Assessing the Human Experience of Weather and Climate: a Further Examination of Weather Salience

In what ways are weather and climate (and changes in weather and climate) psychologically significant to people? How is the importance that people attach to weather and climate manifested on cognitive, emotional, and behavioral levels? These questions are addressed in the present project which describes the further development and evaluation of a psychological measurement tool, the Weather Salience Questionnaire (WxSQ, Stewart, 2005). The WxSQ is meant to assess the extent to which people find the weather and climate to be salient to various aspects of their lives. The salience of weather and climate information should be studied because anecdotal observations suggested that people differ in the extent to which weather and climate affects their decision-making, their emotional experiences, and their behaviors. In this regard, the construct of weather salience may be an important variable to consider insofar as it may affect the extent to which people seek and use weather-related information during hazardous or severe weather events. Conversely, extreme weather events such as hurricanes Katrina and Wilma in 2005 may result in increased weather salience given the property destruction, injuries, and deaths that they caused. Thus, weather salience may both affect preparatory responses prior to dangerous weather and by affected by such weather. The sections that follow describe: 1. the development of the WxSQ items, the sample of individuals who responded to them, and the research methodology, 2. the WxSQ’s factorial validity, 3. the summary statistics for the WxSQ subscales and gender differences in WxSQ scores, 4. the relationship of WxSQ total and subscale scores with the experiencing of severe weather events and the use of consumer weather instruments, and 5. the WxSQ’s relationship with other measures of environmental salience and with a measure of seasonal effects upon mood. ______________________________________ *Corresponding author address: Alan E. Stewart University of Georgia, 402 Aderhold Hall, Athens, Georgia 30602-7142 email: [email protected] 2. Development of the Weather Salience Questionnaire (WxSQ)