In the 1500s, the artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder produced a painting about people's indifference to distant suffering. Called Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, a copy of the original that's now on display in Brussels shows a farmer ploughing his field in the foreground. It's only when you look carefully that you can see Icarus drowning in the sea in the distance, surrounded by melted feathers, his legs flailing in the air.

More than a decade ago, the psychologists Nira Liberman and Yaacov Trope used Bruegel's painting to introduce an idea in the journal Science that describes how time and distance shape people's attitudes – and specifically, their empathy towards others. They called it "construal level theory". The farmer is indifferent to the plight of Icarus, they argued, because he is far away. With geographical distance comes psychological distance.

It's an idea that holds particular relevance this week as the east coast of North America experiences low air quality and dystopian orange skies due to wildfires in Canada. Some on social media – notably quite a few Californians who have already faced such impacts – have speculated that the pollution may sharpen the realities of climate change for many east coasters. Could it change hearts and minds, they wonder, because the impacts are so close to home? Others pointed to the symbolism of the United Nations building in New York City, shrouded in smog.

How much truth is there to this? Do climate impacts that are "near" in time and space change people's attitudes towards mitigation and adaptation?

According to construal level theory, people's awareness and willingness to act on climate change should, in principle, be influenced by how psychologically close they perceive its impacts to be. If they formerly believed climate change was mainly about melting ice caps, drought in the developing world or disappearing island nations – and all those are far away in space and time – then their concern should be lower. In 2011, one psychologist referred to psychological distance as one of the "dragons of inaction" for preventing climate change.

This isn't necessarily callous behaviour, according to psychologists. In Bruegel's painting, the farmer has more immediate needs and priorities – perhaps he's intent on feeding his own family – so it's harder to notice and extend empathy towards Icarus's suffering in the ocean far away. People's circle of concern is often drawn near to them, meaning that they will care more about someone close to home, rather than on the opposite side of the world.

However, on reviewing the literature up to 2020, the psychologist Roberta Maiella of G. d'Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara in Italy and colleagues found that the reality was more complex and nuanced than first appears.

There is indeed evidence that proximity to climate impacts influences people's views. For example, in 2011 Alexa Spence of the University of Nottingham and colleagues surveyed UK residents exposed to coastal flooding, and found that they perceived greater uncertainty about the climate and more willingness to restrict energy use. And another study of participants in 24 countries showed that people with personal experience of climate change were more likely to do things like use less air conditioning in the summer.

However, not all studies have confirmed the correlation as strong, and the methodologies to study the effect differ. In one study where US participants were presented with the impact of climate change in the Maldives, researchers used cues that aimed to reduce people's psychological distance and make the remote island nation feel nearer. This included asking them to trace the distance from Ithaca in New York to the remote island nation on a map, and watch a video about how sea level rise was affecting Maldives citizens. People given these cues judged the Maldives to be spatially closer, but crucially, this didn't translate into increased support for climate change mitigation policies.

People's prior political affiliation may also matter. One 2020 study of Californians’ response to nearby wildfires suggested that close exposure to damage fostered support for pro-environmental policies in Democratic areas, but not Republican ones.

So will the awful air and darkened skies in New York City and other east coast cities influence people's attitudes there? Perhaps for some – but there are clearly other effects at play that influence beliefs.

There do seem to be ways to reduce psychological distance over climate change through effective communication. For instance, there's a well-known trick that charities often use called the "identifiable victim effect". When people are presented with a single human being facing the effects of climate change, this can foster greater empathy. In one study by psychologists Sabine Pahl at the University of Plymouth and Judith Bauer at the University of Erlangen in Germany, people were told a detailed story about a woman living in the future facing the impact of climate change. The pair told people how she'd burn her skin outside in the Sun, or get a rash after swimming in a polluted sea. Compared with those who had been given more "fact-focused" information about future warming, people who heard the woman's story were more likely to spend time reading about climate change afterwards.

In sum, psychological distance is shaped by more than geography alone. But the evidence suggests that when climate change comes to people's neighbourhoods, it's likely to influence how many see it.

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