Environmental crises such as climate change and biodiversity loss pose major challenges to societies around the world. Yet communicating these issues effectively remains difficult. My research examines how media, storytelling, and other forms of cultural communication shape environmental attitudes, perceptions, and behavior. Combining methods from the social sciences and the humanities, I investigate how environmental information can be communicated in ways that are both engaging and evidence-based, as well as which social and cultural factors influence public responses to environmental problems.
Together with my collaborators, I have explored topics ranging from the psychological impact of climate fiction and extinction narratives to the relationship between political ideology and environmental concern. Among other findings, we have shown that climate stories combining both hope and fear can be more persuasive than stories relying on only one of these appeals. We have also found that while right-wing authoritarianism is typically associated with lower levels of climate concern and activism in Western countries, this relationship appears to be reversed in India.
Selected Publications
Malecki, W.P. (2026). Empirical Ecocriticism and the Anthropocene. In: Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51703-7_108-1
Małecki, W. P. (2025). Empirical Ecocriticism. In The Routledge Companion to Literature and Cognitive Studies (pp. 506–517). Routledge.
Malecki, W. P., Thaker, J., & Schneider-Mayerson, M. (2025). Climate and authoritarianism in two global powers: Exploring right-wing and left-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and climate concern and activism in the USA and India. Climatic Change, 178(2), 23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-025-03862-2
Malecki, W. P., Schneider-Mayerson, M., Petterson, A., Dobrowolska, M., & Thaker, J. (2025). The role of hope and fear in the impact of climate fiction on climate action intentions: Evidence from India and USA. Poetics, 108, 101960. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2024.101960
Featured in the media:
Kilikar, D. (2025, January 29). How hope and fear in climate fiction impact climate action intentions. Mongabay-India. https://india.mongabay.com/2025/01/how-hope-and-fear-in-climate-fiction-impact-climate-action-intentions/
M. Schneider-Mayerson, A. Weik von Mossner, Małecki, W., & F. Hakemulder (Eds.). (2023). Empirical ecocriticism: An interdisciplinary approach to environmental narrative. University of Minnesota Press.
Reviewed in Green Letters, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, Ecocene, H-Net, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities.
Malecki, W. P., Weik von Mossner, A., Sorokowski, P., & Frackowiak, T. (2021). Extinction stories matter: The impact of narrative representations of endangered species across media. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isab094
Schneider-Mayerson, M., Weik von Mossner, A., & Małecki, W. P. (2020). Empirical ecocriticism: Environmental texts and empirical methods. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 27(2), 327–336. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isaa027
Małecki, W., P. Sorokowski, B. Pawłowski, & M. Cieński. (2019). Human minds and animal stories: How narratives make us care about other species. New York: Routledge. (pbk 2020, OA 2022).
Reviewed in Anthrozoos (Volume 34, 2021) by R. Malamud; The Scientific Study of Literature (Volume 11, Issue 1, Dec 2021) by J. Alber; Ecozon@ (Vol. 13 No. 2, 2022) by K. Nahornava; and The Polish Review (Volume 67, Issue 2, July 2022) by C. Geyer.
Featured in Diggit Magazine (Dec 12, 2020).
Małecki, W. (2016). Literary fiction influences attitudes toward animal welfare. PLOS ONE, 11(12), e0168695. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0168695