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Mouguiama Daouda Camille Thesis.pdf
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Authors
Supervisors
Heeren, Alexandre  
Abstract
(en) Through complementary network analysis approaches and latent profile analysis, and after first validating the two reference measures, this thesis apprehends climate anxiety through the lens of complexity, both as a dynamic and multifaceted construct. Our data suggest that at the heart of the cognitive-emotional manifestations of climate anxiety, as well as the adaptive behaviors deployed to contain the unpredictable, lies a dispositional aversion to uncertainty — an aversion that extends beyond the climate threat to resonate more broadly with the horizon of a polycrisis whose contours remain unresolved. These findings corroborate the Uncertainty and Anticipation Model of Anxiety (UAMA; Grupe & Nitschke, 2013), which conceptualizes anxiety as a future-oriented response to uncertainty regarding a potential threat, giving rise to several dysfunctional cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes. This work addresses longstanding theoretical, methodological, and clinical gaps in the field, including the absence of validated measures in French-speaking populations, the dominant reliance on unidimensional approaches, and the lack of studies capable of generating causal hypotheses regarding the mechanisms underlying climate anxiety. At the clinical level, these findings suggest that intolerance of uncertainty, and particularly its prospective dimension, constitutes a privileged therapeutic lever in the treatment of climate-related distress. While our data corroborate the core axioms of the UAMA, certain findings invited us to move beyond this framework to more fully capture the complexity of climate anxiety — suggesting, on interpretive grounds, that the heterogeneity of psychological profiles, the role of social normativity in mitigation behaviors, and the identity-related dimensions of ecological engagement represent avenues that dominant theories have yet to integrate. This work thus calls for a re-evaluation of prevailing theories, as well as an epistemological and reflexive examination of the field's own foundations — underscoring that available theoretical frameworks remain fragile, culturally situated, and insufficiently tested against the diversity of ways in which humans relate to the climate crisis. It represents in this sense a first step, opening the path toward a more fundamental epistemological inquiry into the conditions under which knowledge is produced in environmental psychology.
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Mouguiama-Daouda, C. (2026). Climate change anxiety through the lens of complexity. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/280840