Climate change policies that require short-term sacrifice, like carbon taxes or flying restrictions, will fail unless enough people accept them — but polarisation and distrust are eroding that acceptance. This fellowship extension studies how social norms shift, both toward climate action and toward dysfunctional responses that block it, and what conditions tip the balance. The research addresses a gap: we know climate movements can drive change, but we also know climate threat can trigger paralysis and division. The project will use generative AI to build realistic models of how these competing dynamics interact, drawing on existing survey data and new data from the European Parliament, expert interviews with EU policymakers, and community engagement with Kirklees City Council and the charity Hope for the Future. If successful, the work could show policymakers how to mobilise public support for unpopular but necessary climate measures — not by raising awareness, but by understanding how norms take hold in political institutions and how disadvantaged communities can drive change from the bottom up. The research is applied social science with direct relevance to climate policy design.
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The scale and pace of transformation required to mitigate climate change is a huge challenge. Addressing this challenge requires social change – a change in social norms, behavioural change, a change in shared future visions, and a change in political decision-making. For climate mitigation missions to be successful – such as achieving net zero by 2050 – societies need to rally behind necessary but, often in the short-term at least, unpopular policies. This challenge is exacerbated by increasing polarisation and declining trust in politics across countries. This fellowship extension will build on insights gained during the first phase of the research which demonstrated the transformational potential that climate movements can have in affecting social and political change and the potential of moral norms for accelerating climate action. But the research also showed how climate change threat can lead to dysfunctional responses that block solutions and increase a sense of division and paralysis. This fellowship extension will focus on increasing understanding of how the competing dynamics of accelerating climate action on the one hand and dysfunctional responses on the other can interact, and what conditions could lead to increasing the prevalence of climate action in society. For this purpose, the most recent methodological advances in social science research will be utilised, namely using generative-AI to create realistic models of social change dynamics. Data collected during the first phase of the fellowship, complemented with new follow-up and survey data to be collected during the extension phase, will help to fine-tune these models and increase their validity. Moreover, the research will take a deeper look into political institutions and how changes in norms that can drive wider social change can take hold in these institutions thereby triggering processes of political change. Here the focus will be on the European Parliament, making use of open data available on discussions, decisions and processes in this institution, as well as gathering data on the influence of links between the institution and various external actors, such as industry and civil society. This data will be complemented with data from expert interviews with EU policy makers. Furthermore, this extension will go beyond the individual level by investigating the role that communities, including disadvantaged communities, can play in driving forward normative and social change. The extended fellowship will involve working collaboratively with the Kirklees City Council and the third sector organisation Hope for the Future, as well as local community groups to run a visioning and bottom-up deliberation engagement, while collecting data on this engagement. In this context we will also explore the potential of generative-AI tools for visioning (image-generating AI) and informed deliberation of climate policies within communities (text-generating AI). The insights from this research will advance social science research and understanding of social change processes. The research will also have strong potential to inform climate policy by producing important findings on how best to mobilise population support, and by revealing how climate activism can go beyond raising awareness of an issue by creating alliances that can successfully drive positive social change.
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