Climate Change Conceptual Change: Scientific Information Can Transform Attitudes

Abstract

Of this article's seven experiments, the first five demonstrate that virtually no Americans know the basic global warming mechanism. Fortunately, Experiments 2-5 found that 2-45 min of physicalchemical climate instruction durably increased such understandings. This mechanistic learning, or merely receiving seven highly germane statistical facts (Experiment 6), also increased climate-change acceptance-across the liberal-conservative spectrum. However, Experiment 7's misleading statistics decreased such acceptance (and dramatically, knowledge-confidence). These readily available attitudinal and conceptual changes through scientific information disconfirm what we term "stasis theory"-which some researchers and many laypeople varyingly maintain. Stasis theory subsumes the claim that informing people (particularly Americans) about climate science may be largely futile or even counterproductive-a view that appears historically na€ ıve, suffers from range restrictions (e.g., near-zero mechanistic knowledge), and/or misinterprets some polarization and (noncausal) correlational data. Our studies evidenced no polarizations. Finally, we introduce HowGlobalWarmingWorks.org-a website designed to directly enhance public "climate-change cognition." This article contains information that appears here alone, but Experiments 1-7 are described elsewhere, often with more available descriptive space. Therefore, for additional (usually more) explicit information about motivations, methods, and findings, please note that Experiment 1 appears in Ranney et al. (2012a, Study 1) and in considerable detail in Cohen (2012); Experiment 2 appears in Ranney et al. (2012a, Study 2) and also in Clark (2013, Study 6.1); Experiments 3, 5, and 7 appear in Clark et al. (2013, Studies 1, 4, and 2, respectively); Experiments 3 and 7 also appear with considerable detail in Clark (2013, Studies 6.2 and 4.2); Experiment 5 also appears with considerable detail in Felipe (2012); Experiments 4 and 6 appear with considerable detail in Clark (2013, Studies 6.3 and 5.2). Given present allotted space, we have generally compacted the studies here, but we have more richly explicated a minority of the studies.

The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism

“…On the contrary, it has been shown that the mere exposure to conspiracy theories involving global warming decreases pro-environmental decision making and the intention to reduce one's carbon footprint (Jolley and Douglas 2013;van der Linden 2015). Similarly, McCright et al (2016) and Ranney and Clark (2016) have shown that exposure to misleading statistics about climate change-and many contrarian claims are judged to be misleading and inaccurate in a blind expert test )-can adversely impact people's attitudes.…”

Fostering Scientific and Numerate Practices in Journalism to Support Rapid Public Learning

“…Similar results were found in the climate change example. Once study participants were exposed to correct and/or representative scientific information (e.g., numerical or mechanism-based), they consistently decreased their level of denial that humans do not contribute to the current global climate change (Ranney et al 2016;Ranney and Clark, 2016). To characterize participants' views of climate change, these studies employed a 9-point scale regarding the degree of acceptance of the position that humans are causing global warming (from 1 [no acceptance] to 9 [total acceptance]).…”

“…In others, it involved summarizing a basic explanatory scientific model. For example, in experiments regarding global warming and climate change, Ranney and colleagues (Ranney et al 2016;Ranney and Clark, 2016) employed five brief ways to increase acceptance that climate change is both occurring and anthropogenic. In addition to using numerical information, such as providing statistics and graphs about climate change's observed effects, the team also incorporated a 600-word (or shorter) explanatory text summarizing the scientific model of how global warming occurs--or provided links to explanatory videos shorter than 5 minutes in duration.…”

“…Those involving numbers are part of the paradigm called "Numerically-Driven Inferencing" (NDI; Ranney et al 2001;Ranney and Clark, 2016;Ranney et al 2016). One of the central techniques of the NDI approach is called EPIC, an acronym that refers to a procedure that asks participants to (1) Estimate a quantity regarding a phenomenon, (2) offer a policy Preference about what they would like that quantity to be, (3) receive Information (usually the true base rate of the phenomenon), and then (4) state a new policy preference to see if the participant experienced a Change.…”

Crowdsourcing Analysis of Twitter Data on Climate Change: Paid Workers vs. Volunteers

“…Paid crowdsourcing platforms are also frequently employed for collecting public opinion data. Ranney and Clark [20] used volunteer and paid online participants to collect data on knowledge about climate change. Attari [21] researched peoples' perceptions on their water use and found over two-times underestimation of consumed water.…”