Motivated Attention in Climate Change Perception and Action

Abstract

Despite the scientific consensus, some people still remain skeptical about climate change. In fact, there is a growing partisan divide over the last decade within the United States in the support for climate policies. Given the same climate evidence, why do some people become concerned while others remain unconvinced? Here we propose a motivated attention framework where socio-political motivations shape visual attention to climate evidence, altering perceptions of the evidence and subsequent actions to mitigate climate change. To seek support for this framework, we conducted three experiments. Participants viewed a graph of annual global temperature change while they were eyetracked and estimated the average change. We found that political orientation may bias attention to climate change evidence, altering the perception of the same evidence (Experiment 1). We further examined how attentional biases influence subsequent actions to mitigate climate change. We found that liberals were more likely to sign a climate petition or more willing to donate to an environmental organization than conservatives, and attention guides climate actions in different ways for liberals and conservatives (Experiment 2). To seek causal evidence, we biased attention to different parts of the temperature curve by coloring stronger climate evidence in red or weak climate evidence in red. We found that liberals were more likely to sign the petition or more willing to donate when stronger evidence was in red, but conservatives were less likely to act when stronger evidence was in red (Experiment 3). This suggests that drawing attention to motivationally consistent information increases actions in liberals, but discouraged conservatives. The findings provide initial preliminary evidence for the motivated attention framework, suggesting an attentional divide between liberals and conservatives in the perception of climate evidence. This divide might further reinforce prior beliefs about climate change, creating further polarization. The current study raises a possible attentional mechanism for ideologically motivated reasoning and its impact on basic perceptual processes. It also provides implications for the communication of climate science to different socio-political groups with the goal of mobilizing actions on climate change.

“It’s Global Warming, Stupid”: Aggressive Communication Styles and Political Ideology in Science Blog Debates About Climate Change

“…Another possible explanation that may integrate the findings on EVT and psychological reactance was related to selective attention to the experimental messages (Luo & Zhao, 2019). It is likely that the reason conservatives showed less psychological reactance and violation of expectance was because they did not read the experimental message, the goal of which was to promote a topic conservatives generally oppose, as carefully as liberals (Luo & Zhao, 2019). Thus, because of their less attention to or engagement with the message, conservatives were less likely to react differently to the more (vs. less) aggressive messages than liberals.…”

Attentional and perceptual biases of climate change

“…Attentional People with different political orientations attend to different aspects of global temperature information [5] Align climate communication with people's ideologies and motivations to capture their attention People concerned with climate change attend more readily to climate-related words or images [8,9] Attended environmental risks are judged to be more severe than unattended risks [11] Perceptual…”

“…A growing body of evidence suggests that people tend to pay attention to information consistent with their pre-existing beliefs, motivations, and values [e.g., 6,7]. In the context of climate information, the motivated attention framework has been proposed to describe the attentional biases that are driven by prior motivations and can shape climate perception and actions [5]. In a series of eye-tracking experiments by Luo and Zhao (2019), participants who were more liberal tended to pay more visual attention to the rising phase of the global temperature curve (after 1990) relative to the flatter phase (from 1940 to 1980).…”

“…In the context of climate information, the motivated attention framework has been proposed to describe the attentional biases that are driven by prior motivations and can shape climate perception and actions [5]. In a series of eye-tracking experiments by Luo and Zhao (2019), participants who were more liberal tended to pay more visual attention to the rising phase of the global temperature curve (after 1990) relative to the flatter phase (from 1940 to 1980). To seek causal evidence for the role of attention in climate actions, the authors manipulated attention by highlighting the rising phase (i.e., stronger climate change evidence) in red in one condition, and highlighting the flatter phase (i.e., weaker climate change evidence) in red in another condition.…”

Attentional and perceptual biases of climate change

“…A growing body of evidence suggests that people tend to pay attention to information consistent with their pre-existing beliefs, motivations, and values [e.g., 6,7]. In the context of climate information, the motivated attention framework has been proposed to describe the attentional biases that are driven by prior motivations and can shape climate perception and actions [5]. In a series of eye-tracking experiments by Luo and Zhao (2019), participants who were more liberal tended to pay more visual attention to the rising phase of the global temperature curve (after 1990) relative to the flatter phase (from 1940 to 1980).…”