (2012; #430-2012-0264).

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Wolfe, S.E. Fear, anger and responsibility: the emotional content of historical speeches about water and water policy. Water Hist 9, 317–336 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12685-016-0189-3

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