As it becomes increasingly urgent to take steps to reduce climate change, a number of scholars have begun to explore ways in which attitudes toward climate change are shaped, including the influence of messages people hear in the context of the ongoing climate change debate. What has not yet been addressed, however, is that these arguments are affecting not only climate change attitudes (direct attitude change), but other environmental attitudes as well (lateral attitude change). To explore this possibility, two experimental studies were conducted in which participants were exposed to messages either in favor of or opposed to taking action to mitigate climate change. Attitudes toward climate change, the closely-related issue of recycling, and several more distantly-related issues were assessed both before and after message exposure. Results indicated that lateral attitude change (specifically, generalization) occurred for recycling attitudes, but not the other attitudes. In addition, both attitude polarization and depolarization were observed as a result of these message effects. General implications of this finding for public opinion are discussed.
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