Climate Change Protesters – Motivations & Psychology
What are the motivations of the climate change protesters (extinction rebellion), looking into the psychology, personality traits, plus what’s really going on inside their distorted minds?
On the surface their motivations seem obvious, virtuous and for a good cause. Do these people really think their motivations are pure, selfless and for a good cause? Yes, I believe they genuinely believe in their cause, mostly anyway.
Hidden Meanings & Motivations
Despite the obvious motivations, there will also be other psychological motivations which protrude from the unconscious. These motivations will include the need to feel important, and ego gratification which is tied into feeling moral and virtuous. We all have these motivations. However, sometimes with some people things can go out of balance. These imbalances could be caused by extreme personality traits, or they could be the result of the mind over compensating for something, something lacking in their lives. They are most definitely the result of conformity, herd morality and various cognitive biases and distortions.
Conformity
These protesters are a part of a collective group think, feeding off each other. Everyone who shares the same views reinforces and validates those views in others. They believe they are being virtuous, so herd morality would be an appropriate summation of this phenomenon.
Cognitive Biases/Distortions
Various thinking distortions are going on, such as magnification, jumping to conclusions, mental filtering and black and white thinking. Confirmation bias is very apparent; they look to confirm their preconceptions about climate change. For example, attributing every serious weather event to human activity.
Personality Traits – MBTI
On the myers briggs type indicator the introverted intuitive types are idealists. Idealists are likely to be protesters/activists. When the introvert intuitive types are also feelers, they tend to be ruled by emotion and not logic. This dominance of emotion and lack of logic leads to this irrational idealistic behaviour that we see in these activists. They will be largely made up of INFP’s.
The Climate Change Issue
Personally I am environmentally conscious, and I support the cause for reducing pollution, which includes developing cleaner forms of energy and generally cleaning up the planet. However, based on some research in the subject, there seems to be a political motivation behind the climate change hysteria. There are plenty of scientists that dismiss that we are near a climate catastrophe. However, these views tend to be kept out of the majority of the mainstream media.
A common strategy of those with far leftist views is to mask their real intentions (power and control) with fake moral and virtuous motivations. These climate change protesters have fallen for this fabricated cause. It makes them feel virtuous and important. This is connected very strongly to my other post, why people adopt politically correct views?
