Despite the ambition of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit the increase in the global average temperature to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels”, the global response to climate change has been characterized by political failure. Current national policies are not only insufficient to reach the objectives of the 2015 Paris Agreement, most countries even fail to meet their pledged Nationally Determined Contributions. Assuming that elected officials act on the preferences of their constituents, one way in which individual voters can influence climate policy agendas is by voting for political parties that are committed to combatting climate change. There is often a discrepancy, however, between self-reported issue importance (e.g., saying that climate change mitigation is important) and actual voting behavior (e.g., voting for a political party committed to climate change mitigation). This project seeks to demonstrate that implicit beliefs (i.e., complex cognitive processes that operate in the absence of awareness, certain goals, substantial time, and/or substantial cognitive resources) play a critical role in voting behavior and, hence, that measures of implicit beliefs are needed to accurately predict election results. In so doing, this project will provide a
unique understanding of the mechanisms that underlie voting behavior and, ultimately, help improve the accuracy of future climate models as this knowledge can be used to anticipate shifts in climate policy agendas.