Fossil fuel companies may be using our psychology to greenwash
Based on D. O’Keefe & P. Mahdavi (2026). How might fossil fuel companies use our psychology to greenwash? An evidence review of potential psychological mechanisms.
We identify and provide evidence of how fossil fuel industry advertisements may employ psychological mechanisms to delay policy implementation.
Discourses of Delay
Globally, groups are calling for a ban on fossil-fuel advertisements and seek to implement policies that limit the industry’s ability to spread disinformation. Fossil-fuel corporations benefit from delaying and preventing policies to curb carbon emissions from their products and production. Several lines of research have identified how fossil fuel advertising may contribute to the delay of such policies, leading to continued emissions, worsening climate impacts like extreme weather, pollution, and injustice. Immediate policies and action are needed to reach global climate goals and ensure a healthier and safer world.
Key Findings and Proposed Solutions
Nature imagery, moral appeals, and individualized causal attributions influence attitudes toward the fossil fuel industry and policies that impact it.
These three mechanisms, their joint effects, and relationships with disinformation make them useful in advertising and persuasion.
Quantifying these effects and fossil fuel efforts to use our psychology are essential to implement climate policies and mitigate climate change.
Further research should address methods used to negate these effects.