Carmen Brick
Biographic Data
| ID | 305075 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Carmen Brick |
| GIVEN NAMES | Carmen |
| FAMILY NAME | Brick |
| SIGNATURE | BRICK C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7174-8193 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 30 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
A megastudy of behavioral interventions to catalyze public, political, and financial climate advocacy
Addressing climate change depends on large-scale system changes, which require public advocacy. Here, we identified and tested 17 expert-crowdsourced theory-informed behavioral interventions designed to promote public, political, and financial advocacy in a large quota-matched sample of US residents (n = 31,324). The most consistently effective intervention emphasized both the collective efficacy and emotional benefits of climate action, increasi…
Promoting Clothing Repair With In‐Person Workshops
Repair can help extend clothing lifecycles. However, clothing repair is infrequent in high‐income countries, especially among young adults who often lack practical repair skills. In this quasi‐experiment, we tested whether a group workshop could motivate repair and reduce consumption in young adults. Participants were assigned to a skill‐based workshop ( n = 62) or a control group ( n = 51) that only received a persuasive message about clothing r…
Gaps in public trust between scientists and climate scientists
This study compares public trust in climate scientists and scientists in general across 68 countries ( N = 69,534). On average, participants reported moderately high levels of trust in climate scientists, with trust levels being slightly lower than trust in scientists in general. Overall, this trust gap was larger among participants who identified as politically conservative or right-leaning, but there was considerable variation across countries
Public Communication about Science in 68 Countries
This 68-country survey ( n = 71,922) examines science information diets and communication behavior, identifies cross-country differences, and tests how such differences are associated with sociopolitical and economic conditions. We find that social media are the most used sources of science information in most countries, except those with democratic-corporatist media systems where news media tend to be used more widely. People in collectivist soc…
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages
Addressing climate change with behavioral science
Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interve…
Realizing the full potential of behavioural science for climate change mitigation
Is the Effect of Trust on Risk Perceptions a Matter of Knowledge, Control, and Time? An Extension and Direct-Replication Attempt of Siegrist and Cvetkovich (2000)
The complexity of societal risks such as pandemics, artificial intelligence, and climate change may lead laypeople to rely on experts and authorities when evaluating these threats. While Siegrist and Cvetkovich showed that competence-based trust in authorities correlates with perceived societal risks and benefits only when people feel unknowledgeable, recent research has yielded mixed support for this foundational work. To address this discrepanc…
Opportunities for Emotion Research on Biodiversity
We see unique opportunities to advance emotional research by studying an overlooked environmental problem. The biodiversity crisis is caused by land use, in particular by reducing and damaging habitats, such as deforestation for cattle grazing. Biodiversity processes are proximate and personally moving, like when a person is causing or experiencing changes to livelihood-providing ecosystems, and we suggest this affect-rich context is useful for s…
The Gender Wage Gap, Between-Firm Inequality, and Devaluation
Unequal sorting of men and women into higher and lower-wage firms contributes significantly to the gender wage gap according to recent analysis of national labor markets. We confirm the importance of this between-firm gender segregation in wages and examine a second outcome of hours using unique employer-employee data from the service sector. We then examine what explains the relationship between firm gender composition and wages. In contrast to …
Illusory Essences
The reliance in psychology on verbal definitions means that psychological research is unusually moored to how humans think and communicate about categories. Psychological concepts (e.g., intelligence, attention) are easily assumed to represent objective, definable categories with an underlying essence. Like the “vital forces” previously thought to animate life, these assumed essences can create an illusion of understanding. By synthesizing a wide…
Organizations can make a real impact on sustainable development
The motivation–impact gap in pro-environmental clothing consumption
Districting that minimizes partisan bias
The shapes of electoral districts determine how votes translate into seats. When districts favor certain political parties, electoral results can be disproportionate and the public may lose faith in the political process. Disagreement about appropriate district shapes is subjective, rarely resolved, and often leads to lawsuits. Previously, many authors have called for objective districting criteria. We offer a novel synthesis of models that enabl…
Systematic Review of Household Water Conservation Interventions Using the Information–Motivation–Behavioral Skills Model
Increasing droughts and water shortages are intensifying the need for residential water conservation. We identify and classify 24 water conservation studies using the information–motivation–behavioral skills (IMB) model by categorizing interventions based on content and water conservation effectiveness. This synthesis revealed several insights. First, all of the interventions used information, motivation, and/or behavioral skills, suggesting that…
Communicating evidence in icons and summary formats for policymakers
Policy decisions have vast consequences, but there is little empirical research on how best to communicate underlying evidence to decision-makers. Groups in diverse fields (e.g., education, medicine, crime) use brief, graphical displays to list policy options, expected outcomes and evidence quality in order to make such evidence easy to assess. However, the understanding of these representations is rarely studied. We surveyed experts and non-expe…
Even conservative voters want the environment to be at the heart of post-Covid-19 economic reconstruction in the UK
In 2019, the environment began to rival the economy among priority issues for the UK public. The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to shift this balance in either direction, because the crisis is not only causing serious economic damage but is also highlighting the usefulness of expert warnings. The current work examines the balance between public prioritisation of environment and economy in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. A nationally repr…
How Managers Can Reduce Household Water Use Through Communication
As populations increase and droughts intensify, water providers are using tools such as persuasive messaging to decrease residential water use. However, district‐led messaging campaigns are rarely informed by psychological science, evaluated for effectiveness, or strategically disseminated. In collaboration with a water district, we report a field experiment among single‐family households using persuasive messaging based on the information‐motiva…
The Psychological Science Accelerator
Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution t…
When stereotype threat does not impair performance, self-affirmation can be harmful
When an individual is threatened by a negative stereotype, they are motivated to disconfirm the stereotype to protect self-integrity. When the task is simple and short, this motivation enables threatened individuals to counter the harmful effects of stereotype threat. Two theoretical accounts could explain this effect. First, performance is facilitated by a correct prepotent response according to the mere effort account. Second, the threatened in…
“Green to be seen” and “brown to keep down”
Unearthing the “Green” Personality
Pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors show substantial individual differences, and exploring their predictors can help reveal the origins of pro-environmental behavior. Basic personality traits may provide a partial explanation, but it is unclear which personality traits are reliably associated with pro-environmental behaviors. This article uses a specific type of environmental behavior, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, to clarify which per…
Going along versus getting it right
The Gender Wage Gap, Between-Firm Inequality, and Devaluation
Unequal sorting of men and women into higher and lower-wage firms contributes significantly to the gender wage gap according to recent analysis of national labor markets. We confirm the importance of this between-firm gender segregation in wages and examine a second outcome of hours using unique employer-employee data from the service sector. We then examine what explains the relationship between firm gender composition and wages. In contrast to …
Going along versus getting it right
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
How Managers Can Reduce Household Water Use Through Communication
As populations increase and droughts intensify, water providers are using tools such as persuasive messaging to decrease residential water use. However, district‐led messaging campaigns are rarely informed by psychological science, evaluated for effectiveness, or strategically disseminated. In collaboration with a water district, we report a field experiment among single‐family households using persuasive messaging based on the information‐motiva…
The motivation–impact gap in pro-environmental clothing consumption
Going along versus getting it right
Unearthing the “Green” Personality
Pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors show substantial individual differences, and exploring their predictors can help reveal the origins of pro-environmental behavior. Basic personality traits may provide a partial explanation, but it is unclear which personality traits are reliably associated with pro-environmental behaviors. This article uses a specific type of environmental behavior, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, to clarify which per…
“Green to be seen” and “brown to keep down”
The Psychological Science Accelerator
Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution t…
When stereotype threat does not impair performance, self-affirmation can be harmful
When an individual is threatened by a negative stereotype, they are motivated to disconfirm the stereotype to protect self-integrity. When the task is simple and short, this motivation enables threatened individuals to counter the harmful effects of stereotype threat. Two theoretical accounts could explain this effect. First, performance is facilitated by a correct prepotent response according to the mere effort account. Second, the threatened in…
How Managers Can Reduce Household Water Use Through Communication
As populations increase and droughts intensify, water providers are using tools such as persuasive messaging to decrease residential water use. However, district‐led messaging campaigns are rarely informed by psychological science, evaluated for effectiveness, or strategically disseminated. In collaboration with a water district, we report a field experiment among single‐family households using persuasive messaging based on the information‐motiva…
Districting that minimizes partisan bias
The shapes of electoral districts determine how votes translate into seats. When districts favor certain political parties, electoral results can be disproportionate and the public may lose faith in the political process. Disagreement about appropriate district shapes is subjective, rarely resolved, and often leads to lawsuits. Previously, many authors have called for objective districting criteria. We offer a novel synthesis of models that enabl…
Systematic Review of Household Water Conservation Interventions Using the Information–Motivation–Behavioral Skills Model
Increasing droughts and water shortages are intensifying the need for residential water conservation. We identify and classify 24 water conservation studies using the information–motivation–behavioral skills (IMB) model by categorizing interventions based on content and water conservation effectiveness. This synthesis revealed several insights. First, all of the interventions used information, motivation, and/or behavioral skills, suggesting that…
Communicating evidence in icons and summary formats for policymakers
Policy decisions have vast consequences, but there is little empirical research on how best to communicate underlying evidence to decision-makers. Groups in diverse fields (e.g., education, medicine, crime) use brief, graphical displays to list policy options, expected outcomes and evidence quality in order to make such evidence easy to assess. However, the understanding of these representations is rarely studied. We surveyed experts and non-expe…
Even conservative voters want the environment to be at the heart of post-Covid-19 economic reconstruction in the UK
In 2019, the environment began to rival the economy among priority issues for the UK public. The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to shift this balance in either direction, because the crisis is not only causing serious economic damage but is also highlighting the usefulness of expert warnings. The current work examines the balance between public prioritisation of environment and economy in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. A nationally repr…
Illusory Essences
The reliance in psychology on verbal definitions means that psychological research is unusually moored to how humans think and communicate about categories. Psychological concepts (e.g., intelligence, attention) are easily assumed to represent objective, definable categories with an underlying essence. Like the “vital forces” previously thought to animate life, these assumed essences can create an illusion of understanding. By synthesizing a wide…
Organizations can make a real impact on sustainable development
The motivation–impact gap in pro-environmental clothing consumption
Opportunities for Emotion Research on Biodiversity
We see unique opportunities to advance emotional research by studying an overlooked environmental problem. The biodiversity crisis is caused by land use, in particular by reducing and damaging habitats, such as deforestation for cattle grazing. Biodiversity processes are proximate and personally moving, like when a person is causing or experiencing changes to livelihood-providing ecosystems, and we suggest this affect-rich context is useful for s…
The Gender Wage Gap, Between-Firm Inequality, and Devaluation
Unequal sorting of men and women into higher and lower-wage firms contributes significantly to the gender wage gap according to recent analysis of national labor markets. We confirm the importance of this between-firm gender segregation in wages and examine a second outcome of hours using unique employer-employee data from the service sector. We then examine what explains the relationship between firm gender composition and wages. In contrast to …
Addressing climate change with behavioral science
Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interve…
Realizing the full potential of behavioural science for climate change mitigation
Is the Effect of Trust on Risk Perceptions a Matter of Knowledge, Control, and Time? An Extension and Direct-Replication Attempt of Siegrist and Cvetkovich (2000)
The complexity of societal risks such as pandemics, artificial intelligence, and climate change may lead laypeople to rely on experts and authorities when evaluating these threats. While Siegrist and Cvetkovich showed that competence-based trust in authorities correlates with perceived societal risks and benefits only when people feel unknowledgeable, recent research has yielded mixed support for this foundational work. To address this discrepanc…
Gaps in public trust between scientists and climate scientists
This study compares public trust in climate scientists and scientists in general across 68 countries ( N = 69,534). On average, participants reported moderately high levels of trust in climate scientists, with trust levels being slightly lower than trust in scientists in general. Overall, this trust gap was larger among participants who identified as politically conservative or right-leaning, but there was considerable variation across countries
Public Communication about Science in 68 Countries
This 68-country survey ( n = 71,922) examines science information diets and communication behavior, identifies cross-country differences, and tests how such differences are associated with sociopolitical and economic conditions. We find that social media are the most used sources of science information in most countries, except those with democratic-corporatist media systems where news media tend to be used more widely. People in collectivist soc…
Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. We interrogated these concerns with a preregistered 68-country survey of 71,922 respondents and found that in most countries, most p…
Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages
A megastudy of behavioral interventions to catalyze public, political, and financial climate advocacy
Addressing climate change depends on large-scale system changes, which require public advocacy. Here, we identified and tested 17 expert-crowdsourced theory-informed behavioral interventions designed to promote public, political, and financial advocacy in a large quota-matched sample of US residents (n = 31,324). The most consistently effective intervention emphasized both the collective efficacy and emotional benefits of climate action, increasi…
Promoting Clothing Repair With In‐Person Workshops
Repair can help extend clothing lifecycles. However, clothing repair is infrequent in high‐income countries, especially among young adults who often lack practical repair skills. In this quasi‐experiment, we tested whether a group workshop could motivate repair and reduce consumption in young adults. Participants were assigned to a skill‐based workshop ( n = 62) or a control group ( n = 51) that only received a persuasive message about clothing r…
Psychology (15 works) · Environmental Education and Sustainability (11 works) · Climate Change Communication and Perception (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (7 works) · Economics (7 works) · Business (6 works) · Environmental resource management (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Climate change (5 works)