Salil Benegal’s research while affiliated with Union College and other places

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Publications (15)


Blame over blackouts: Correcting partisan misinformation regarding renewable energy in the United States
  • Article

April 2024

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11 Reads

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3 Citations

Energy Research & Social Science

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Salil Benegal

We examine how different sources of corrective information may correct such misinformation from Republican elites who blame renewables for power grid failures. In an original survey experiment conducted in the United States, we find that co-partisan corrections coming from other Republicans significantly increase perceptions of renewables' reliability and preferences for increasing the use of renewable energy.


Cost sensitivity, partisan cues, and support for the Green New Deal

March 2024

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9 Reads

Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences

Opponents of climate policy proposals frequently ground their objections in terms of costs. However, it is unclear whether these objections are persuasive to individuals considering whether to support such programs. Not only do people have difficulties in understanding large numbers, partisans in particular may place more weight on the originator of a given proposal—supporting it if their own party proposed it, and opposing it otherwise. We test these dynamics using a survey experiment that varied the costs associated with real-world climate policy proposals attributed to each of the two major US political parties, compared to a control group where no cost was made salient. Our study allows us to disentangle the effects of cost perception and partisan identity on policy preferences. We find little evidence that respondents are systematically sensitive to program cost. Rather, we find that climate policy preferences are shaped by partisan identities, with respondents showing little sensitivity towards increasing costs. The results provide reason for skepticism that cost-based objections to climate spending programs are persuasive at scale, after accounting for partisan cue-taking.


How pandemic-related changes in global attitudes toward the scientific community shape "post-pandemic" environmental opinion

May 2023

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23 Reads

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4 Citations

Public Understanding of Science

Low public concern about anthropogenic climate change (ACC)-due in part to distrust in the scientific community-may decrease demand for policies aimed at mitigating its deleterious effects. Encouragingly, though, recent research finds that experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic has elevated trust in scientific expertise worldwide. We explore the possibility that positive attitudes toward the medical community are "spilling over" to increase ACC acceptance via globally representative survey data from 107 countries (N = 119,088) conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that trust in medical experts' handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with increased ACC acceptance, worldwide. Problematically, though, we also show that the effects of trust in medical professionals is strongest in countries experiencing the most positive change in attitudes toward the scientific community, which tend to be disproportionately wealthy, and less likely to bear the unequal effects of climate change.


Support for climate policy across racial and ethnic groups.
Support for climate policies by partisanship within racial and ethnic groups.
Support for climate policies by ideology within racial and ethnic groups.
Support for climate policies by education within racial and ethnic groups.
Support for environmental policy across age.

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Race, ethnicity, and support for climate policy
  • Article
  • Full-text available

November 2022

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45 Reads

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10 Citations

Addressing the increasing temperatures of the globe requires society-wide adaptation and mitigation efforts. One central challenge to these efforts is the resistance of groups to support broad policy efforts to reduce global temperatures, with particular resistance in the United States. While scholars have established the role of partisanship, ideology, demographic, and socio-economic factors in shaping support for or opposition to climate policy, we do not yet understand the role that racial and ethnic identity might play in these views. In this paper, we use pooled data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Data (Ntotal=241,800) to examine differences in attitudes about climate policy between Asian, Black, Latino, and white Americans. Comparing across groups, we demonstrate that the many core findings of scholarship on support for climate policy apply nearly exclusively to white Americans, with varying correlational effects for Asian, Black, and Hispanic Americans. Our efforts provide a much-needed examination of how racial identity shapes views on climate change and show that central, replicated results in scholarship on climate change apply largely to the views and behaviors of white Americans.

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Overconfident, resentful, and misinformed: How racial animus motivates confidence in false beliefs

November 2022

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13 Reads

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7 Citations

Social Science Quarterly

We examine the role of racial resentment in motivating Americans to express confidence in misinformed beliefs on racialized scientific issues. We study survey data from the 2020 American National Election Study. We examine respondents’ endorsement of misinformation on different scientific issues and their reported confidence in these views. We find that racial resentment plays a strong role in leading Americans to hold confidently misinformed views about highly racialized policy issues (e.g., the occurrence of anthropogenic climate change or the origins of the COVID‐19 pandemic), but not on less racialized issues (e.g., childhood vaccine safety). Our work underscores the often‐overlooked importance of intergroup attitudes in shaping overconfidence and helps resolve theoretical tensions in the study of misinformation acceptance.


Aggregate support for each policy by cost treatment Policy
Aggregate support for each policy by partisanship Policy and endorsing party
Cost Sensitivity, Partisan Cues, and Support for the Green New Deal

April 2022

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6 Reads

Opponents of climate policy proposals frequently ground their objections in terms of costs. However, it is unclear whether these objections are persuasive to voters considering whether to support such programs. Not only do people have difficulties in understanding large numbers, partisans in particular may place more weight on the originator of a given proposal – supporting it if their own party proposed it, and opposing it otherwise. We test these dynamics using a survey experiment that varied the costs associated with real-world climate policy proposals attributed to each of the two major U.S. political parties, compared to a control group where no cost was made salient. We find little evidence that citizens are systematically sensitive to program cost, and that partisans tend to prefer policies proposed by their own party. The results provide reason for skepticism that cost-based objections to climate spending programs are persuasive at scale, after accounting for partisan cue-taking.


Overconfident, Resentful, and Misinformed: How Racial Animus Motivates Confidence in False Beliefs

April 2022

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13 Reads

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2 Citations

Many Americans not only hold misinformed beliefs about policy-relevant topics (e.g., climate change, public health) but hold those views with high degrees of confidence in their factual accuracy. Epistemic overconfidence – an application of the Dunning Kruger Effect (DKE, or “ignorance of one’s own ignorance”) – is politically consequential, as misinformed individuals who hold those views with high degrees of confidence may be especially likely to oppose evidence-based policies and resist attitude change. Yet, its psychological origins – particularly in application to misinformation endorsement – are not well understood. In this paper, we propose that racial animus plays a key psychological role in motivating Americans to express confidence in misinformed beliefs. Using nationally representative survey data from the American National Election Study, we find that racial resentment plays a strong role in leading Americans to hold confidently misinformed views about racialized policy issues (e.g., the causes of anthropogenic climate change, the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic), but not on less-racialized issues (e.g., childhood vaccine safety). We conclude by discussing how our work underscores the often-overlooked importance of intergroup attitudes in shaping DKE, and helps resolve theoretical tensions in the study of misinformation acceptance.


How Pandemic-Related Changes in Global Attitudes Toward the Scientific Community Shape “Post-Pandemic” Environmental Opinion

February 2022

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5 Reads

Low public concern about anthropogenic climate change (ACC) – due in part to distrust toward the global scientific community – may decrease demand for policies aimed at mitigating and adapting to the deleterious effects of climate change. Encouragingly, though, recent public opinion research suggests that experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic has elevated trust in scientific expertise worldwide. Consequently, amid the suffering associated with global pandemic, one “silver lining” might be that trust in the scientific community attributable to COVID-19 pandemic response is spilling over to increase public acceptance of other contentious aspects of scientific consensus: such as the reality of ACC. We explore this possibility by turning to globally-representative survey data from 111 countries (N = 119,088) conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that trust medical experts’ handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is associated with increased acceptance of ACC, worldwide. These findings hold even when accounting for individuals’ broader trust in the scientific community, and therefore do not appear to be confounded by more-general orientations toward science. Problematically, though, we also show that effect of trust in medical professionals is strongest in countries experiencing the most positive change in attitudes toward the scientific community, which we demonstrate (via multivariate country-level analyses) tend to be disproportionately wealthy, and perhaps less likely to bear the deleterious and unequal effects of ACC. We conclude by discussing how this work helps elucidate the role of pandemic psychology on “post-pandemic life,” and discuss the potentially-far-reaching benefits of improving trust in medical institutions in the developing world.


Sexism and agreement with scientific consensus (ANES). 2016 ANES data. Results are post-estimation predicted probabilities from the logistical regression model used in Table 1 with controls for partisanship, ideology, gender, age, education, income, and survey weights
Partisan differences in views of human caused climate change and policy attitudes. 2016 ANES and 2018 CCES data. Results are post-estimation predicted probabilities from separate logistical regression models for Democrats and Republicans. Models include hostile sexism with controls for ideology, gender, age, education, income, and survey weights. See appendix table 3F for full models
Sexism and agreement that human activity is the primary cause of global warming by party, gender, age, and education (2016 ANES). 2016 ANES; logistical regression with survey weights and controls. See appendix for full models
Comparing sexism in 2012 and 2016. Post-hoc predicted effects of moving from a minimum value (0) on modern sexism to a maximum value (1) in both the 2012 and 2016 ANES. Logistical regression with survey weights and controls. See appendix for full models
Understanding the importance of sexism in shaping climate denial and policy opposition

August 2021

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58 Reads

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13 Citations

Climatic Change

In the USA, a sizable share of the population denies the human causes of climate change and opposes policies to address it. System justification, where individuals fight to protect a socio-economic order, undergirds this opposition. We argue that sexism, representing an investment in gendered hierarchies, contributes to climate change denial and policy opposition. Using nationally representative surveys from 2016 to 2018, we show a consistent relationship between sexism and opposition to climate change beliefs and policies. These results are consistent across measures of both climate change beliefs and support for climate policy. We then show that sexism is correlated with climate denial and opposition to climate policy within a wide variety of subgroups of interest: for both Democrats and Republicans and for groups sorted by ideology, gender, education, and age. We then extend our analysis back in time, looking at data from 2012, finding similar effects prior to the 2016 election. The consistent findings point to the central role that system justifying beliefs about gender play in shaping attitudes about climate change in the USA.


Racial prejudice, education, and views of climate change

August 2021

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37 Reads

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16 Citations

Social Science Quarterly

Objective We examine the role of education in shaping attitudes about climate change and how it interacts with racial prejudice. Methods We analyze data from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Study (ANES) and 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES). Results We identify a paradoxical relationship in which education is associated with both lower levels of racial prejudice and increased support for climate policies, but also strengthens the negative effects of prejudices that persist at higher levels of educational attainment. For individuals with racially prejudiced views, we find that educational attainment decreases both agreement with the scientific consensus and support for climate policies. Our results hold up in evaluating Democrats and Republicans and using alternative measures of racial bias. Conclusion Our results contribute to our understanding of the barriers to action on climate change and the continued salience of racial prejudice in the United States.


Citations (12)


... 337 Furthermore, preventive measures such as detailed information and explanations can potentially reduce peoples' susceptibility to disinformation and conspiracy beliefs and are applicable to increase wind power acceptance, although it may be challenging if these are deeply rooted beliefs. 309,332,333,338 Planning and permitting Lengthy permitting processes are ''the biggest barrier to the expansion of wind energy'' in Europe, with at least 80 GW onshore wind projects stuck in the permitting process in 2022. 339 Similarly, many wind power projects are also delayed due to permitting issues in the US. ...

Reference:

System impacts of wind energy developments: Key research challenges and opportunities
Blame over blackouts: Correcting partisan misinformation regarding renewable energy in the United States
  • Citing Article
  • April 2024

Energy Research & Social Science

... This interest has been sparked by discussions on vaccination research, public health policy, and preventative measures [10]. However, it is important to note that this phenomenon extends beyond infectious diseases [11], as people are becoming more eager to investigate scientific problems across a range of fields [12]. Moreover, fighting against fake news in science is crucial to prevent the spread of misinformation and inaccuracies that can lead to public confusion and distrust in scientific findings. ...

How pandemic-related changes in global attitudes toward the scientific community shape "post-pandemic" environmental opinion
  • Citing Article
  • May 2023

Public Understanding of Science

... There are a number of other cognitive dynamics that undermine people's ability to evaluate evidence and form well-founded beliefs, including avoidance of cognitive dissonance (Sanchez and Dunning 2021), poor analytical thinking (Calvillo et al. 2020;Nurse et al. 2021;Swami et al. 2014), poor bullshit detection (G. Rand 2017, 2020), need for cognitive closure (Leman and Cinnirella 2013;Marchlewska, Cichocka, and Kossowska 2018), racism (Bengal and Holman 2021;Benegal and Motta 2022), poor understanding of probability (Brotherton and French 2014), and low general intelligence (Stieger et al. 2013). However, the evaluation of information that is presented to support a claim may also depend on the individual's contextual knowledge. ...

Overconfident, resentful, and misinformed: How racial animus motivates confidence in false beliefs
  • Citing Article
  • November 2022

Social Science Quarterly

... Studies have found that leftwing groups are more supportive of climate change-related policies (Unsworth & Fielding, 2014). Ethnic or racial identity influences the perceived salience of climate policy issues (Benegal et al., 2022;Crowder-Meyer, 2022) as do educational qualifications, income-levels (Houser et al., 2022) and residential exposure (place identity) to natural hazards (Bradley et al., 2020). ...

Race, ethnicity, and support for climate policy

... Overconfident citizens also tend to make strong political claims and resist persuasive counterarguments (I. G. Anson, 2018;Benegal & Motta, 2022). These processes may reinforce individuals' confirmation bias and motivated reasoning, depriving cross-cutting discussion of its proper deliberative role. ...

Overconfident, Resentful, and Misinformed: How Racial Animus Motivates Confidence in False Beliefs
  • Citing Preprint
  • April 2022

... There are also gendered differences in climate change belief. McCright andDunlap (2011b, p.1171) find a ''conservative white male effect on climate change denialism,'' while Benegal and Holman (2021) find a consistent relationship between sexism and climate denial. In this latter study, the authors suggest that investments in both the capitalist system and the gender hierarchy promote maintenance of the status quo. ...

Understanding the importance of sexism in shaping climate denial and policy opposition

Climatic Change

... Despite Obama's efforts to foreground "post-racial" or raceneutral appeals, his presidency racialized American politics such that "racial considerations (were) brought more heavily to bear on political evaluations" (Tesler, 2016, p. 5; see also Gillion, 2017;Yadon & Piston, 2019). Racial attitudes have since been linked to a range of seemingly unrelated issues, suggesting cues by Obama may lead racial attitudes to "spillover." (Tesler, 2012(Tesler, , 2015Kinder & Kam, 2012;Maxwell & Shields, 2014;Henderson & Hillygus, 2011;Sheagley et al., 2017;Benegal & Holman, 2021). ...

Racial prejudice, education, and views of climate change
  • Citing Article
  • August 2021

Social Science Quarterly

... Previous international research has primarily focused on factors associated with environmental concern, such as awareness of environmental issues, social influence, environmental attitudes, knowledge, and responsibility, coupled with government initiatives aimed at shaping consumers' intentions to adopt green energy sources [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. The preced- ing research results confirmed that the functionality of green energy sources encompasses not only the physical characteristics of products but also the internal and external reference prices that customers consider when making purchase decisions [21]. ...

Green Priorities: How economic frames affect perceptions of renewable energy in the United States
  • Citing Article
  • January 2019

Energy Research & Social Science

... Another bias of relevance to vaccination decisions relates to overconfidence, in which people overestimate the accuracy of their knowledge or expertise 86 . Overconfidence was found to be highest among individuals who were less knowledgeable about the causes of autism and who endorsed a link between vaccines and autism 87 . ...

Overconfidence and the discounting of expertise: A commentary
  • Citing Article
  • July 2018

Social Science & Medicine

... These minimal conditions allow our model to speak to a wide variety of real-world divisions, not limited to those where belief accuracy and group membership are correlated, e.g. (52). Second, our model provides insight into the cognitive processes associated with belief change. ...

Correcting misinformation about climate change: the impact of partisanship in an experimental setting

Climatic Change