Seth A Rosenthal

Biographic Data

ID706776
NAMESeth A Rosenthal
GIVEN NAMESSeth A
FAMILY NAMERosenthal
SIGNATUREROSENTHAL S A
AFFILIATIONSYale University
ORCID0000-0003-0950-2261
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS31
TOTAL CITATIONS140
AUTHOR COUNT31
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2010
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX6

  • The Role of Emotion in Climate Change Communication

    Laura Thomas-Walters, Matthew H Goldberg et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Communication2026

    Extreme weather events are becoming increasingly frequent and severe worldwide. Emotional messages might be persuasive in communicating this information, but it remains unclear whether message efficacy depends more on emotional content or delivery. In a pre-registered experiment (N = 3,463), participants were randomly assigned to listen to one of seven audio messages: a control message or one of six messages on climate change’s impact on extreme …

  • Positive Images of Heat Waves Reduce the Effects of Messages About Extreme Heat among U.S. Adults

    Open AccessAfrooz Mosallaei, Laura Thomas-Walters et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Communication2026

    As climate change intensifies, extreme heat events are becoming more frequent and severe, posing growing risks to human health, ecosystems, and infrastructure. In a large-scale survey experiment (N = 3,960 U.S. adults) we examine how the emotional valence of imagery – negative, neutral, or positive – in social media-based news about heat waves influences worry about heat waves, beliefs about climate change’s role in extreme heat, and willingness …

  • Vulnerability outpaces climate worry in US frontline communities

    Open AccessJennifer Carman, Emily Goddard et al.ARTICLEOne Earth2026

  • Predicting the Performance of Facebook Advertisements About Climate Change Using Self-report Data

    Matthew H Goldberg, Miriam Remshard et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Communication2025

    Social media has become an important medium for climate change communication, where sponsored content can be delivered to specific audiences. However, studying message effects on social media platforms has limitations and therefore scholars often rely on surveys and controlled experiments, which can lack external validity. Here, we use survey methods to predict the real-world performance of advertisements on Facebook. We found that a 10 percentag…

  • Testing the Durability of Persuasion From Moral Appeals About Renewable Energy

    Open AccessAbel Gustafson, Matthew H Goldberg et al.ARTICLEScience Communication2025References: 10

    Research shows that opinions rooted in moral justifications may be more stable over time. This suggests that communicators could create more durable persuasion by adding explicit moral claims (i.e., stating that the issue is a matter of right vs. wrong) to persuasive messages. Here, using animated videos about the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, we conducted a three-stage longitudinal experiment ( N = 4,488) to test whether mess…

  • Gender, Development, and Recognition of Anthropogenic Climate Change

    Open AccessMette Verner, Hong Tien Vu et al.ARTICLEWorld Development2025References: 7

  • Communicating the Links between Climate Change and Heat Waves with the Climate Shift Index

    Open AccessLaura Thomas-Walters, Matthew H Goldberg et al.ARTICLEWeather, Climate, and Society2024

    Extreme weather, including heat waves, poses a significant threat to ecosystems and human health. As global temperatures continue to rise, the frequency and severity of heat waves will increase. Because of this, communicating heat-related risks to the public is increasingly important. One commonly used communication tool is the Climate Shift Index (CSI), which establishes how much more likely an extreme weather event, such as a heat wave, has bee…

  • Americans’ support for climate justice

    Open AccessJennifer Carman, Jennifer P Carman et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Science & Policy2024References: 6

  • Climate change messages can promote support for climate action globally

    Open AccessMatthew T Ballew, Laura Thomas-Walters et al.ARTICLEGlobal Environmental Change2024Cited by: 2References: 12

  • Environmental Literature as Persuasion: An Experimental Test of the Effects of Reading Climate Fiction

    Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Abel Gustafson et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Communication2023

    Literary works of fiction about climate change are becoming more common and more popular among critics and readers. While much research has indicated the persuasive effectiveness of narrative storytelling in general, empirical research has not yet tested the effects of reading climate fiction. This paper reports results from the first experimental study to test the immediate and delayed impacts of climate fiction on readers’ beliefs and attitudes…

  • Evaluating the Terms Americans Use to Refer to “Carbon Emissions”

    Francis A Commerçon, Matthew H Goldberg et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Communication2023

    The effectiveness of climate change communication depends in part on how people perceive common terms used to describe key climate concepts. In a mixed methods study (N = 2859), we examined affect, top-of-mind associations, beliefs, policy support, and behavioral intentions elicited by terms communicators colloquially use to refer to the gases responsible for climate change: greenhouse gas emissions, carbon emissions, and carbon pollution. Open-e…

  • Information about the human causes of global warming influences causal attribution, concern, and policy support related to global warming

    Parrish Bergquist, Jennifer R Marlon et al.ARTICLEThinking & Reasoning2022

    Scientists know that human activities, primarily fossil fuel combustion, are causing Earth’s temperature to increase. Yet in 2021, only 60% of the US population understood that human activities are the primary cause of global warming. We experimentally test whether information about the human causes of global warming influences Americans’ beliefs and concerns about global warming and support for climate policies. We find that communicating inform…

  • Communicating the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change: Diverse Audiences and Effects Over Time

    Open AccessMatthew H Goldberg, Abel Gustafson et al.ARTICLEEnvironment and Behavior2022

    Prior research has demonstrated that communicating the scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is happening is an effective way to increase public understanding and engagement with the issue. However, less is known about (1) how persuasive this message is to oppositional audiences, (2) how long message effects last over time, and (3) what factors predict whether such effects last. We address these questions in a two-wave longitudina…

  • Measuring Americans’ Support for Adapting to ‘Climate Change’ or ‘Extreme Weather’

    Jennifer Carman, Karine Lacroix et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Communication2022

    Climate communicators can use the terms ‘climate change’ or ‘extreme weather’ to describe climate change adaptation strategies. However, the terms might differentially affect individuals’ support for those strategies. We examined Americans’ (N = 1,558) endorsement of climate change adaptation behaviors and policies based on whether they were described using ‘climate change’ or ‘extreme weather.’ Republicans’ endorsement of some adaptation behavio…

  • Change in US state-level public opinion about climate change: 2008–2020

    Open AccessJennifer R Marlon, Xinran Wang et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2022

    Public attitudes toward climate change influence climate and energy policies and guide individual mitigation and adaptation behaviors. Over the last decade, as scientific certainty about the causes and impacts of, and solutions to the climate crisis has increased, cities, states, and regions in the United States have pursued diverse policy strategies. Yet, our understanding of how Americans’ climate views are changing remains largely limited to n…

  • The generational divide over climate change among American evangelicals

    Open AccessBenjamin S Lowe, Susan K Jacobson et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2022

    As urgency grows to address global warming, younger generations can play a strategic role in mobilizing communities that have generally been more opposed to climate action and policy, such as political and religious conservatives in the United States. American evangelical Protestants—and white evangelicals in particular—are the largest religious group in the U.S. and also the most skeptical of climate science. There is growing interest, however, …

  • Does personal climate change mitigation behavior influence collective behavior? Experimental evidence of no spillover in the United States

    Open AccessKarine Lacroix, Jennifer Carman et al.ARTICLEEnergy Research & Social Science2022Cited by: 4References: 8

  • The Greta Thunberg Effect: Familiarity with Greta Thunberg predicts intentions to engage in climate activism in the United States

    Open AccessAnandita Sabherwal, Matthew T Ballew et al.ARTICLEJournal of Applied Social…2021

    Despite Greta Thunberg's popularity, research has yet to investigate her impact on the public's willingness to take collective action on climate change. Using cross‐sectional data from a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults ( N = 1,303), we investigate the “Greta Thunberg Effect, ” or whether exposure to Greta Thunberg predicts collective efficacy and intentions to engage in collective action. We find that those who are more familiar w…

  • Shifting Republican views on climate change through targeted advertising

    Open AccessMatthew H Goldberg, Abel Gustafson et al.ARTICLENature Climate Change2021

  • Mask-Wearing Increased After a Government Recommendation: A Natural Experiment in the U.S. During the Covid-19 Pandemic

    Open AccessMatthew H Goldberg, Abel Gustafson et al.ARTICLEFrontiers in Communication2020

    On April 3 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that all Americans wear face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The announcement came during the fielding of a large, nationally-representative survey (N = 3,933) of Americans’ COVID-19-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, providing an opportunity to measure the impact of the CDC’s recommendation on public reported mask wearing and buying behavior…

  • A multidimensional model of collective narcissism

    Open AccessR Matthew Montoya, Todd L Pittinsky et al.ARTICLEJournal of Theoretical Social…2020

    The impact of collective narcissism on intergroup and intragroup relations has seen a recent surge in attention. Since collective narcissism is a relatively new topic of study, with only a single published measure, its structure and composition require further investigation. A pilot study investigated a multidimensional model of collective narcissism and identified four factors: entitlement/exploitativeness, dominance/arrogance, apathy, and admir…

  • A Meta-Cognitive Approach to Predicting Hurricane Evacuation Behavior

    Matthew H Goldberg, Jennifer R Marlon et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Communication2020

    As hurricanes intensify and more people are at risk, there is a clear need to understand the evacuation behavior of coastal residents. Of particular relevance is the role of past experience in evacuation decisions, about which evidence is mixed. In the current study, we use the Meta-Cognitive Model (MCM) to show that expectations of future hurricane evacuation are strongly predicted by the combination of past behavior and confidence in that past …

  • Identifying the most important predictors of support for climate policy in the United States

    Open AccessMatthew H Goldberg, Abel Gustafson et al.ARTICLEBehavioural Public Policy2020Cited by: 9References: 14

    Reducing global warming will require enacting strong climate policies, which is unlikely to happen without public support. While prior research has identified varied predictors of climate change policy support, it is unclear which predictors are strongest for the American electorate as a whole, and which predictors are strongest for Democrats and Republicans. In a nationally representative sample of registered voters ( n = 2063), we use relative …

  • Quota sampling using Facebook advertisements

    Open AccessBaobao Zhang, Matto Mildenberger et al.ARTICLEPolitical Science Research and…2020Cited by: 57References: 18

    Researchers in different social science disciplines have successfully used Facebook to recruit subjects for their studies. However, such convenience samples are not generally representative of the population. We developed and validated a new quota sampling method to recruit respondents using Facebook advertisements. Additionally, we published an R package to semi-automate this quota sampling process using the Facebook Marketing API. To test the m…

  • Climate Change in the American Mind: Data, Tools, and Trends

    Open AccessMatthew T Ballew, Anthony Leiserowitz et al.ARTICLEEnvironment Science and Policy…2019

    iStock/yangphotoClimate change is a major threat to ecosystems and people around the world.1 Risk analysts, including the U.S. Department of Defense, rank climate change as one of the most serious ...