Matthew Goldberg

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Verified

Matthew verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Research Scientist at Yale University

What affects the durability of political persuasion? This study evaluates the influence of two factors—the number of times an individual is treated, and the time between treatments—on persuasion around climate change. We conducted a five-wave panel study (N = 2,588), varying exposure to the number of persuasive messages (one versus three messages)...

In 2021, the Indian government announced the goal of net-zero carbon emissions in India by 2070. India’s vulnerability to climate impacts and central role in reducing global emissions make it essential to understand the policy features that affect Indians’ support for the 2070 goal. We conducted a conjoint experiment (N = 1,500) to test Indians’ su...

We review 50 studies on the impacts of climate activism. We present the existingevidence in a map of what we know about climate activism and its impacts. There isstrong evidence that climate activism shifts public opinion and media coverage in a pro-climate direction, but this varies by context and the tactics employed. There is moremoderate eviden...

Research shows that opinions rooted in moral justifications may be more stable over time. This suggests that communicators could create more durable persuasion by adding explicit moral claims (i.e., stating that the issue is a matter of right vs. wrong) to persuasive messages. Here, using animated videos about the transition from fossil fuels to re...

Research shows that opinions rooted in moral justifications may be more stable over time. This suggests that communicators could create more durable persuasion by adding explicit moral claims (i.e., stating that the issue is a matter of right vs. wrong) to persuasive messages. Here, using animated videos about the transition from fossil fuels to re...

Social media has become an important medium for climate change communication, where sponsored content can be delivered to specific audiences. However, studying message effects on social media platforms has limitations and therefore scholars often rely on surveys and controlled experiments, which can lack external validity. Here, we use survey metho...

One of the most challenging aspects of climate change mitigation today is not identifying solutions but reaching political leaders with climate scientists’ existing solutions. Although there is substantial research on climate change communication, research rarely focuses on one of the most impactful groups: policymakers. It is essential to test the...

In 2021, the Indian government announced the goal of net-zero carbon emissions in India by 2070. India’s vulnerability to climate impacts and central role in reducing global emissions make it essential to understand the policy features that affect Indians’ support for the 2070 goal. We conducted a conjoint experiment (N = 1,500) to test Indians’ su...

Through a review of the experimental research in environmental communication, we examine the claim that tailoring message characteristics (e.g., framing) to match audience characteristics (e.g., personal values) makes messages more persuasive. We find that, across the wide range of ways in which tailored messages were tested against non-tailored al...

Combating climate change requires persuading people about climate change and climate solutions. The nearly universal way of evaluating which climate and environmental messages are most effective is to calculate and compare average treatment effects (ATEs). The problem with the ATE is that it fails to describe the underlying pattern of persuasion: w...

We review 53 studies on the impacts of climate activism. We present the existing evidence in a map of what we know about climate activism and its impacts. We have strong evidence that climate activism shifts public opinion and media coverage in a pro-climate direction, but this varies by context and the tactics employed. We have more moderate evide...

We review 50 studies on the impacts of climate activism. We present the existingevidence in a map of what we know about climate activism and its impacts. There isstrong evidence that climate activism shifts public opinion and media coverage in a pro-climate direction, but this varies by context and the tactics employed. There is moremoderate eviden...

Large language models (LLMs) can be used to estimate human attitudes and behavior, including measures of public opinion, a concept referred to as algorithmic fidelity. This study assesses the algorithmic fidelity and bias of LLMs in estimating public opinion about global warming. LLMs were conditioned on demographics and/or psychological covariates...

Extreme weather, including heat waves, poses a significant threat to ecosystems and human health. As global temperatures continue to rise, the frequency and severity of heat waves will increase. Because of this, communicating heat-related risks to the public is increasingly important. One commonly-used communication tool is the Climate Shift Index...

Extreme weather, including heat waves, poses a significant threat to ecosystems and human health. As global temperatures continue to rise, the frequency and severity of heat waves will increase. Because of this, communicating heat-related risks to the public is increasingly important. One commonly-used communication tool is the Climate Shift Index...

One of the most challenging aspects of climate change mitigation today is not identifying solutions but reaching political leaders with climate scientists’ existing solutions. Although there is substantial research on climate change communication, such research rarely focuses on one of the most impactful groups: policymakers. It is essential to tes...

As climate change impacts increase, communicators must engage as many audiences as possible in climate action. One potentially underrated audience is video gamers. Two-thirds of Americans play video games, and video games are a potentially effective climate change communication tool. However, little research has examined whether video gamers have u...

Beliefs and attitudes form the core of public opinion about climate change. Network analysis can reveal the structural configuration of these beliefs and attitudes. In this research, we utilize a belief system framework to identify key psychological elements, track change in the density of these belief systems over time and across political groups,...

As climate change impacts increase, communicators must engage as many audiences as possible in climate action. One potentially underrated audience is video gamers. Two-thirds of Americans play video games, and video games are a potentially effective climate change communication tool. However, little research has examined whether video gamers have u...

Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated their potential in social science research by emulating human perceptions and behaviors, a concept referred to as algorithmic fidelity. This study assesses the algorithmic fidelity and bias of LLMs by utilizing two nationally representative climate change surveys. The LLMs were conditioned on demograph...

Emotion and affect play a central role in persuasion, decision-making, and human behavior. Because of ongoing environmental crises, there is a strong need to better understand how emotions shape selection, attention, processing, and effects of environmental communication. Here, I highlight three main areas that contain challenges and opportunities...

The segmentation analysis, based on a nationally representative survey of 4,619 Indian adults, identified four unique global warming audiences in India: The Alarmed, the Concerned, the Cautious, and the Disengaged. The majority of the Indian population are Alarmed (54%) – the group most aware and convinced of the reality and danger of global warmin...

Behavioral change is essential to mitigate climate change. To advance current knowledge, we synthesize research on interventions aiming to promote climate change mitigation behaviors in field settings. In a preregistered second-order meta-analysis, we assess the overall effect of 10 meta-analyses, incorporating a total of 430 primary studies. In ad...

The effectiveness of climate change communication depends in part on how people perceive common terms used to describe key climate concepts. In a mixed methods study (N = 2859), we examined affect, top-of-mind associations, beliefs, policy support, and behavioral intentions elicited by terms communicators colloquially use to refer to the gases resp...

The effectiveness of climate change communication depends in part on how people perceive common terms used to describe key climate concepts. In a mixed methods study (N = 2859), we examined affect, top-of-mind associations, beliefs, policy support, and behavioral intentions elicited by terms communicators colloquially use to refer to the gases resp...

Legislators who frequently advocate for climate action might be expected to cast more pro-climate votes, but pro-climate messaging alone may not predict actual voting behavior. We analyzed 401 539 tweets posted by 518 United States federal legislators over the 6 months prior to the 2020 election and identified 5350 of these as containing climate-re...

Decades of research on strategic communication campaigns has generated myriad insights. However, this valuable knowledge is often fragmented across many fields and topic areas, making it difficult for researchers and practitioners to distill this knowledge and map the key strategic considerations. In this article, we present an overarching framewor...

Both lifestyle and structural changes are needed to reduce carbon emissions and limit the impacts of climate change. In a series of three studies, we examine whether undertaking behaviors at the personal level affects (i.e., spills over onto) people's willingness to engage in behaviors at the collective level. In Study 1, we find that none of the p...

Prior research has demonstrated that communicating the scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is happening is an effective way to increase public understanding and engagement with the issue. However, less is known about (1) how persuasive this message is to oppositional audiences, (2) how long message effects last over time, and (3)...

Pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) are crucial to reducing environmental degradations, and much research has focused on two key psychological antecedents: pro-environmental attitudes and efficacy beliefs. Yet, the evidence of their direct and interactive relationships are mixed. Further, few studies investigate how these key relationships vary acro...

Prior research has demonstrated that communicating the scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is happening is an effective way to increase public understanding and engagement with the issue. However, less is known about (1) how persuasive this message is to oppositional audiences, (2) how long message effects last over time, and (3)...

Effective communication can help increase bipartisan support for renewable energy. Prior research suggests that support for renewable energy may be determined, in part, by which of its benefits are emphasized. Here we use a three-stage, longitudinal experiment (N = 2,891) to compare the immediate and over-time effects of three informational frames...

Americans increasingly accept that global warming is happening and a serious threat. Using secondary data from national probability surveys of the US adult population and preregistered hypotheses, we explore how and why Americans self-report changing their minds about global warming. Common reasons included learning more about the issue, hearing or...

This initiative examined systematically the extent to which a large set of archival research findings generalizes across contexts. We repeated the key analyses for 29 original strategic management effects in the same context (direct reproduction) as well as in 52 novel time periods and geographies; 45% of the reproductions returned results matching...

Supplemental materials for "Measuring Americans' Support for Adapting to 'Climate Change' or 'Extreme Weather'"

Scientists know that human activities, primarily fossil fuel combustion, are causing Earth’s temperature to increase. Yet in 2021, only 60% of the US population understood that human activities are the primary cause of global warming. We experimentally test whether information about the human causes of global warming influences Americans’ beliefs a...

Climate communicators can use the terms ‘climate change’ or ‘extreme weather’ to describe climate change adaptation strategies. However, the terms might differentially affect individuals’ support for those strategies. We examined Americans’ (N = 1,558) endorsement of climate change adaptation behaviors and policies based on whether they were descri...

Romantic partners influence each other's beliefs and behaviors. However, little is known about the dynamics of climate change beliefs and behaviors within romantic couples. We surveyed 758 romantic couples (N = 1,516 individuals) to investigate (a) correspondence between partners' climate change beliefs/behaviors, (b) accuracy and bias in people's...

Both lifestyle changes and structural changes are needed to substantially reduce carbon emissions and limit the impacts of climate change. In a series of three studies, we examine whether undertaking behaviors at the personal or lifestyle level affects (i.e., spills over onto) people's willingness to engage in behaviors at the collective or structu...

Adoption of plant-based diets is one of the most impactful ways individuals can reduce carbon emissions, helping to mitigate climate change. People attach different degrees of importance to the attributes of their food, such as taste, environmental impact, and health considerations. Identifying key motivators and barriers to adopting plant-based di...

Do illiberal regimes suppress public discourse on environmental problems? We advance theory on environmental information control and test whether civil liberties have influenced the diffusion of climate change concern across 118 countries. Using a spatial model of synthetic panel data from 611,909 individuals, we find each unit change in the 7-poin...

Using open-ended responses from 5297 interviews across 11 countries, this study reports what people say are the most important reasons to protect nature. Overall, and in some individual countries (e.g., Brazil, China, South Africa, South Korea, United States), the most frequently stated reason was an anthropocentric motive of ensuring human health...

Chinn and Hart (2021) argue that their experiment on the effects of communicating the scientific consensus on climate change revealed “mixed” and “inconsistent findings”. We note that Chinn and Hart (2021) provide clear and consistent evidence that the scientific consensus message has positive indirect effects on climate beliefs, attitudes, and sup...

Climate communicators can use the terms climate change or extreme weather to describe climate change adaptation strategies. However, the terms might differentially affect individuals’ support for those strategies. We examined Americans’ (N = 1,558) endorsement of climate change adaptation behaviors and policies based on whether they were described...

Decades of research on public communication campaigns has generated a large volume of insights that are often siloed and fragmented across many fields and topic areas, making it difficult for researchers and practitioners to distill these insights into an overarching framework. Further, most research and theory focus only on a select few of the fac...

Using open-ended responses from 12,000 interviews conducted across 12 countries, this study reports what people say are the most important reasons to protect nature. Overall, and in some individual countries (e.g., Brazil, China, South Africa), the most frequently stated reason was an anthropocentric motive of ensuring human health and survival. Bu...

Chinn and Hart (2021) conclude that communicating the scientific consensus on climate change causes psychological reactance. Here we identify several issues that cast doubt on these findings. First and foremost, the authors replicate the finding from van der Linden, Maibach, et al. (2019) that consensus messages do not increase perceptions of manip...

In many countries, natural gas is perceived more favorably than other fossil fuels. Here, we experimentally test (N = 2931) how perceptions of natural gas vary depending on what it is called. We find that Americans have stronger positive feelings for the term “natural gas” than “natural methane gas” (d = 0.59), “fossil gas” (d = 0.80), “fracked gas...

Romantic partners influence one another’s beliefs and behaviors. However, little is known about the dynamics of climate change beliefs and behaviors within romantic couples. We surveyed 758 romantic couples (N = 1,516 individuals) to investigate (a) correspondence between partners’ climate change beliefs and behaviors, (b) accuracy of people’s perc...

It is essential to increase public understanding of the existence, causes and harms of climate change. In the United States, Republicans are one important audience, as the bipartisan support needed for ambitious and durable climate policy is currently lacking. An important limitation of most climate change message testing is that it is usually base...

Despite Greta Thunberg's popularity, research has yet to investigate her impact on the public's willingness to take collective action on climate change. Using cross‐sectional data from a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults (N = 1,303), we investigate the “Greta Thunberg Effect,” or whether exposure to Greta Thunberg predicts collective...

This report is an analysis of public opinion about climate change among the regular U.S. audience (American adults who frequently watch, read, or listen to the content) of each of six major U.S. news sources: CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, the Weather Channel, and the national nightly network news (on CBS, ABC, or NBC). The findings in this report are...

Global warming will disproportionately affect people of color (e.g., Latinos). Previous research has found that Latinos in the USA are more engaged with global warming than are non-Latino Whites, in part, because they are more likely to perceive it as a serious risk. It was unclear, however, what factors most strongly explain Latinos’ elevated perc...

Action on climate change is urgently needed. Because the climate crisis is a wicked problem driven by human activities, it requires social solutions. Although previous research has led to significant progress in our understanding of how to effectively communicate the existence and seriousness of climate change-and how to motivate people to behave i...

Literary works of fiction about climate change are becoming more common and more popular among critics and readers. While much research has indicated the persuasive effectiveness of narrative storytelling in general, empirical research has not yet tested the effects of reading climate fiction. This paper reports results from the first experimental...

Are there specific motives that lead individuals to become extreme in their political attitudes after exposure to information? Can these motives explain recent evidence that attitude polariza-tion occurs more on the conservative than the liberal side? We propose that two mechanisms, related to relational motives to engage in social conformity and e...

Reducing global warming will require enacting strong climate policies, which is unlikely to happen without public support. While prior research has identified varied predictors of climate change policy support, it is unclear which predictors are strongest for the American electorate as a whole, and which predictors are strongest for Democrats and R...

Sharing personal stories of how climate change is already harming people is a promising communication strategy to engage diverse and even skeptical audiences. Using two experiments, we test the effects of a radio story on the climate change beliefs and risk perceptions of political moderates and conservatives. The radio story, which aired on hundre...

The degree to which behavioral interventions can promote widespread action on climate change is an important and urgent question. In their recent meta-analysis, Nisa et al. conclude that behavioral interventions have alarmingly small effects. Here we re-analyze the data and conclude that the meta-analytic effect reported by Nisa et al. is highly se...

Drawing on a nationally representative survey (N = 1,029; including 911 registered voters), this report describes how Democratic, Independent, and Republican registered voters view global warming, climate and energy policies, and personal and collective action. This report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey – Climate Chang...

This report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey – Climate Change in the American Mind – conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (climatecommunication.yale.edu) and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication (climatechangecommunication.org). Interview dates: April 7 – 17, 2020....

People often misperceive other people's beliefs about global warming—for instance, underestimating the percentage of people who think global warming is happening. In the U.S., perceptions of others vary across political lines and interact with the extent to which partisans align or deviate from the views of their political ingroup. With an online s...

Affectionate touch is crucial to the development of attachment security in infancy, yet little is known about how attachment and touch are related in adulthood. For adults high in anxiety, touch provision can maintain proximity, and received touch can signal reassurance of a partner’s affections that relatively anxious people desperately desire. Ad...

Americans strongly support policies aimed at increasing the use of renewable energy. Prior research has found that, overall, support for renewable energy tends to be motivated primarily by people's perceptions that it creates economic benefits and reduces environmental harms. However, the extant research has not established how these motivations va...

Measures to control the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are having unprecedented impacts on people’s lives around the world. In this paper, we argue that those conducting social research in the energy domain should give special consideration to the internal and external validity of their work conducted during this pandemic period. We...

On April 3 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that all Americans wear face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The announcement came during the fielding of a large, nationally-representative survey (N = 3,933) of Americans' COVID-19-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, providing an opportunity t...

Measures to control the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are having unprecedented impacts on people’s lives around the world. In this paper, we argue that those conducting social research in the energy domain should give special consideration to the internal and external validity of their work conducted during this pandemic period. We...

In this working paper, we used a large national survey of American adults (N = 3,933) to estimate the effect of perceived social norms among friends and family (i.e., how often friends and family perform preventive behaviors, and whether they think it is important for the respondent to do so) on people’s own COVID-19 preventive behaviors. We found...

Drawing on a scientific national survey (N = 3,933; including 3,188 registered voters), this report describes Americans’ risk perceptions and emotional responses to COVID-19 to inform the public health community, policymakers, and the public.

On April 3 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that all Americans wear face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The announcement came during the fielding of a large, nationally-representative survey (N = 3,933) of Americans’ COVID-19-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, providing an opportunity t...

Drawing on a scientific national survey (N = 3,933; including 3,188 registered voters), this report describes Americans’ coronavirus knowledge, attitudes, vulnerabilities, protective behaviors, and communication needs in an effort to inform the public health community, policymakers, and the public.

This report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey – Climate Change in the American Mind – conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (climatecommunication.yale.edu) and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication (climatechangecommunication.org). Interview dates: November 8 – 20, 201...

This report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey – Climate Change in the American Mind – conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (climatecommunication.yale.edu) and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication (climatechangecommunication.org). Interview dates: November 8 – 20, 201...

In a large-scale replication effort, Klein et al. (2018, https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245918810225 ) investigate the variation in replicability and effect size across many different samples and settings. The authors concluded that, for any given effect being studied, heterogeneity across samples and settings does not explain failures to replicate. I...

Do campaign contributions from oil and gas companies influence legislators to vote against the environment, or do these companies invest in legislators that have a proven anti environmental voting record? Using 28 y of campaign contribution data, we find that evidence consistently supports the investment hypothesis: The more a given member of Congr...

Previous research documents that U.S. conservatives, and conservative white males in particular, tend to dismiss the threat of climate change more than others in the U.S. public. Other research indicates that higher education and income can each exacerbate the dismissive tendencies of the political Right. Bridging these lines of research, the prese...

This paper is a pre-print and is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published. Please do not copy or cite this document without permission. The published article is available at 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.102024

In early 2019, a US climate change and economic renewal policy proposal called the Green New Deal (GND)¹ rose from obscurity to national prominence in just four months. This situation created a natural field experiment in which to study the emergence of partisan polarization. Here, we report findings from two nationally representative surveys of re...

As hurricanes intensify and more people are at risk, there is a clear need to understand the evacuation behavior of coastal residents. Of particular relevance is the role of past experience in evacuation decisions, about which evidence is mixed. In the current study, we use the Meta-Cognitive Model (MCM) to show that expectations of future hurrican...

Research on the gateway belief model indicates that communicating the scientific consensus on global warming acts as a "gateway" to other beliefs and support for action. We test whether a video conveying the scientific consensus on global warming is more effective than a text transcript with the same information. Results show that the video was sig...

A fundamental goal of the scientific process is to make causal inferences. Random assignment to experimental conditions has been taken to be a gold-standard technique for establishing causality. Despite this, it is unclear how often random assignment fails to eliminate non-trivial differences between experimental conditions. Further, it is unknown...

Shared Reality Theory argues that people are motivated to perceive the world in similar ways to people around them to fulfill epistemic and relational motives. However, most research on shared reality has focused on dyads. Taking a broader perspective, disagreement with members of one’s social networks may threaten shared reality, with downstream c...

A fundamental goal of the scientific process is to make causal inferences. Random assignment to experimental conditions has been taken to be a gold-standard technique for establishing causality. Despite this, it is unclear how often random assignment fails to eliminate non-trivial differences between experimental conditions. Further, it is unknown...

Ideally, research in the social and behavioral sciences would be conducted using samples that perfectly represent the population of interest. However, it is often not feasible for researchers to collect representative samples, forcing them to rely on convenience samples. While some researchers have found that convenience samples can produce compara...

This report is based on findings from a nationally representative survey – Climate Change in the American Mind – conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (climatecommunication.yale.edu) and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication (climatechangecommunication.org). Interview dates: March 29-April 8, 20...

One nationally representative study tested whether ideology predicted likelihood of people voting for a different candidate from their romantic partner in the 2016 United States presidential election. Extending upon recent research on informational social influence and ideological differences in values, results show that conservatives were more lik...

Climate change is an urgent global issue, with demands for personal , collective, and governmental action. Although a large body of research has investigated the influence of communication on public engagement with climate change, few studies have investigated the role of interpersonal discussion. Here we use panel data with 2 time points to invest...

Using two nationally representative surveys (total N = 2,544) and two experiments (total N = 1,620), we investigate a social identity approach to engaging Christians in the issue of climate change. Results show Christian Americans say “protecting God’s creation” is a top reason for wanting to reduce global warming. An exploratory experiment and a p...

Increasing PrEP adoption for eligible individuals is critical, but limited research has examined individual-level factors that might be amenable to educational or behavioral intervention. Using data from a PrEP demonstration project conducted at a community health center, we examined differences in behavioral and psychosocial factors between patien...

It is well established that conservatives in the United States are substantially less likely than liberals to accept that climate change is happening and is human caused and are less supportive of policies to limit climate change. However, it is likely that ideological differences in climate change beliefs, attitudes, and policy preferences are sma...

Research has identified many strategies people use to defend against belief-inconsistent information. However, little research has identified factors that predict which defense strategy people will use when more than one is available. Two experiments tested whether people choose to counter-argue belief-inconsistent information because they believe...

Research has identified many strategies people use to defend against belief‐inconsistent information. However, little research has identified factors that predict which defense strategy people will use when more than one is available. Two experiments tested whether people choose to counter‐argue belief‐inconsistent information because they believe...