No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Open Questions in Scientific Consensus Messaging Research
Abstract
In recent years, there has been considerable interest in studying and using scientific consensus messaging strategies to influence public opinion. Researchers disagree, sometimes vociferously, about how to examine the potential influence of consensus messaging, debating one another publicly and privately. In this essay, we take a step back and focus on some of the important questions that scholars might consider when researching scientific consensus messaging. Hopefully, reflecting on these questions will help researchers better understand the reasons for the different points of debate and improve the work moving forward.
... As a messaging strategy, the Gateway Belief Model (GBM; Van der Linden, 2021) has demonstrated the potential of conveying scientific consensus to appeal to cognitions and emotions that are key to affecting support for pro-environmental policies. However, the GBM is also limited in many ways (Bayes et al., 2020;Chinn & Hart, 2021b;Landrum & Slater, 2020). For instance, the GBM's exclusive focus on scientists as the referent group of consensus as well as on cognition-based consensus may constrain its application to domains in which there is scientific consensus. ...
... As such, the current study responds to calls for more research on what types of consensus messaging are effective in a specific context (Bayes et al., 2020;Landrum & Slater, 2020). It strives to extend the GBM in two fundamental ways that will expand the scope of the GBM, broaden the contexts in which it is applicable, and strengthen its potential in explaining attitudinal and behavioral change as a result of exposure to consensus messaging. ...
... Studies have shown support for the GBM's propositions in different scientific contexts, including climate change, genetically modified food and vaccination (Van der Linden, 2021). While the success of scientific consensus messaging also relies largely on activating heuristic cues, it utilizes a different heuristic cue than public consensus messaging: Since scientists are considered authorities or experts on scientific issues, scientific consensus likely conveys a unique "scientists must be correct" heuristic or at least an implicit appeal to authority, which is similar to expert heuristics, such as "experts know best" and "if expert, then correct" (Chaiken, 1987;Chaiken & Ledgerwood, 2011;Landrum & Slater, 2020). ...
Considering effective messaging strategies as one important way of mobilizing the general public to join the fight in addressing some of the world’s most critical environmental problems, this study compared the effectiveness of different consensus messages that varied in referent groups and content in communicating two global environmental issues. It proposed and tested a theoretical framework that includes two mediational pathways leading to changes in policy support. U.S. adults (N = 2,296) were randomly assigned to 1 of 16 experimental conditions as part of a 4 (consensus message: control vs. seriousness vs. anger vs. hope) × 2 (referent group: scientists vs. public) × 2 (issue: plastic pollution vs. biodiversity loss) between-subjects factorial design. Overall, the proposed framework received solid support in both contexts. Scientific (vs. public) consensus was found to be more credible, which positively influenced policy support. Anger consensus (vs. control) worked through perceived anger consensus and then anger to increase policy support. In contrast, hope consensus and the feeling of hope were largely ineffective in improving policy support. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the potentials and limitations of consensus messaging in communicating global environmental issues.
... Some evidence suggests that consensus messaging could be a significant factor in public perception of scientific issues. Mechanisms for establishing and communicating scientific consensus (Holliman, 2012; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2017) and the conditions under which consensus information influences public perception (Landrum & Slater, 2020) remain underexamined. This experiment tests the effects of consensus messaging, which is the practice of presenting an audience with information about what the weight of scientific evidence thus far suggests about a scientific topic like GE foods. ...
... Consensus messaging is a communication strategy that attempts to convey a high level of scientific agreement among relevant experts to various audiences. Consensus messaging is used extensively in science communication research and practice (Landrum & Slater, 2020), particularly within the context of climate change. Current data suggests that many Americans are unaware that a scientific consensus exists surrounding the safety of GE crops. ...
... Additionally, even when consensus messaging has been demonstrated as effective in achieving communication goals, that effect can be short-lived and can be neutralized by misinformation if publics are not inoculated (Maertens et al., 2020). Debates regarding the efficacy of consensus messaging are accumulating within science and environmental communication scholarship (Dixon et al., 2019;Kahan, 2016;Pearce et al., 2017), and important questions regarding what consensus means and how we define message "success" remain unresolved (Landrum & Slater, 2020). ...
Genetically engineered (GE) crops are likely to be one solution when it comes to balancing the needs of a growing human population and changing climate. Recent data suggest that many U.S. adults believe that GE foods are risky for human health and the environment, despite scientific consensus that they are no more harmful to human health or the environment than conventionally bred crops. While some evidence suggests that consensus messaging could be a significant factor in publics’ perceptions about technologies like GE, the effect of communicating scientific consensus and under different conditions remains unclear. We test message effectiveness in terms of individuals’ consensus perceptions and beliefs about the environmental risks and benefits of GE technology. We find that consensus messaging reduces perceived environmental risks of GE crops, and that supplementing a consensus message with benefits information reduces perceived environmental risks and increases anticipated benefits. We find an interaction effect for trust in scientists, such that those who have lower trust in industry scientists exhibit a backfire effect when exposed to consensus information.
... Concerns exist among some, however, regarding the applicability of these results outside of climate change. First, not all consensus messages can be accurately summarized as a proportion of scientists who agree (and arguably, consensus about climate change should not be interpreted that way either [8]). To this end, this study uses and compares two consensus messaging strategies. ...
... Although this "evidence message" design may be a closer description to what philosophers of science would label scientific consensus, and it may be more in line with how consensus is established [8], there is evidence that it may be a less effective communication strategy than the descriptive norm/authority appeal. For example, Myers et al. [3] found that when agreement among scientists was described but a numerical estimate was not used (e.g., "an overwhelming majority of scientists have concluded. . ...
... Similarly, Landrum et al. [6], which used a message highlighting a NASEM consensus panel on genetically modified organisms, also found no significant difference between exposure to the consensus message and participants' estimates of agreement among scientists. Landrum and Slater [8] propose that messages may be more or less successful depending on whether the question about estimating consensus is aligned with the message design. That is, if the message describes a proportion of agreeing scientists, the question asked to participants ought to be "what percent of scientists agree." ...
This study examines to what extent study design decisions influence the perceived efficacy of consensus messaging, using medicinal cannabis as the context. We find that researchers’ decisions about study design matter. A modified Solomon Group Design was used in which participants were either assigned to a group that had a pretest (within-subjects design) or a posttest only group (between-subjects design). Furthermore, participants were exposed to one of three messages—one of two consensus messages or a control message—attributed to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. A consensus message describing a percent (97%) of agreeing scientists was more effective at shifting public attitudes than a consensus message citing substantial evidence, but this was only true in the between-subject comparisons. Participants tested before and after exposure to a message demonstrated pre-sensitization effects that undermined the goals of the messages. Our results identify these nuances to the effectiveness of scientific consensus messaging, while serving to reinforce the importance of study design.
... However, there is also conflicting evidence, leading to discussion about the effectiveness of consensus communication as a science-communication strategy (Bayes et al., 2020;Landrum & Slater, 2020;van der Linden, 2021). Some scholars argue that people might not see experts who adopt positions incongruent with their preferences as knowledgeable or trustworthy (Kahan et al., 2011) or that people might experience reactance from being exposed to a scientific-consensus message ; also see Dixon et al., 2019;. ...
... Finally, we conducted an exploration of moderators other than the contested science topic that might explain the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of scientificconsensus communication. Much discussion about the gateway-belief model centers around differential effects of scientific-consensus communication for specific groups (e.g., Landrum & Slater, 2020;Ma et al., 2019;. To explore whether scientific-consensus communication might be more or less effective for certain groups, we examined moderating effects of conservatism and preexisting perceptions of consensus and beliefs. ...
Scientific-consensus communication is among the most promising interventions to minimize the gap between experts' and the public's belief in scientific facts. There is, however, discussion about its effectiveness in changing consensus perceptions and beliefs about contested science topics. This preregistered meta-analysis assessed the effects of communicating the existence of scientific consensus on perceived scientific consensus and belief in scientific facts. Combining 43 experiments about climate change, genetically modified food, and vaccination, we found that a single exposure to consensus messaging had a positive effect on perceived scientific consensus (g = 0.55) and on belief in scientific facts (g = 0.12). Consensus communication yielded very similar effects for climate change and genetically modified food, whereas the low number of experiments about vaccination prevented conclusions regarding this topic. Although these effects are small, communicating scientific consensus appears to be an effective way to change factual beliefs about contested science topics.
... Van der Linden et al., (2015), citing the foregoing study, argue that "perceived scientific agreement [is] a 'gateway belief' that either supports or undermines other key beliefs about climate change, which in turn, influence support for public action" (2; see also van der Linden, Leiserowitz, and Maibach 2019). These results -including their generality and real-world efficacy -remain controversial (Landrum & Slater, 2020;Kahan, 2017;Landrum, Hallman, and Jamieson 2019;cf. van der Linden, Leiserowitz, and Maibach 2017). ...
... But even granting their basic thrust, much more would need to be said in favor of the effectiveness of an agreement-framed-CMS. Recall that this question arises in the context of the second horn of the second-tier dilemma -concerning an issue, like ACC, on which the scientific community and (even more) relevant experts agree. On this issue, the effectiveness of agreement-framed-CMSs for at least the immediate acceptance of ACC has been something of a mixed bag (see citations in §2.1); even when significant effects show up, effect sizes are small, and no one yet knows whether the relevant belief revisions would occasion changes in one's actions relevant to climate change (for a review of the relevant literature, see Landrum & Slater 2020). More empirical research is needed here, as John agrees (2018, 10). ...
Despite decades of concerted efforts to communicate to the public on important scientific issues pertaining to the environment and public health, gaps between public acceptance and the scientific consensus on these issues remain stubborn. One strategy for dealing with this shortcoming has been to focus on the existence of scientific consensus on the relevant matters. Recent science communication research has added support to this general idea, though the interpretation of these studies and their generalizability remains a matter of contention. In this paper, we describe results of a qualitative interview study on different models of scientific consensus and the relationship between such models and trust of science, finding that familiarity with scientific consensus is rarer than might be expected. These results suggest that consensus messaging strategies may not be effective.
... However, there is also conflicting evidence, leading to discussion about the effectiveness of consensus communication as a science communication strategy (Bayes et al., 2020;Landrum & Slater, 2020;van der Linden, 2021). Some scholars argue that people might not see experts who adopt positions incongruent with their preferences as knowledgeable or trustworthy (Kahan et al., 2011) or that people might experience reactance from being exposed to a scientific consensus message ; also see Dixon et al., 2019;. ...
... Finally, we conducted an exploration of other moderators than the contested science topic that might explain the (in)effectiveness of scientific consensus communication. Much discussion about the gateway belief model centers around differential effects of scientific consensus communication for specific groups (e.g., Landrum & Slater, 2020;Ma et al., 2019;. ...
... Even though expert consensus information successfully increased estimates of expert consensus in our manipulation checks, it did not increase policy support when a policy was outcome-irrelevant and could have been used as a heuristic (Chaiken & Ledgerwood, 2012;Petty & Briñol, 2012). Moreover, we did not find evidence that expert consensus diminished policy support which could have suggested reactance, as others have suggested could occur (Bolsen & Druckman, 2018;Dixon et al., 2018;Landrum & Slater, 2020;Ma et al., 2019). ...
... Perhaps one need only exceed a certain threshold of understanding that most experts endorse human-caused climate change to "pass through the gateway," and added precision does not contribute to policy support. It is also worth noting that the difficulty in achieving downstream effects from acknowledging expert consensus to policy support may emerge in the general public as well, as evidenced by an increase in public perceived expert consensus about the existence of global warming (Krosnick & MacInnis, 2020). It is also likely difficult to find the downstream effect because the effect size for expert consensus predicting public action is small and may only be detected by an enormous sample size (van der Linden et al., 2019a). ...
We suggest that policies will be less popular when individuals personally have to pay for them rather than when others have to pay (i.e., a Not Out of My Bank Account or NOMBA effect). Dual process models of persuasion suggest that personally having to pay would motivate scrutiny of persuasive messages making it essential to use effective science communication tactics when using climate science to support climate change policies. A pilot experiment (N = 186) and main study (N = 758) support a NOMBA effect with less policy support (Pilot study) and lower recommended fees (Main study) for a policy that would require participants, rather than another group, to pay a fee for community solar panels. Consistent with dual process models and suggesting systematic processing, only when participants would have to pay the fee, messages using strong (vs. weak) science communication tactics increased support for policies (Pilot study), increased the favorability of thoughts about the policy (Main study) and these thoughts subsequently predicted policy support (Main study). Inconsistent with propositions that information about expert sources would be a heuristic or bolster science messages, expert consensus information did not influence thoughts or policy support in any study condition. Efforts to understand climate change policy support would benefit from attending to research on dual process models of persuasion, including understanding how different types and degree of outcome relevance can alter how people process science information used to bolster support for climate change policies.
... Notwithstanding backfire effects in some groups, in some contexts (e.g. [46,47]), and doubts concerning the extent to which 'consensus messaging' influences people [48], it remains possible that scientific community opinion data, collected on a large international scale as envisioned here, could sway public opinion significantly, on a range of important topics (cf. [49]). ...
We take up the challenge of developing an international network with capacity to survey the world’s scientists on an ongoing basis, providing rich datasets regarding the opinions of scientists and scientific sub-communities, both at a time and also over time. The novel methodology employed sees local coordinators, at each institution in the network, sending survey invitation emails internally to scientists at their home institution. The emails link to a ‘10 second survey’, where the participant is presented with a single statement to consider, and a standard five-point Likert scale. In June 2023, a group of 30 philosophers and social scientists invited 20,085 scientists across 30 institutions in 12 countries to participate, gathering 6,807 responses to the statement Science has put it beyond reasonable doubt that COVID-19 is caused by a virus. The study demonstrates that it is possible to establish a global network to quickly ascertain scientific opinion on a large international scale, with high response rate, low opt-out rate, and in a way that allows for significant (perhaps indefinite) repeatability. Measuring scientific opinion in this new way would be a valuable complement to currently available approaches, potentially informing policy decisions and public understanding across diverse fields.
... This strategy of enhancing perceived scientific consensus has been shown to influence people's beliefs about climate change (4). However, despite the attention it has received, the reasons behind the effectiveness of consensus messaging are not fully understood (5,6), and estimates of its effectiveness have varied substantially (2,7). Prior research has also highlighted a broad disagreement about whether there are segments of the population where consensus information is ineffective (8)(9)(10) such as along the political divide (11). ...
Despite overwhelming scientific consensus on the existence of human-caused climate change, public opinion among Americans remains split. Directly informing people of scientific consensus is among the most prominent strategies for climate communication, yet the reasons for its effectiveness and its limitations are not fully understood. Here, we propose that consensus messaging provides information not only about the existence of climate change but also traits of climate scientists themselves. In a large (N = 2,545) nationally representative survey experiment, we examine how consensus information affects belief in human-caused climate change by shaping perceptions of climate scientist credibility. In the control group (N = 847), we first show that people learn both from and about climate scientists when presented with consensus and that perceived scientist credibility (especially skill) mediates up to about 40% of the total effect of consensus information on climate belief. We demonstrate that perceptions of climate scientists are malleable with two novel interventions that increase belief in climate change above and beyond consensus information.
... Importantly, it was considered more trustworthy than information from the CDC website, an important communication platform during the pandemic. We have also shown that an approach using more direct scientific evidence, rather than statements of expert consensus, can be effective at establishing scientific consensus on a controversial topic 24 . While our research showed that scientific meta-summaries can provide trustworthy information, our intervention did not significantly increase people's intention to get vaccinated, suggesting a need for future work. ...
Despite the efficacy, safety, and availability of COVID-19 vaccines, a lack of awareness and trust of vaccine safety research remains an important barrier to public health. The goal of this research was to design and test online meta-summaries—transparent, interactive summaries of the state of relevant studies—to improve people’s awareness and opinion of vaccine safety research. We used insights from a set of co-design interviews (n = 22) to develop meta-summaries to highlight metascientific information about vaccine safety research. An experiment with 863 unvaccinated participants showed that our meta-summaries increased participants’ perception of the amount, consistency, and direction of vaccine safety research relative to the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) webpage, and that participants found them more trustworthy than the CDC page as well. They were also more likely to discuss it with others in the week following. We conclude that direct summaries of scientific research can be a useful communication tool for controversial scientific topics.
... Therefore, consensus messaging aims to correct the misconception about the scientific consensus by communicating a descriptive norm (i.e., a statement introducing the actual expert consensus). The most prominent theory describing the cognitive mechanisms that underlie this process is the gateway belief model (van der Linden et al., 2015; for review papers see Bayes et al., 2020;Landrum & Slater, 2020;van der Linden, 2021). In this model, estimation of scientific consensus on human-caused climate change (perceived scientific consensus; PSC) is assumed to be a "gateway belief" which causally affects other personal beliefs and attitudes about climate change. ...
Consensus messaging aims to increase climate change awareness by communicating the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. According to the gateway belief model, consensus messages improve the estimation of scientific consensus, which then causes subsequent changes in personal attitudes about climate change. Most studies investigating this communication strategy refer to US-American samples. Therefore, the present study replicated existing research on consensus messaging using a national representative German sample (N = 1110), which represents a high-consensus context. We further tested confidence in perceived scientific consensus as moderator variable in the gateway belief model. The consensus message improved the participants’ estimates of scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change but had no statistically significant effect on the climate change attitudes (belief in climate change, belief in human causation of climate change, worry about climate change, support for action on climate change). Regarding the moderation analysis, confidence in perceived scientific consensus did not moderate the consensus messaging process. However, we found a significant main effect of confidence in perceived scientific consensus on worry about climate change. This finding adds to existing literature arguing that metacognition might influence political and societal beliefs.
... Er is echter discussie over de effectiviteit van communicatie van wetenschappelijke consensus in het veranderen van publieke overtuigingen (Landrum & Slater, 2020). Sommige onderzoekers stellen dat de consensus zelf misschien niet geaccepteerd wordt en juist bij sommige groepen tot weerstand kan leiden zie ook Dixon et al., 2019;Van der Linden et al., 2019). ...
Ondanks overweldigend wetenschappelijk bewijs zijn we het niet allemaal eens over de feiten met betrekking tot een aantal belangrijke onderwerpen. Hoe kan dat? Dit artikel geeft een overzicht van onderzoek naar hoe mensen vasthouden aan onjuiste overtuigingen terwijl ze geconfronteerd worden met juiste informatie en hoe wetenschapscommunicatie verbeterd kan worden om mensen te helpen tot wetenschappelijk accurate overtuigingen te komen.
... The effects reported in the current study also result from just a single exposure. Implemented at scale small messaging effects can have a discernible impact on public opinion (see discussion in:Landrum & Slater, 2020;Rode et al., 2021;van der Linden et al., 2019). More engaging and repeated consensus messaging campaigns incorporating visual elements or humor may prove more effective in shifting beliefs for those wanting to do so(Brewer & McKnight, 2017;Clarke et al., 2020;Goldberg, van der Linden et al., 2020;Harris et al., 2019). ...
The Gateway Belief Model (GBM) places perception of a scientific consensus as a
key “gateway cognition” with cascading effects on personal beliefs, concern, and ultimately support for public policies. However, few studies seeking to evaluate and
extend the model have followed the specification and design of the GBM as originally
outlined. We present a more complete test of the theoretical model in a novel domain:
the COVID-19 pandemic. In a large multi-country correlational study (N = 7,206) we
report that, as hypothesized by the model, perceptions of scientific consensus regarding
the threat of COVID-19 predict personal attitudes toward threat and worry over the virus, which are in turn positively associated with support for mitigation policies. We also find causal support for the model in a large pre-registered survey experiment (N = 1,856): experimentally induced increases in perceived consensus have an indirect effect on changes in policy support mediated via changes in personal agreement with the consensus. Implications for the role of expert consensus in science communication are discussed.
... 2017). For a review of the state of the debate and its main questions, see Landrum and Slater (2020). 5 This is what is measured by Kahan's "Ordinary Science Intelligence" instrument (which also includes some popular numeracy and cognitive reflection items) (Kahan, 2016). ...
Efforts to cultivate scientific literacy in the public are often aimed at enabling people to make more informed decisions — both in their own lives (e.g., personal health, sustainable practices, &c.) and in the public sphere. Implicit in such efforts is the cultivation of some measure of trust of science. To what extent does science reporting in mainstream newspapers contribute to these goals? Is what is reported likely to improve the public's understanding of science as a process for generating reliable knowledge? What are its likely effects on public trust of science? In this paper, we describe a content analysis of 163 instances of science reporting in three prominent newspapers from three years in the last decade. The dominant focus, we found, was on particular outcomes of cutting-edge science; it was comparatively rare for articles to attend to the methodology or the social–institutional processes by which particular results come about. At best, we argue that this represents a missed opportunity.
... Yet, this approach focuses too much on the need to fill the knowledge gap between scientists and the public, and it overlooks the influence that ideological predispositions and values have on the public's interpretation of information (Besley, Dudo, Yuan, & Ghannam, 2016). Arguably, consensus reports such as those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and campaigns communicating scientific consensus have done little to sway the public's attitudes as public opinion hardly shifts surrounding their release (e.g., Landrum, Hallman, & Jamieson, 2019;Landrum & Slater, 2020). As stated earlier, the strongest predictor of global climate change attitudes is not knowledge, but political ideology (e.g., Dunlap & McCright, 2008). ...
As soon as it was clear that Pope Francis's 2015 Encyclical, Laudato Si’ : On Care for Our Common Home , would discuss, among other issues, the moral imperative to address global climate change, U.S. scholars and research institutions rushed to collect data surrounding its release. These groups aimed to determine whether there would be a “Francis Effect,” in which U.S. Conservatives (and Conservative Catholics in particular) would show greater concern about the negative effects of global climate change. Here, we first provide context by discussing the history of political polarization in the U.S. over global climate change. Then, we review the published literature and publicly available data that aimed to examine potential influences of Laudato Si’ on people's climate change attitudes. Taken together, the available scholarship provides strong evidence that U.S. publics were differentially responsive to the Pope's messaging (with political Conservatives expressing less climate change concern and viewing Pope Francis as less credible), but there is correlational evidence of an overall “Francis Effect.” U.S. population data collected following the encyclical's release show small, potentially temporary, increases in perceptions of papal credibility, climate change concern, and the perspective that global climate change is a moral issue.
This article is categorized under:
• Trans‐Disciplinary Perspectives > Humanities and the Creative Arts
• Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Communication
Abstract
Percent of respondents from Gallup Polls who report worrying “a great deal” about global warming or climate change from 2000 to 2019. The release of the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006 and the Papal Encyclical in 2015 are marked on the figure.
Does consensus messaging about contested science issues influence perceptions of consensus and/or personal beliefs? This question remains open, particularly for topics other than climate change and samples outside the United States. In a Spanish national sample (N = 5087), we use preregistered survey experiments to examine differential efficacy of variations in consensus messaging for vaccines and genetically modified organisms. We find that no variation of consensus messaging influences vaccine beliefs. For genetically modified organisms, about which misperceptions are particularly prevalent in our sample, we find that scientific consensus messaging increases perception of consensus and personal belief that genetically modified organisms are safe, and decreases support for a ban. Increasing degree of consensus did not have consistent effects. Although individual differences (e.g. a conspiratorial worldview) predict these genetically modified organism beliefs, they do not undercut consensus message effects. While we observe relatively modest effect sizes, consensus messaging may be able to improve the accuracy of beliefs about some contentious topics.
Recent studies suggest climate change consensus messages may cause psychological reactance for conservatives. However, it remains unknown how much this reactance impacts the effectiveness of consensus messaging. Using data from a recent meta-analysis on climate change interventions, the current paper seeks to add context to the debate over reactance. We integrated data from 20 experiments (N = 19,200 participants) that test how consensus messages (compared to a control condition) impact climate change attitudes. The effect of consensus messages on attitudes was small yet statistically significant and positive (g = 0.09), and not significantly moderated by political affiliation. Moreover, the moderating role of political affiliation was similar for consensus messages compared to other interventions for climate change attitudes. While conservatives may experience resistance to consensus messages, there is little meta-analytic evidence that consensus messages backfire.
The current study investigates how people respond to a climate science consensus statement embedded within a news article. Participants ( N = 1,048) were randomly assigned to read a news article about climate change, read the same article with a scientific consensus message included, read a simple consensus statement, or a control condition. Participants in consensus conditions had increased perceptions of scientific agreement compared with those who did not receive consensus information. Moreover, the article was similarly effective as an overt consensus statement. However, neither consensus statement affected other climate change attitudes, suggesting the effect may be limited to consensus perceptions.
In a recent article, van der Linden, Maibach, and Leiserowitz ([2019]. Exposure to Scientific Consensus Does Not Cause Psychological Reactance. Environmental Communication, 1–8) claim that exposure to a consensus message on climate change does not cause psychological reactance. In doing so, they provide a critique and “replication” of our recently published study which found evidence to the contrary (Ma, Dixon, & Hmielowski, 2019. Psychological Reactance From Reading Basic Facts on Climate Change: The Role of Prior Views and Political Identification. Environmental Communication, 13(1), 71–86). We address key shortcomings of their findings – the most significant of which is their study’s lack of an appropriate control group and problematic measure for psychological reactance – while also responding to their specific critiques of our study. When accounting for these shortcomings, their findings resemble ours: climate change skeptics and Republicans strongly believe that a consensus message about climate change is manipulative. We find their emphatic statement that “exposure to scientific consensus does not cause psychological reactance” to be directly challenged by their own findings and impossible to test given their study’s design.
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 significantly more effective than the transcript in increasing people's perception of scientific agreement. Structural equation models indicate indirect increases in the beliefs that global warming is happening and is human-caused, and in worry about global warming, which in turn predict increased global warming issue priority.
In a recent article, Ma, Dixon, and Hmielowski (2019. Psychological Reactance from Reading Basic Facts on Climate Change: The Role of Prior Views and Political Identification. Environmental Communication, 13(1), 71-86) explore whether scientific consensus messages activate psychological reactance. They find no main effect of the consensus message on psychological reactance, but a subsequent moderation analysis appears to show reactance among audiences who question the existence of climate change, especially Republicans. Here we attempt to replicate this finding in a large national sample of American adults (N = 6,301). Consistent with Ma et al., we find no main effect of the consensus condition on our measure of psychological reactance. However, in contrast to Ma et al., we find no evidence of psychological reactance among Republicans, conservatives, or those with dismissive prior views. Although people who question climate change are more likely to say that the 97% consensus message is manipulative, this main effect exists regardless of experimental condition, indicating that psychological reactance does not stem from exposure to the scientific consensus.
Science communication via testimony requires a certain level of trust. But in the context of ideologically-entangled scientific issues, trust is in short supply—particularly when the issues are politically ‘entangled’. In such cases, cultural values are better predictors than scientific literacy for whether agents trust the publicly-directed claims of the scientific community. In this paper, we argue that a common way of thinking about scientific literacy—as knowledge of particular scientific facts or concepts—ought to give way to a second-order understanding of science as a process as a more important notion for the public’s trust of science.
Scholars continue to search for solutions to shift climate change skeptics’ views on climate science and policy. However, research has shown that certain audiences are resistant to change regarding environmental issues. To explore this issue further, we examine the presence of reactance among different audiences in response to simple, yet prominently used, climate change messages. Our results show that emphasizing the scientific consensus of climate change produces reactance, but only among people who question the existence of climate change. Moreover, adding political identification to the model as an additional moderating variable shows the increases in reactance occur among Republicans who question the existence of climate change. Finally, our results show that reactance to climate change messaging may lead to backfiring effects on important outcomes tied to climate change such as risk perceptions, climate change beliefs, and support for mitigation policies.
The importance of framing as a concept is reflected by the massive amount of attention it has received from scholars across disciplines. As a communicative process, framing involves making certain considerations salient as a way to simplify or shape the way in which an audience understands a particular problem and its potential solutions. As recently as the early 2000s, social scientists began to examine how strategic frames in a communication affect both individuals' beliefs about climate change and the actions they are willing to support to mitigate the likely effects. Research on the effects of how strategic frames influence the attitudes, beliefs, and preferences of individuals in this domain primarily builds on insights from framing theory, which explains that an individual's attitude or preference in any given context depends on the available, accessible, and most applicable (i.e., perceived strongest) considerations. But it is much more than theory: frames related to the effects and potential solutions for climate change have been employed strategically by various actors in an effort to shape public opinion and public policy.
In this paper, we respond to the critiques presented by [Kahan, 2017]. Contrary to claims that the scientific consensus message did not significantly influence the key mediator and outcome variables in our model, we show that the experiment in [van der Linden et al., 2015] did in fact directly influence key beliefs about climate change. We also clarify that the Gateway Belief Model (GBM) is theoretically well-specified, empirically sound, and as hypothesized, the consensus message exerts a significant indirect influence on support for public action through the mediating variables. We support our conclusions with a large-scale replication.
This paper analyzes data collected but not reported in the study featured in van der Linden, Leiserowitz, Feinberg, and Maibach [van der Linden et al., 2015]. VLFM report finding that a “scientific consensus” message “increased” experiment subjects' “key beliefs about climate change” and “in turn” their “support for public action” to mitigate it. However, VLFM fail to report that message-exposed subjects' “beliefs about climate change” and “support for public action” did not vary significantly, in statistical or practical terms, from those of a message-unexposed control group. The paper also shows how this absence of an experimental effect was obscured by a misspecified structural equation model.
Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus, a sizable minority of people doubt that human activity is causing climate change. Communicating the existence of a scientific consensus has been suggested as a way to correct individuals’ misperceptions about human-caused climate change and other scientific issues, though empirical support is mixed. We report an experiment in which psychology students were presented with consensus information about two issues, and subsequently reported their perception of the level of consensus and extent of their endorsement of those issues. We find that messages about scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change and the safety of genetically modified food shift perceptions of scientific consensus. Using mediation models we also show that, for both these issues, high consensus messages also increase reported personal agreement with the scientific consensus, mediated by changes in perceptions of a scientific consensus. This confirms the role of perceived consensus in informing personal beliefs about climate change, though results indicate the impact of single, one-off messages may be limited.
Scientists are in near-universal agreement that human activity is a primary cause of climate change. Yet, despite this scientific consensus, the American public remains divided when it comes to beliefs about human-induced climate change. We investigate the role of partisan group identity and the politicization of science in undermining the impact of a scientific consensus message about human-induced climate change. We do so with a survey experiment administered on a nationally representative sample, finding that partisan identity—and especially politicization—can stunt the effect of a scientific consensus statement about climate change. We conclude with a discussion about how scientists, as a group, might work with partisans to more effectively communicate scientific information.
Many scientists communicate with the public about risks associated with scientific issues, but such communication may have unintended consequences for how the public views the political orientations and the credibility of the communicating scientist. We explore this possibility using an experiment with a nationally representative sample of Americans in the fall of 2015. We find that risk communication on controversial scientific issues sometimes influences perceptions of the political orientations and credibility of the communicating scientist when the scientist addresses the risks of issues associated with conservative or liberal groups. This relationship is moderated by participant political ideology, with liberals adjusting their perceptions of the scientists' political beliefs more substantially when the scientist addressed the risks of marijuana use when compared with other issues. Conservatives' political perceptions were less impacted by the issue context of the scientific risk communication but indirectly influenced credibility perceptions. Our results support a contextual model of audience interpretation of scientific risk communication. Scientists should be cognizant that audience members may make inferences about the communicating scientist's political orientations and credibility when they engage in risk communication efforts about controversial issues.
This paper assesses whether ExxonMobil Corporation has in the past misled the general public about climate change. We present an empirical document-by-document textual content analysis and comparison of 187 climate change communications from ExxonMobil, including peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed publications, internal company documents, and paid, editorial-style advertisements ('advertorials') in The New York Times. We examine whether these communications sent consistent messages about the state of climate science and its implications—specifically, we compare their positions on climate change as real, human-caused, serious, and solvable. In all four cases, we find that as documents become more publicly accessible, they increasingly communicate doubt. This discrepancy is most pronounced between advertorials and all other documents. For example, accounting for expressions of reasonable doubt, 83% of peer-reviewed papers and 80% of internal documents acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused, yet only 12% of advertorials do so, with 81% instead expressing doubt. We conclude that ExxonMobil contributed to advancing climate science—by way of its scientists' academic publications—but promoted doubt about it in advertorials. Given this discrepancy, we conclude that ExxonMobil misled the public. Our content analysis also examines ExxonMobil's discussion of the risks of stranded fossil fuel assets. We find the topic discussed and sometimes quantified in 24 documents of various types, but absent from advertorials. Finally, based on the available documents, we outline ExxonMobil's strategic approach to climate change research and communication, which helps to contextualize our findings.
Several studies have been using quantified consensus within climate science as an argument to foster climate policy. Recent efforts to communicate such scientific consensus attained a high public profile but it is doubtful if they can be regarded successful. We argue that repeated efforts to shore up the scientific consensus on minimalist claims such as ‘humans cause global warming’ are distractions from more urgent matters of knowledge, values, policy framing and public engagement. Such efforts to force policy progress through communicating scientific consensus misunderstand the relationship between scientific knowledge, publics and policymakers. More important is to focus on genuinely controversial issues within climate policy debates where expertise might play a facilitating role. Mobilising expertise in policy debates calls for judgment, context and attention to diversity, rather than deferring to formal quantifications of narrowly scientific claims.
Publicized disputes between groups of scientists may force lay choices about groups' credibility. One possible, little studied, credibility cue is vote-counting (proportions of scientists on either side): for example, "97%" of climate scientists believe in anthropogenic climate change. An online sample of 2600 Americans read a mock article about a scientific dispute, in a 13 (proportions: 100%-0%, 99%-1%, … 50%-50%, … 1%-99%, 0%-100% for Positions A and B, respectively) × 8 (scenarios: for example, dietary salt, dark matter) between-person experiment. Respondents reported reactions to the dispute, attitudes toward the topic, and views on science. Proportional information indirectly affected judged agreement but less so topic or science responses, controlling for scenarios and moderators, whether by actual proportions or differing contrasts of "consensus" versus "near-consensus." Given little empirical research with conflicting findings, even these low effect sizes warrant further research on how vote-counting might help laypeople deal with scientific disputes.
In team sport, classifying playing position based on a players’ skilled performance can provide a guide to talent identification by enabling the recognition of distinctive performance attributes relative to playing position. Here, elite junior Australian football (AF) players were a priori classified into one of four common playing positions; forward, midfield, defence, and ruck. Three analysis techniques were used to assess the extent to which 12 in-game skill performance indicators could classify playing position. These were a linear discriminant analysis (LDA), random forest, and a PART decision list. The LDA produced classification accuracy of 56.8%, with class errors ranging from 19.6% (midfielders) to 75.0% (ruck). The random forest model performed at a slightly worse level (51.62%), with class errors ranging from 27.8% (midfielders) to 100% (ruck). The decision list revealed six rules capable of classifying playing position at accuracy of 70.1%, with class errors ranging from 14.4% (midfielders) to 100% (ruck). Although the PART decision list produced the greatest relative classification accuracy, the technical skill indicators reported were unable to accurately classify players according to their position using three analysis approaches. This homogeneity may complicate player recruitment by constraining a talent recruiter’s ability to objectively recognise distinctive positional attributes.
The consensus that humans are causing recent global warming is shared by 90%–100% of publishing climate scientists according to six independent studies by co-authors of this paper. Those results are consistent with the 97% consensus reported by Cook et al (Environ. Res. Lett.
8 024024) based on 11 944 abstracts of research papers, of which 4014 took a position on the cause of recent global warming. A survey of authors of those papers (N = 2412 papers) also supported a 97% consensus. Tol (2016 Environ. Res. Lett.
11 048001) comes to a different conclusion using results from surveys of non-experts such as economic geologists and a self-selected group of those who reject the consensus. We demonstrate that this outcome is not unexpected because the level of consensus correlates with expertise in climate science. At one point, Tol also reduces the apparent consensus by assuming that abstracts that do not explicitly state the cause of global warming ('no position') represent non-endorsement, an approach that if applied elsewhere would reject consensus on well-established theories such as plate tectonics. We examine the available studies and conclude that the finding of 97% consensus in published climate research is robust and consistent with other surveys of climate scientists and peer-reviewed studies.
Despite over 20 years of research and scientific consensus on the topic, climate change continues to be a politically polarizing issue. We conducted a survey experiment to test whether providing the public with information on the exact extent of scientific agreement about the occurrence and causes of climate change affects respondents' own beliefs and bridges the divide between conservatives and liberals. First, we show that the public significantly underestimated the extent of the scientific consensus. We then find that those given concrete information about scientists' views were more likely to report believing that climate change was already underway and that it was caused by humans. However, their beliefs about the necessity of making policy decisions and their willingness to donate money to combat climate change were not affected. Information provision affected liberals, moderates, and conservatives similarly, implying that the gap in beliefs between liberals and conservatives is not likely to be bridged by information treatments similar to the one we study. Finally, we conducted a 6-month follow-up with respondents to see if the treatment effect persisted; the results were statistically inconclusive.
Background:
A substantial minority of American adults continue to hold influential misperceptions about childhood vaccine safety. Growing public concern and refusal to vaccinate poses a serious public health risk. Evaluations of recent pro-vaccine health communication interventions have revealed mixed results (at best). This study investigated whether highlighting consensus among medical scientists about childhood vaccine safety can lower public concern, reduce key misperceptions about the discredited autism-vaccine link and promote overall support for vaccines.
Methods:
American adults (N = 206) were invited participate in an online survey experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to either a control group or to one of three treatment interventions. The treatment messages were based on expert-consensus estimates and either normatively described or prescribed the extant medical consensus: "90 % of medical scientists agree that vaccines are safe and that all parents should be required to vaccinate their children".
Results:
Compared to the control group, the consensus-messages significantly reduced vaccine concern (M = 3.51 vs. M = 2.93, p < 0.01) and belief in the vaccine-autism-link (M = 3.07 vs M = 2.15, p < 0.01) while increasing perceived consensus about vaccine safety (M = 83.93 vs M = 89.80, p < 0.01) and public support for vaccines (M = 5.66 vs M = 6.22, p < 0.01). Mediation analysis further revealed that the public's understanding of the level of scientific agreement acts as an important "gateway" belief by promoting public attitudes and policy support for vaccines directly as well as indirectly by reducing endorsement of the discredited autism-vaccine link.
Conclusion:
These findings suggest that emphasizing the medical consensus about (childhood) vaccine safety is likely to be an effective pro-vaccine message that could help prevent current immunization rates from declining. We recommend that clinicians and public health officials highlight and communicate the high degree of medical consensus on (childhood) vaccine safety when possible.
Even as the consensus over the reality and significance of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) becomes stronger within the scientific community, this global environmental problem is increasingly contested in the political arena and wider society. The spread of debate and contention over ACC from the scientific to socio-political realms has been detrimental to climate science. This article provides an overview of organized climate change denial. Focusing primarily on the US, where denial first took root and remains most active, this article begins by describing the growth of conservative-based opposition to environmentalism and environmental science in general. It then explains why climate change became the central focus of this opposition, which quickly evolved into a coordinated and well-funded machine or 'industry'. It also examines denialists' rationale for attacking the scientific underpinnings of climate change policy and the crucial strategy of 'manufacturing uncertainty' they employ.
Diverse methods have been applied to understand why science continues to be debated within the climate policy domain. A number of studies have presented the notion of the ' echo chamber' to model and explain information flows across an array of social settings, finding disproportionate connections among ideologically similar political communicators. This paper builds on these findings to provide a more formal operationalization of the components of echo chambers. We then empirically test their utility using survey data collected from the community of political elites engaged in the contentious issue of climate politics in the United States. Our survey period coincides with the most active and contentious period in the history of US climate policy, when legislation regulating carbon dioxide emissions had passed through the House of Representatives and was being considered in the Senate. We use exponential random graph (ERG) modelling to demonstrate that both the homogeneity of information (the echo) and multi-path information transmission (the chamber) play significant roles in policy communication. We demonstrate that the intersection of these components creates echo chambers in the climate policy network. These results lead to some important conclusions about climate politics, as well as the relationship between science communication and policymaking at the elite level more generally.
Action to tackle the complex and divisive issue of climate change will be strongly influenced by public perception. Online social media and associated social networks are an increasingly important forum for public debate and are known to influence individual attitudes and behaviours – yet online discussions and social networks related to climate change are not well understood. Here we construct several forms of social network for users communicating about climate change on the popular microblogging platform Twitter. We classify user attitudes to climate change based on message content and find that social networks are characterised by strong attitude-based homophily and segregation into polarised “sceptic” and “activist” groups. Most users interact only with like-minded others, in communities dominated by a single view. However, we also find mixed-attitude communities in which sceptics and activists frequently interact. Messages between like-minded users typically carry positive sentiment, while messages between sceptics and activists carry negative sentiment. We identify a number of general patterns in user behaviours relating to engagement with alternative views. Users who express negative sentiment are themselves the target of negativity. Users in mixed-attitude communities are less likely to hold a strongly polarised view, but more likely to express negative sentiment towards other users with differing views. Overall, social media discussions of climate change often occur within polarising “echo chambers”, but also within “open forums”, mixed-attitude communities that reduce polarisation and stimulate debate. Our results have implications for public engagement with this important global challenge.
There is currently widespread public misunderstanding about the degree of scientific consensus on human-caused climate change, both in the US as well as internationally. Moreover, previous research has identified important associations between public perceptions of the scientific consensus, belief in climate change and support for climate policy. This paper extends this line of research by advancing and providing experimental evidence for a "gateway belief model" (GBM). Using national data (N = 1104) from a consensus-message experiment, we find that increasing public perceptions of the scientific consensus is significantly and causally associated with an increase in the belief that climate change is happening, human-caused and a worrisome threat. In turn, changes in these key beliefs are predictive of increased support for public action. In short, we find that perceived scientific agreement is an important gateway belief, ultimately influencing public responses to climate change.
Research dealing with various aspects of* the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985,
1987) is reviewed, and some unresolved issues are discussed. In broad terms, the theory is
found to be well supported by empirical evidence. Intentions to perform behaviors of different
kinds can be predicted with high accuracy from attitudes toward the behavior, subjective
norms, and perceived behavioral control; and these intentions, together with perceptions of
behavioral control, account for considerable variance in actual behavior. Attitudes, subjective
norms, and perceived behavioral control are shown to be related to appropriate sets of salient
behavioral, normative, and control beliefs about the behavior, but the exact nature of these
relations is still uncertain. Expectancy value formulations are found to be only partly
successful in dealing with these relations. Optimal rescaling of expectancy and value
measures is offered as a means of dealing with measurement limitations. Finally, inclusion of
past behavior in the prediction equation is shown to provide a means of testing the theory*s
sufficiency, another issue that remains unresolved. The limited available evidence concerning
this question shows that the theory is predicting behavior quite well in comparison to the
ceiling imposed by behavioral reliability.
Previous research has identified public perceptions of the scientific consensus on climate change as an important gateway belief. Yet, little research to date has examined how to effectively communicate the scientific consensus on climate change. In this study, we conducted an online experiment using a national quota sample to compare three approaches to communicating the scientific consensus, namely: (a) descriptive text, (b) a pie chart and (c) metaphorical representations. Results indicate that while all three approaches can significantly increase public understanding of the degree of scientific consensus, the pie chart and simple text have superior recall and are most effective across political party lines. We conclude that the scientific consensus on climate change is most effectively communicated as a short, simple message that is easy to comprehend and remember. Representing the consensus visually in the form of a pie chart appears to be particularly useful.
In this theoretical article, we introduce the Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model (DSMM), a new, integrative model to improve our understanding of media effects. The DSMM organizes, integrates, and extends the insights developed in earlier microlevel media-effects theories. It distinguishes 3 types of susceptibility to media effects: dispositional, developmental, and social susceptibility. Using the analogy of a mixing console, the DSMM proposes 3 media response states that mediate media effects: cognitive, emotional, and excitative. The assumptions on which the DSMM is based together explain (a) why some individuals are more highly susceptible to media effects than others, (b) how and why media influence those individuals, and (c) how media effects can be enhanced or counteracted.
This paper conducts an analysis of the financial resource mobilization of the organizations that make up the climate change counter-movement (CCCM) in the United States. Utilizing IRS data, total annual income is compiled for a sample of CCCM organizations (including advocacy organizations, think tanks, and trade associations). These data are coupled with IRS data on philanthropic foundation funding of these CCCM organizations contained in the Foundation Center’s data base. This results in a data sample that contains financial information for the time period 2003 to 2010 on the annual income of 91 CCCM organizations funded by 140 different foundations. An examination of these data shows that these 91 CCCM organizations have an annual income of just over 64 million in identifiable foundation support. The overwhelming majority of the philanthropic support comes from conservative foundations. Additionally, there is evidence of a trend toward concealing the sources of CCCM funding through the use of donor directed philanthropies.
While there is overwhelming scientific agreement on climate change, the public has become polarized over fundamental questions such as human-caused global warming. Communication strategies to reduce polarization rarely address the underlying cause: ideologically-driven misinformation. In order to effectively counter misinformation campaigns, scientists, communicators, and educators need to understand the arguments and techniques in climate science denial, as well as adopt evidence-based approaches to neutralizing misinforming content. This chapter reviews analyses of climate misinformation, outlining a range of denialist arguments and fallacies. Identifying and deconstructing these different types of arguments is necessary to design appropriate interventions that effectively neutralize the misinformation. This chapter also reviews research into how to counter misinformation using communication interventions such as inoculation, educational approaches such as misconception-based learning, and the interdisciplinary combination of technology and psychology known as technocognition.
The Gateway Belief Model describes a process of attitudinal change where a shift in people's perception of the scientific consensus on an issue leads to subsequent changes in their attitudes which in turn predict changes in support for public action. In the current study, we present the first large-scale confirmatory replication of the GBM. Specifically, we conducted a consensus message experiment on a national quota sample of the US population (N=6,301). Results support the mediational hypotheses of the GBM: an experimentally induced change in perceived scientific consensus causes subsequent changes in cognitive (belief) and affective (worry) judgments about climate change, which in turn are associated with changes in support for public action. The scientific consensus message also had a direct effect on support for public action. We further found an interaction
with both political ideology and prior attitudes such that conservatives and climate change disbelievers were more likely to update their beliefs toward the consensus. We discuss the model's theoretical and practical implications, including why conveying scientific consensus can help reduce politically motivated reasoning
Despite a scientific consensus, citizens are divided when it comes to climate change — often along political lines. Democrats or liberals tend to believe that human activity is a primary cause of climate change, whereas Republicans or conservatives are much less likely to hold this belief. A prominent explanation for this divide is that it stems from directional motivated reasoning: individuals reject new information that contradicts their standing beliefs. In this Review, we suggest that the empirical evidence is not so clear, and is equally consistent with a theory in which citizens strive to form accurate beliefs but vary in what they consider to be credible evidence. This suggests a new research agenda on climate change preference formation, and has implications for effective communication.
The gateway belief model posits that perceptions of scientific agreement play a causal role in shaping beliefs about the existence of anthropogenic climate change. However, experimental support for the model is mixed. The current study takes a longitudinal approach, examining the causal relationships between perceived consensus and beliefs. Perceptions of scientific consensus and personal beliefs about climate change were collected over a five-month period in a student sample (N = 356). Cross-lagged panel analysis revealed that perceived scientific consensus did not prospectively predict personal agreement with the reality of climate change, thus the current study did not find support for the gateway belief model. However, the inverse pathway was significant for those with liberal voting intentions: personal beliefs about the reality of anthropogenic climate change prospectively predicted subsequent estimates of consensus. The results suggest that individuals’ perceptions of a consensus among scientists do not have a strong influence on their personal beliefs about climate change.
Scholars are divided over whether communicating to the public the existence of scientific consensus on an issue influences public acceptance of the conclusions represented by that consensus. Here, we examine the influence of four messages on perception and acceptance of the scientific consensus on the safety of genetically modified organisms (GMOs): two messages supporting the idea that there is a consensus that GMOs are safe for human consumption and two questioning that such a consensus exists. We found that although participants concluded that the pro-consensus messages made stronger arguments and were likely to be more representative of the scientific community’s attitudes, those messages did not abate participants’ concern about GMOs. In fact, people’s pre-manipulation attitudes toward GMOs were the strongest predictor of of our outcome variables (i.e. perceived argument strength, post-message GMO concern, perception of what percent of scientists agree). Thus, the results of this study do not support the hypothesis that consensus messaging changes the public’s hearts and minds, and provide more support, instead, for the strong role of motivated reasoning.
Scholars have recently suggested that communicating levels of scientific consensus (e.g. the percentage of scientists who agree about human-caused climate change) can shift public opinion toward the dominant scientific opinion. Initial research suggested that consensus communication effectively reduces public skepticism. However, other research failed to find a persuasive effect for those with conflicting prior beliefs. This study enters this contested space by experimentally testing how different levels of consensus shape perceptions of scientific certainty. We further examine how perceptions of certainty influence personal agreement and policy support. Findings indicate that communicating higher levels of consensus increases perceptions of scientific certainty, which is associated with greater personal agreement and policy support for non-political issues. We find some suggestive evidence that this mediated effect is moderated by participants’ overall trust in science, such that those with low trust in science fail to perceive higher agreement as indicative of greater scientific certainty.
Messages emphasizing scientific agreement are increasingly used to communicate politically polarizing issues. Proponents argue that these messages neutralize the effect of people’s political worldviews due to the neutral scientific character of the message. Yet this argument has not undergone extensive testing. Addressing this, we measured participants’ thoughts on scientists featured in messages emphasizing scientific agreement on politically dissonant issues. Our results show that readers often produce less favorable thoughts and moral judgments when scientists agree on a politically dissonant issue. As a result, messages emphasizing scientific agreement on politicized issues might not always neutralize the effect of people’s political worldviews.
Individuals who provide incorrect answers to scientific knowledge questions have long been considered scientifically illiterate. Yet, increasing evidence suggests that motivated reasoning, rather than ignorance, may explain many of these incorrect answers. This article uses novel survey measures to assess two processes by which motivated reasoning might lead to incorrect personal beliefs: motivated individuals may fail to identify the presence of a scientific consensus on some issue or they may recognize a consensus while questioning its veracity. Simultaneously looking at perceptions of what most scientists say and personal beliefs, this study reveals that religiosity and partisanship moderate the extent to which Americans identify scientific consensuses and assert beliefs that contradict their perceptions of consensus. Although these pathways predict the scope of disagreement with science for each of 11 issues, the relative prevalence of each process depends on both the scientific issue and motivational pathway under examination.
Previous research suggests that when individuals encounter new information, they interpret it through perceptual ‘filters’ of prior beliefs, relevant social identities, and messenger credibility. In short, evaluations are not based solely on message accuracy, but also on the extent to which the message and messenger are amenable to the values of one’s social groups. Here, we use the release of Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical as the context for a natural experiment to examine the role of prior values in climate change cognition. Based on our analysis of panel data collected before and after the encyclical’s release, we find that political ideology moderated views of papal credibility on climate change for those participants who were aware of the encyclical. We also find that, in some contexts, non-Catholics who were aware of the encyclical granted Pope Francis additional credibility compared to the non-Catholics who were unaware of it, yet Catholics granted the Pope high credibility regardless of encyclical awareness. Importantly, papal credibility mediated the conditional relationships between encyclical awareness and acceptance of the Pope’s messages on climate change. We conclude by discussing how our results provide insight into cognitive processing of new information about controversial issues.
The Gateway Belief Model (GBM) suggests that highlighting a scientific consensus is the key to improving beliefs about important scientific issues. However, questions have been raised on how one’s perception of a scientific consensus affects his/her personal scientific beliefs. Reporting on two online experiments, findings suggest that consensus messages designed to impact beliefs on a controversial scientific issue – genetically modified foods – affect audience segments in different ways. People with low prior support for GM foods are less affected by a message emphasizing a scientific consensus about GM food safety. Including visual exemplars of a scientific consensus in these messages might make them more salient. However, questions remain on how best to apply the GBM to persuasive science communication.
Since the 1960s, two claims have been at the core of disputes about scientific change: that scientists reason rationally and that science is progressive. For most of this time discussions were polarized between philosophers, who defended traditional Enlightenment ideas about rationality and progress, and sociologists, who espoused relativism and constructivism. Recently, creative new ideas going beyond the polarized positions have come from the history of science, feminist criticism of science, psychology of science, and anthropology of science. Addressing the traditional arguments as well as building on these new ideas, Miriam Solomon constructs a new epistemology of science.
After discussions of the nature of empirical success and its relation to truth, Solomon offers a new, social account of scientific rationality. She shows that the pursuit of empirical success and truth can be consistent with both dissent and consensus, and that the distinction between dissent and consensus is of little epistemic significance. In building this social epistemology of science, she shows that scientific communities are not merely the locus of distributed expert knowledge and a resource for criticism but also the site of distributed decision making. Throughout, she illustrates her ideas with case studies from late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century physical and life sciences. Replacing the traditional focus on methods and heuristics to be applied by individual scientists, Solomon emphasizes science funding, administration, and policy. One of her goals is to have a positive influence on scientific decision making through practical social recommendations.
Participants:
Among Australians, consensus information partially neutralized the influence of worldview, with free-market supporters showing a greater increase in acceptance of human-caused global warming relative to free-market opponents. In contrast, while consensus information overall had a positive effect on perceived consensus among U.S. participants, there was a reduction in perceived consensus and acceptance of human-caused global warming for strong supporters of unregulated free markets. Fitting a Bayes net model to the data indicated that under a Bayesian framework, free-market support is a significant driver of beliefs about climate change and trust in climate scientists. Further, active distrust of climate scientists among a small number of U.S. conservatives drives contrary updating in response to consensus information among this particular group.
Consensus conferences are social techniques which involve bringing together a group of scientific experts, and sometimes also non-experts, in order to increase the public role in science and related policy, to amalgamate diverse and often contradictory evidence for a hypothesis of interest, and to achieve scientific consensus or at least the appearance of consensus among scientists. For consensus conferences that set out to amalgamate evidence, I propose three desiderata: Inclusivity (the consideration of all available evidence), Constraint (the achievement of some agreement of intersubjective assessments of the hypothesis of interest), and Evidential Complexity (the evaluation of available evidence based on a plurality of relevant evidential criteria). Two examples suggest that consensus conferences can readily satisfy Inclusivity and Evidential Complexity, but consensus conferences do not as easily satisfy Constraint. I end by discussing the relation between social inclusivity and the three desiderata.
This article examines the science-of-science-communication measurement problem. In its simplest form, the problem reflects the use of externally invalid measures of the dynamics that generate cultural conflict over risk and other policy-relevant facts. But at a more fundamental level, the science-of-science-communication measurement problem inheres in the phenomena being measured themselves. The “beliefs” individuals form about a societal risk such as climate change are not of a piece; rather they reflect the distinct clusters of inferences that individuals draw as they engage information for two distinct ends: to gain access to the collective knowledge furnished by science and to enjoy the sense of identity enabled by membership in a community defined by particular cultural commitments. The article shows how appropriately designed “science comprehension” tests—one general and one specific to climate change—can be used to measure individuals’ reasoning proficiency as collective-knowledge acquirers independently of their reasoning proficiency as cultural-identity protectors. Doing so reveals that there is in fact little disagreement among culturally diverse citizens on what science knows about climate change. The source of the climate-change controversy and like disputes over societal risks is the contamination of the science-communication environment with forms of cultural status competition that make it impossible for diverse citizens to express their reason as both collective-knowledge acquirers and cultural-identity protectors at the same time.
Learning from other people requires integrating reasoning about an informant's psychological properties, such as knowledge and intent, with reasoning about the implications of the data the informant chooses to present. Here, we argue for an approach that considers these two reasoning paths as interrelated, reciprocal processes that develop over experience and guide learners when acquiring knowledge about the world.
Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
This article shows that even modest amounts of scientific dissent reduce public support for environmental policy. A survey experiment with 1000 Americans demonstrates that small skeptical scientific minorities can cast significant doubt among the general public on the existence of an environmental problem and reduce support for addressing it. Public support for environmental policy is maximized when the subjects receive no information about the scientific debate, indicating that the general public's default assumption is a very high degree of scientific consensus. Accordingly, a stronger scientific consensus will not generate public support for environmental policy, unless skeptical voices become almost silent.