"You know nothing, John Doe" – Judgmental overconfidence in lay climate knowledge

Thaller, Annina; Brudermann, Thomas

doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101427

Cited by 17 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Therefore, future work should explore the relationship between the significant predictors in this study and behaviors that demonstrate support for climate aid, such as personally donating money to help developing countries tackle global warming or voting for candidates who have a strong history of supporting climate aid. Moreover, previous research suggests the importance of measures of certainty or confidence about people's beliefs about global warming (Thaller and Brudermann 2020). Although we measured certainty of belief that global warming is happening, we did not have a similar measure of certainty in the belief that global warming is human-caused, although future research may benefit from such a measure.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Predictors of U.S. public support for climate aid to developing countries

Ansah,

Campbell,

Kotcher

et al. 2023

Environ. Res. Commun.

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Effectively responding to global warming requires mitigation and adaptation efforts worldwide. Although developed countries have pledged substantial financial support to help developing countries respond to climate change, these pledges have yet to be fulfilled. A majority of American voters support providing aid to developing nations, however, levels of support differ sharply between Democrats and Republicans. To investigate the predictors of support for climate aid among registered voters in the United States and to assess the effect of political party identification, we conducted hierarchical regression and relative weight analysis on a nationally representative sample of U.S. registered voters (n = 898) surveyed in 2021. Among all voters, the predictors of support for climate aid were: party identification (with more support among Democrats), perceived risk to developing countries, worry about global warming, injunctive beliefs that the U.S. should do more, and global warming belief certainty. Among Democrats, the predictors were: perceived risk to the U.S., worry, injunctive beliefs the U.S. should do more, education, and income. Among Republicans, the predictors were: perceived risk to developing countries, and injunctive beliefs the U.S. should do more. These findings have both theoretical and practical relevance for efforts to build public support for development assistance aimed at reducing climate change.

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Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 95%

Predictors of U.S. public support for climate aid to developing countries

Ansah,

Campbell,

Kotcher

et al. 2023

Environ. Res. Commun.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Overconfidence generally refers to a situation in which a person overestimates the accuracy of his or her knowledge ( Fischhoff et al, 1977 ; Yates et al, 1996 ). This tendency is one of the so-called self-serving biases ( Greenberg et al, 1982 ), in which people usually interpret facts to help maintain a positive image of themselves, and a high evaluation of one’s knowledge clearly contributes to a positive self-image ( Thaller and Brudermann, 2020 ). This concept is closely related to the failure of metacognition, which refers to someone’s knowledge of his or her own knowledge ( Kruger and Dunning, 1999 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extremism, knowledge, and overconfidence in the covid-19 restriction times

Hatori,

Bhandary

2024

Front. Psychol.

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Public response to restriction policy against the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) can polarize into two extremes: one absolutely in favor of restrictions for the sake of human life and health, and other absolutely against the restrictions for the sake of human rights and daily life. This study examines psychological nature of extremism regarding individuals’ self-restraint from social behavior, which was and has been encouraged by the Japanese government as restriction measures, as well as possible measures to mitigate this extremism. We hypothesize that people with more extreme views on self-restraint tend to have less knowledge of this virus, and, nevertheless, tend to be more overconfident in the sense that they falsely believe they understand COVID-19 and the effects of self-restraint. It is also postulated that overconfidence can be reduced by asking them to explain how self-restraint works. To test these hypotheses, we conducted an online experiment on the Japanese adults (n = 500) to measure the extent of their knowledge of COVID-19 and to examine the effect of explanation task on their understanding regarding COVID-19 and extremism. The results indicate that the extreme attitudes were associated with insufficient knowledge about the symptoms, risks, and characteristics of COVID-19. Moreover, their extreme attitudes tended to moderate through this experimental study to an extent that they realized they did not understand COVID-19 including the effects of self-restraint. This suggests that people with extremism may have been overconfident in their own understanding of the COVID-19 restrictions.

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“…Impaired metacognitive sensitivity, that is poor insight into the (in)correctness of one's beliefs as measured in a low-level perceptual discrimination task (Rollwage et al, 2018), and the reduced adjustment of confidence when presented with corrective post-decision evidence, predicted the extent to which people hold radical beliefs. This line of research may help to understand the adherence to climate change scepticism beliefs, despite scientific consensus (Thaller & Brudermann, 2020) , (Ortoleva et al, 2015). Scanell and Grouzet (Scannell & Grouzet, 2010) highlighted the relevance of metacognitive abilities in the study of climate change beliefs, suggesting the importance of accurate metacognitive knowledge about climate change in fostering information-seeking behavior.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing minds about climate change: a pervasive role for domain-general metacognition

Tsakiris¹,

Vehar²,

Fleming³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Updating one’s beliefs about the causes and effects of climate change is crucial for altering attitudes and behaviours. Importantly, metacognitive abilities - insight into the (in)correctness of one’s beliefs- play a key role in the formation of polarized beliefs. We investigated the role of domain-general and domain-specific metacognition in updating prior beliefs about climate change across the spectrum of climate change scepticism. We also considered the role of how climate science is communicated in the form of textual or visuo-textual presentations. We show that climate change scepticism is associated with differences in domain-general as well as domain-specific metacognitive abilities. Moreover, domain-general metacognitive sensitivity influenced belief updating in an asymmetric way : lower domain-general metacognition decreased the updating of prior beliefs, especially in the face of negative evidence. Our findings highlight the role of metacognitive failures in revising erroneous beliefs about climate change and point to their adverse social effects.

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"You know nothing, John Doe" – Judgmental overconfidence in lay climate knowledge

Cited by 17 publications

References 59 publications

Predictors of U.S. public support for climate aid to developing countries

Predictors of U.S. public support for climate aid to developing countries

Extremism, knowledge, and overconfidence in the covid-19 restriction times

Changing minds about climate change: a pervasive role for domain-general metacognition

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