Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus

Kahan, Dan M.; Jenkins‐Smith, Hank C.; Braman, Donald

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1549444

Cited by 153 publications

(214 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Political affiliation is but one reflection of an individual's belief system, even though it has been highly associated with the issue of global warming in the United States (Dunlap and McCright 2008). Studies have shown that other indicators, such as cultural worldview and audience segment, have been more powerful in predicting global warming beliefs and policy preferences than political affiliation or ideology (Kahan et al 2011;Leiserowitz 2003Leiserowitz , 2006Maibach et al 2011).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A rose by any other name ...?: What members of the general public prefer to call “climate change”

Akerlof,

Maibach

2011

Climatic Change

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Unlike many other environmental problems, the terms used to describe the phenomenon of increasing atmospheric concentrations of anthropogenic greenhouse gases are many, with multiple and sometimes conflicting meanings. Whether there are meaningful distinctions in public perceptions of "global warming," "climate change," and "global climate change" has been a topic of research over the past decade. This study examines public preferences for these terms based on respondent characteristics, including climate change beliefs, political affiliation, and audience segment status derived from the "Global Warming's Six Americas" classification. Certainty of belief in global warming, political affiliation and audience segment status were found to be the strongest predictors of preference, although "I have no preference" was the modal response. Global warming appears to be a more polarizing term than climate change, preferred most by people already concerned about the issue, and least by people who don't believe climate change is occurring. Further research is needed to identify which of these two names promotes the engagement of people across the spectrum of climate change beliefs in constructive dialogue about the issue.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A rose by any other name ...?: What members of the general public prefer to call “climate change”

Akerlof,

Maibach

2011

Climatic Change

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“…For instance, one expert remarked, ''If there are few time constraints on the length of treatment, this method is no doubt the cheapest and most environmentally friendly.'' Such social and economic advantages should resonate with egalitarian values, which refer to a predisposition toward equitable social outcomes, and that have been found to influence the judgment of individuals, as well as those of experts (Jenkins-Smith et al 2009;Kahan et al 2011;Druckman and Bolsen 2011;Lachapelle et al 2014). The framing of phytoremediation thus enables an effective test of the importance of political values in the making of technical judgments.…”

Section: Expectations About Experts' Judgment Of Phytoremediationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But it was shown in a laboratory setting that making available a positive emotion in the repertoire of heuristics of risk-averse individuals encourages them to better account for benefits, along risks, in making judgments (Finucane et al 2000). Likewise, scholars who want to induce more rationality in collective decision-making prescribe message framings, which appeal to system 1, to nudge individuals toward attitudes more in line with system 2's standards (Kahan et al 2011;Kahan et al 2012;Druckman and Bolsen 2011;Weber and Stern 2011;Atkinson 2013). In other words, system 1 can interact with system 2 in ways that increase the prevalence of the latter in decision-making.…”

Section: System 1 System 2 and Expert Judgmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information, values and expert decision-making: the case of soil decontamination

Montpetit

Lachapelle

2015

Policy Sci

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Building on insights from cognitive psychology and scholarship on decisionmaking, this article examines the respective role of values and information, and the interaction between them, in the formation of expert judgment. We analyze data from an original expert survey on soil decontamination practices and test several hypotheses found in the literature. While it is common to assume that experts rely primarily on factual information when making decisions, we find that values may also orient the judgment of experts when such information is lacking. In such cases, experts may be influenced by their value predispositions, leading to a wider range of expert assessments. Conversely, the judgment of experts who possess the relevant information tends to converge on the best known outcomes. We thus find that relevant knowledge mediates the role of values in expert judgment. While suggesting that some caution should always be taken when deferring to experts, our findings suggest that governments and the public are justified in taking experts' judgment seriously.

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“…Unknown risk is characterized in terms of a person's assessment of how unobservable, new, or delayed the risk is in its manifestation of harm. Laypersons often selectively credit or dismiss evidence of benefits, costs, and risks based on personal values that they share with others rather than on scientific knowledge (Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, & Braman, 2011). Students have also been found to rely on emotional and rationalistic thinking when analyzing socio-scientific issues, regardless of their level of content knowledge about a subject (Sadler & Donnelly, 2006).…”

Section: Intuitive Toward More Sophisticated Benefits-costs-risks-thimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some research has shown that students' abilities to generate high-quality costs, benefits, and risk analyses seem to vary nonlinearly with content knowledge acquisition (Sadler & Fowler, 2006). Such behavior may partially be explained by the observation of Kahan et al (2011) that personal values interfere with the interpretation of evidence.…”

Section: Intuitive Toward More Sophisticated Benefits-costs-risks-thimentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning Chemistry to Enrich Students’ Views on the World they Live In

Sevian

Bulte

2015

Relevant Chemistry Education

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Practicing chemistry involves using chemical knowledge to evaluate benefits, costs and risks associated with products and processes, and to make informed decisions based on reasoned evaluation. Traditional topical approaches to teaching chemistry have been demonstrated to be unsuccessful in providing students such opportunities. Context-based approaches address this; however, to establish stronger effectiveness, a theoretical underpinning is necessary. Starting from Roberts' curriculum emphasis concept, we argue that if students are to develop useful chemical knowledge, they need a clear view on how the chemistry they learn is related to their lives and the world they live in. In other words, the learning environment needs to be positioned in a clearly defined curriculum emphasis. This determines deliberate focus on enriching students' engagement with chemical thinking in real-world problems. Curriculum emphasis can be related to division of labor for different chemical practices, such as a technologist developing new materials for biomedical purposes, a citizen deciding what kind of fuel to use, or a scientist investigating mechanisms of catalysts. Each practice has specific relevance and, consequently, different foci in the content of chemistry. When a certain emphasis or sequence of emphases is chosen for a particular stage in students' learning, a thoughtful co-development of instructional approaches and assessment of students' progress toward using chemical knowledge is required. We provide exemplars of units positioned within a certain emphasis, and show how the curriculum emphasis model shapes curriculum development, as well as development of assessment within the chosen emphasis.

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Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus

Cited by 153 publications

References 41 publications

A rose by any other name ...?: What members of the general public prefer to call “climate change”

A rose by any other name ...?: What members of the general public prefer to call “climate change”

Information, values and expert decision-making: the case of soil decontamination

Learning Chemistry to Enrich Students’ Views on the World they Live In

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