The emotional and behavioral effects of youth exposure to images of the global climate change crisis and its relationship to their personal characteristics Quasi-experimental study

The problem of the study was to monitor and quasi-experimentally measure the emotional and behavioral effects resulting from exposure of university youth to images of the climate change crisis. Within the framework of three of the intermediate variables: the respondents' personal characteristics (extraversion - neuroticism), their cognitive background, and their level of interest in preserving the environment.
The study used the experimental approach and the comparative method, and the "questionnaire" was applied to three experimental groups and a fourth control group, with a total of (120) university students, and the "focused discussion groups" were applied to a sample of (15) university students.
  The results of the study concluded that exposure to images of the climate change crisis in different visual frameworks affects the emotional and behavioral responses of university students, and indicated that each visual frame of these images has a different effect, as it was found that there were significant differences between the respondents in the three experimental groups in some of the emotional effects In the case of behavioral effects, the results showed that there were significant differences between the three experimental groups. The results also showed that the variable of visual frames of climate change images affected the extent of positive and negative emotional and behavioral effects resulting from the exposure of the respondents to these images.
The results did not show that there is always a significant correlation between the personal characteristics of the respondents and the extent of the positive and negative emotional and behavioral effects resulting from their exposure to images of the climate change crisis in different visual frameworks. influences.
The results showed that the variable of the cognitive background of the respondents had a significant effect on the rates of affective effects on them after exposure to images of the climate change crisis at the level of all feelings except feelings related to distress, and it also had a significant effect on the level of rates of behavioral effects. The results also showed a relationship between levels of interest in preserving The environment of the respondents and the rates of emotional and behavioral effects on them after exposure to images of the climate change crisis.
The results confirmed that the images that contain people are the images that most attract the interest of university youth, but they showed that the images of the effects of climate change, although they attract their attention, may also arouse in them a feeling of helplessness and inability to confront this fierce crisis.