Revisiting educational assumptions: The surprising negative link between creative extracurricular activities and creative thinking in PISA 2022.

In view of the serious transgressions of planetary boundaries, many scientists agree that environment and climate issues have to get far more priority over other issues in the policies and actions of governments and citizens (Rockström et al. ). To stimulate the support of citizens, several scholars emphasize that scientific facts are too impersonal and that communications with citizens should appeal more to the environmental imagination of individuals and, in particular, to their feelings, beliefs, and understandings regarding “Planet Earth” (Feitelson ; Jasanoff ; Devine-Wright et al. ). The present study investigates whether citizens’ support of environment and climate policies can be stimulated by targeting their relationship to Planet Earth. Specifically, we examine the potential of the value Respect for the planet to become a core political value and demonstrate the roles thereby of education, left–right political placement, and cultural context. The concept of value is used in social, political, and legal disciplines with slightly different meanings (e.g., Frischhut ). A social-psychological approach conceptualizes broad, as desirable goals, of different importance, that serve as guiding principles and motivational forces in people’s life (Sagiv and Schwartz ). Examples include the importance of achieving personal success or the importance of protecting the welfare of people and for nature. In the area of political life, there are of which the provide overarching normative principles and belief assumptions about government, citizenship, and the nation’s society that shape policies and action (McCann ; Schwartz et al. ), such as by referring to the importance of Human rights. According to Schwartz et al. (), the personal values may influence political choice through their influence on core political values. The personal and political values can be distinguished from i.e., conceptions of what is good and desirable among people in a society, which are manifested in the behavior of social institutions as well as individuals (Schwartz , ), such as the importance of individual autonomy in a country. The cultural value orientations form the context of people’s behavior. In the development of the European Union (EU), political values, such as Democracy and The rule of law, are political ideals that form the foundation of the European treaties (Foret and Calligaro ; Frischhut ; Polak ). The values are used in all kinds of political interactions, including interactions with citizens. A specific tool for the interactions with citizens is the organization of European surveys (the “Eurobarometer”), which gather the opinions of citizens in all Member States and often in some other countries also. The content of the surveys is policy-relevant, although the specific link between survey questions and particular policy areas is not explicitly explained in the reports (Haverland et al. ). Several Eurobarometers include a question that asks the participating citizens to make a selection out of a list of political values; since 2019 this list has been extended with the value Respect for the planet (Frischhut , p. 220). The relevance of this extension, which was meant to add to the human-centric values a more bio-centric approach (Frischhut , p. 248), has not been analyzed in a systematic and theory-based way up till now.