Emotional Complexity Drives Collective Climate Action

Emotional experiences are often complex, involving the co-occurrence of positive and negative feelings. Yet theories of motivation and collective action typically examine emotions individually, leaving unclear how emotionally complex states shape engagement with societal problems. Here, we test whether emotional complexity predicts collective action using climate change as a real-world context. In Study 1, a behavioral megastudy of 17 interventions conducted with 31,324 U.S. adults, the largest increases in climate advocacy occurred when interventions elicited both negative (such as anger, guilt) and positive (e.g., hope, pride) emotions. Across individuals, anger, guilt, sadness, anxiety, and hope predicted engagement in public, political, financial, and lifestyle advocacy. Study 2 (N = 1,986 U.S. adults) experimentally separated emotional engagement from efficacy cues and found that their combination produced the strongest advocacy gains. These findings suggest that emotionally complex states, particularly when paired with efficacy beliefs, constitute a powerful pathway to collective action.