Canadian Psychology / Psychologie canadienne, Vol 66(4), Nov 2025, 312-324; doi:10.1037/cap0000399
A sizeable minority of people around the world believe that climate change is happening but is largely caused by natural forces. Despite emerging research on the topic, their beliefs and willingness to support climate action remain poorly understood. Here, we conduct a mixed-methods study with a demographically quasirepresentative sample of U.S. adults (N = 939) to examine distinct narratives amongst those who believe in the natural causation of climate change. Inductive coding of participants’ open-ended essay responses about climate change identified three subcategories reflecting the degree of human influence (in addition to natural influence) that those espousing these arguments acknowledged: no influence, minimal influence, and meaningful influence. We then examined each subcategory’s support for climate policy and intentions to engage in pro-climate action in comparison to those who expressed outright disbelief in climate change and those who did not express contrarian arguments. Interestingly, while those who argued for natural causation of climate with minimal or no human influence reported statistically similar policy support and behavioral intentions to those who outright denied the existence of climate change, those who argued for natural causation with meaningful human influence reported statistically similar policy support and behavioral intentions to those who did not espouse contrarian arguments. Taken together, these results shed light on the diversity of views amongst those who argue for natural causes of climate change. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)