Anxious and egocentric: How specific emotions influence perspective taking

Though not a climate-focused study, this widely-cited experimental psychology paper investigates how incidental experiences of anxiety shape perspective-taking, finding that anxious participants show greater egocentrism in mental-state reasoning than those experiencing other negative emotions such as anger or disgust, or neutral states. Anxious participants were more likely to rely on their own spatial and conceptual perspective when reasoning about others, an effect explained in part by heightened uncertainty appraisal. Retained in this library as a relevant theoretical reference point: the finding that anxiety specifically (rather than negative affect generally) narrows perspective-taking capacity has direct relevance for understanding how climate anxiety might affect empathy, intergenerational understanding, and collective action, even though the original study does not address climate change directly.