Difficult climate emotions among late adolescents: What role does social trust play in the associations with general mental wellbeing and climate-friendly behaviour?
Young people experience difficult emotions regarding the future and climate change. Worry being the most common, as well as a mix of difficult emotions in relation to climate change; climate distress. Are these emotions related to low mental well-being in general, or should they be seen as something positive that motivates young people to act more climate friendly?
In June 2025 Maria Ojala kept a presentation at the International Conference on Environmental Psychology, ICEP, in Vilnius, Lithuania, based on the research conducted in this project. In her presentation she discussed how social trust – characterized by perceiving other people as trustworthy, helpful and fair – might be related to general mental well-being and climate-friendly behaviour but also help young people to face climate worry and other difficult climate emotions in constructive ways. General trust has been found to buffer stress and to be related to civic engagement among young people, but little research has been done on what role social trust play in a climate change context. Therefore, Ojala and colleagues aimed to investigate if and how the climate emotions of worry and distress are related to both general well-being and climate-friendly behaviours, and what role social trust plays in these possible relationships.
The study found that the more the young people felt climate worry and/or climate distress the more likely it was that they also felt depressed and anxious in general. However, if they harboured a high degree of social trust this relationship between difficult climate emotions and general mental wellbeing was significantly weaker than if they were low on social trust.
Thus, a high degree of social trust seems to be a protective factor in this context. In addition, if the young people experienced a high degree of social trust, then it was more likely that their climate change worry and distress would lead to more climate engagement compared to if they were low on social trust. Thus, social trust seems to enable the relationships between both climate-change related worry and distress and climate friendly
behaviours.
The presentation ended with a discussion about how to promote social trust among young people to decrease mental illbeing and increase climate friendly behaviours among young people who are highly worried and distressed about climate change.
Ojala, M., Wullenkord, M., Kallio Strand, K., & Erksell, G. (June, 2025). Difficult climate emotions among late adolescents: What role does social trust play in the associations with general mental wellbeing and climate-friendly behaviour? https://www.icep2025.com/