Self-Focused and Unconvinced: Value Profiles and Climate Change Skepticism in Young Adolescents

Climate change skepticism hampers the sustainable change of individuals and societies. Unfortunately, little is known about its developmental origins and early psychological underpinnings. To address these issues, the present study examined the links between basic values and climate change skepticism in adolescents from three culturally, socially, and politically diverse countries. In an online survey, adolescents (N = 5244, ages 12–14) from the Netherlands, China, and Colombia reported their basic values and levels of climate change skepticism. Correlation analyses showed that, in each country, adolescents who reported elevated levels of climate change skepticism prioritized self-enhancement values (and, to a lesser degree, openness-to-change values), but not self-transcendence values. Latent Profile Analyses of adolescents’ value priorities identified 5 value priority profiles, and similarly showed that adolescents with self-focused value priority systems reported higher levels of climate change skepticism than adolescents with other-focused value priority systems. Together, these findings show that, across countries, early emerging climate change skepticism is linked to value systems that promote self-interest over collective welfare. These findings also suggest the potential for implementing intervention at an early age, when adolescents’ budding values and views on polarized topics such as climate change may be most malleable.