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Erika Pages received her MA in Social Psychology from Arizona State University, and is currently working toward her PhD. Her research focuses on the interaction of affective, cognitive, and social mechanisms. Her core research interest is in humor, with studies investigating why humor is a universally desired trait in mating partners, how humor can support emotion regulation in distressing situations, and the role humor can play in social support. She is currently working on a project which combines the literature on humor (as a cognitive process), stereotypes, and intergroup relations and emotions to try to model what happens when a joke is taken as offensive versus when a joke brings people together. She is also a collaborator on 1) research examining the implications of several emotion regulation strategies for health behavior, particularly dietary added-sugar intake, 2) research examining self-compassion in minority populations, and 3) research investigating humor's effect on event segmentation.
Prior work suggests that feeling small relative to nature (Nature-Self Size; NSS) and inclusion of nature in the self-concept (INS) are both associated with more pro-environmental attitudes. The present experiment asked whether exposure to stimuli eliciting awe—an emotion often evoked by extraordinary panoramic views of nature, characterized by subjective experience of “small self” and modulation of reliance on stored concepts—leads to increased NSS and/or INS, thereby promoting pro-environmental policy attitudes. Participants in this online experiment were randomly assigned to view photographs of extraordinary panoramic nature scenes, prosaic nature images, desirable foods, or neutral scenes before completing measures of INS, NSS, and support for environmental conservation policies. Analyses revealed that INS significantly mediated the effects of exposure to panoramic nature scenes (versus a neutral control) on pro-environmental policy attitudes; however, the same effect was observed for the prosaic nature and tasty foods images. Results suggest that exposure to awe-eliciting stimuli can promote pro-environmental attitudes via modulation of the self-concept, but this may be due to pleasant affect rather than awe per se. Future research with real-life stimuli and longitudinal designs is needed to further examine the lasting effects of awe and other emotional states on the self-concept and associated environmental attitudes.
Lauren Ambrose; Adi Wiezel; Erika Pages; Michelle Shiota. Images of Nature, Nature-Self Representation, and Environmental Attitudes. Sustainability 2021, 13, 8025 .
AMA StyleLauren Ambrose, Adi Wiezel, Erika Pages, Michelle Shiota. Images of Nature, Nature-Self Representation, and Environmental Attitudes. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (14):8025.
Chicago/Turabian StyleLauren Ambrose; Adi Wiezel; Erika Pages; Michelle Shiota. 2021. "Images of Nature, Nature-Self Representation, and Environmental Attitudes." Sustainability 13, no. 14: 8025.