Year: 2013
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Global Warming (“GW”) is easily one of the most pressing concerns of our time,and its solution will come about only through a change in human behavior.Compared to the residents of most other nations worldwide, Americans reportlower acceptance of the realities of GW. In order to address this concern in afree society, U.S. residents must be convinced or coerced to take the necessaryactions. In spite of the democratic appeal of education, however, many climatecommunicators appear to be settling on the notion that emotional persuasion issuperior to education.We'll set an empirical foundation in Chapter 2, reviewing an experiment inthe Numerically Driven Inferencing (NDI) paradigm that sheds some light on thecognitive processes involved in learning and attitude shifts in response tosurprising policy-relevant information. Chapters 3–6 contain results froma comprehensive program of research specifically targeting climate-relatedattitudes and beliefs in the United States. As alluded to above, there have beenmany surveys of American attitudes. Chapter 3 provides an overview of ourapproach to assessing climate-related beliefs and attitudes. In particular, wenote relationships observed in one survey between scientific literacy regardingthe GW mechanism on one hand and attitudes, including “willingness tosacrifice” on the other. As with some other empirical approaches, ourresults suggest that U.S. residents generally accept anthropogenic (i.e.,“human caused”) climate change, and support action on this issue.But even if this is the case, Chapter 4 describes an experiment demonstratingthat these beliefs and attitudes are disturbingly fragile in the face ofcherry-picked, misleading numerical facts. Chapter 5 then describes a pairof experiments evaluating the effects of representative numerical facts.Chapter 5's Study 1 (Section 5.1) demonstrates that even whenstudents report strong psychological effects after receiving a set of surprisingnumbers, their beliefs and attitudes will not necessarily be affected.Chapter 5's Study 2 (Section 5.2) improves upon the clarity ofmaterials used in Study 1 and demonstrates that such materialscan effectively increase climate change acceptance and concern.In both of these studies, as with the study presented in Chapter 4, thisrelatively uncontextualized, surprising numerical information underminesstudents' confidence in their own knowledge. Chapter 6 reports on threesuccessful experiments (spanning four samples) that provide a coherentexplanation of the mechanism of climate change that includes relevant numericalfacts. As with Study 2 in Chapter 5, this intervention shiftsparticipant attitudes towards the scientific consensus. Unlike uncontextualizednumerical information, however, this mechanism intervention additionally leavesparticipants feeling that they know more than they did prior to instruction.Chapter 6's Study 1 (Section 6.1) establishes this effect inclassroom-based settings at two culturally distinct universities.Chapter 6's Study 2 (Section 6.2) provides an initial evaluationof the time-course of retention for the cognitive shifts that followed ourmechanism intervention, and Chapter 6's Study 3 (Section 6.3)provides a successful demonstration of durable shifts with the generalpopulation online.Taken together, these experiments point the way towards effective curricula andon-line materials that can help bolster support to combat climate change. Whilewe must certainly be sensitive to the needs, values, and interests of our targetaudiences, we should not reflexively steer away from science education. Indeed,the experiments in this dissertation provide empirical support for the notionthat science education materials can have a meaningful and lasting impact on GWattitudes and beliefs. While this may not provide the complete behavioralsolution we need for the United States (and the world), it seems likely thatsuch shifts will make behavioral and policy changes far more tractable in thecoming years.
Author: David Clark
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: green
Award: G577612013
OpenAlex ID: W2221358172