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- 1. KATIE L. BURKE AMERICAN SCIENTIST Communicating Science Across the Divide: Lessons from the Climate Change & Vaccination Debates
- 2. A Body of Knowledge 11,944 studies on climate change (1991–2011). The IPCC is made up of thousands of scientists from 195 countries. 12,000 studies of vaccination reviewed by 18 medical experts (Institute of Medicine, 2011). It took them 2 years. Cook et al. 2013, Environmental Research Letters Institute of Medicine, 2011
- 3. Knowledge Deficit Model Kahan et al. 2012, Nature Climate Change n = 1540
- 5. Asking “What you know” vs “Who you are” Kahan 2013, Advances in Political Psychology
- 6. Asking “What you know” vs “Who you are” Kahan 2013, Advances in Political Psychology
- 7. Asking “What you know” vs “Who you are” Kahan 2013, Advances in Political Psychology
- 8. Asking “What you know” vs “Who you are” Kahan 2013, Advances in Political Psychology
- 9. Science Comprehension Kahan 2015, Advances in Political Psychology
- 10. Cultural Cognition Kahan et al. 2010, Law & Human Behavior
- 11. Theory of Cultural Cognition http://bit.ly/1PiJpl9
- 12. Knowledge Deficit Model Kahan et al. 2012, Nature Climate Change
- 13. Knowledge Deficit Model Kahan et al. 2012, Nature Climate Change
- 14. Paul Offit exchange on Science Friday FLATOW: Is there any amount of research that could be presented to you that would change your mind? LESLIE (caller): Oh, absolutely. This is what I'm saying, is that he's presenting a false dichotomy. There is something between the yahoos who just don't look at scientific process at all and people who blindly trust what the physicians tell them, of which there are numbers. Many, many people. [Paul Offit answers her concerns] LESLIE: Well, I’m not hearing anything that sounds credible to me as an educated adult. http://n.pr/1JSXQFA
- 15. Conspiracy Theories Lewandowsky, Gignac, & Oberauer 2013, PLoS ONE n = 1001
- 16. Vaccine Media Coverage http://wapo.st/1FTutIz “largely yuppie epidemic” “white, educated populations of people with computers.”
- 21. Opinion Polls Do Not Measure Behavior
- 22. The 2014 Measles Epidemic http://bit.ly/1WNzGWr
- 23. The 2014 Measles Epidemic http://bit.ly/1WNzGWr
- 24. Vaccines are not polarized Kahan 2014, http://bit.ly/1Lz9m0e
- 27. Polarization over HPV Vaccine Kahan et al. 2010, Law & Human Behavior
- 28. Media Focus on Controversy Gollust et al. 2010, Health Affairs n = 598
- 29. The Blame Game “It is a mistake to blame the controversy—and the persistent state of ambivalence surrounding the [HPV] vaccine—on either the recklessness of its manufacturer or the opportunism of political activists who transformed the vaccination into a symbol of clashing cultural orthodoxies. The fault is systemic: the absence of institutional structures and related professional norms that assure the employment of valid, evidence-based methods for protecting the conditions on which informed public recognition of valid, decision-relevant science depends.” ~Dan Kahan, Yale http://bit.ly/1Q8c2jp
- 30. Media Representation of Climate Change Boykoff & Boykoff 2004, Global Environmental Change
- 31. Media Representation of Climate Change Boykoff & Boykoff 2004, Global Environmental Change
- 32. Media Representation of Climate Change Boykoff & Boykoff 2007, Geoforum
- 33. Media Representation of Climate Change Shehata & Hopmann, 2012, Journalism Studies
- 34. Media Representation of Climate Change Hmielowski et al. 2014, Public Understanding of Science
- 35. Focusing on Consensus, rather than Controversy Lewandowsky, Gignac, and Vaughn 2012, Nature Climate Change
- 37. Communicating Consensus n = 1104 van der Linden, et al. 2014, Climatic Change
- 38. Global Warming’s Six Americas http://bit.ly/1LzaeC0
- 39. Common Ground Increase renewable energy use in U.S. Reduce fossil fuel use Eliminate subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, while opposing the elimination of subsidies to renewable energy companies. Fund research on renewable energy, and provide tax rebates for purchases of energy-efficient vehicles and solar panels. http://bit.ly/1LzaeC0
- 40. Public Health Implications Myers et al. 2012, Climatic Change
- 41. Public Health Implications Myers et al. 2012, Climatic Change
- 42. Geoengineering as a Solution Kahan et al. 2015, Annals of American Academy of Political & Social Sci. N = 3,000 (half in US, half in UK)
- 43. Protecting the Status Quo Feygina, Jost, & Goldsmith 2010, Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin n = 41
- 44. Local Conversations “Five years ago, local leaders down here, Republicans and Democrats, formed the bipartisan Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact — an agreement to work together to fight climate change. And it’s become a model not just for the country, but for the world. ” - President Barack Obama http://www.southeastfloridaclimatecompact.org
- 50. Conclusions Effective science communication depends on the quality of the science communication environment Is science presented in a way that leaves people out? How do we reach new people who could be deeply interested in science? Fringe groups cultivate and provoke an antagonistic environment so that convergence of public consensus is disabled People’s identities feel threatened The biggest threat to these fringe groups is people ignoring them.
- 51. Conclusions We need increased dialogue between researchers studying sci. comm. & those practicing it Evidence-based practices of science communication need to become professional norms Local efforts can be most effective Simple messages, repeated often, by trusted sources Climate change: consensus, public health, protecting our society, and reducing fossil fuel use (or increasing renewable energy) Vaccination: Good news—we don’t have a national scale problem. Neither liberals nor conservatives associate vaccine denial with their identities.
Editor's Notes
- People (not just lay persons, but quite often experts too) rely on heuristic reasoning to deal with risk and uncertainty generally. They thus employ a range of “mental shortcuts”: when gauging the danger of a putatively hazardous activity (the possession, say, of a handgun, or the use of nuclear power generation), they consult a mental inventory of recalled instances of misfortunes involving it, give special weight to perceived authorities, and steer clear of options that could improve their situation but that also involve the potential to make them worse off than they are at present (“better safe, than sorry”) (Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982; Slovic, 2000; Margolis, 1996). As much as this account has enlarged our knowledge, it remains incomplete. In particular, a theory that focuses only on heuristic reasoning fails to supply a cogent account of the nature of political conflict over risk (Kahan, Slovic, Braman & Gastil, 2006). Citizens disagree, intensely, over a wide range of personal and societal hazards. If the imprecision of heuristic reasoning accounted for such variance, we might expect such disagreements to be randomly distributed across the population or correlated with personal characteristics (education, income, community type, exposure to news of particular hazards, and the like) that either plausibly related to one or another heuristic or that made the need for heuristic reasoning less necessary altogether. By and large, however, this is not the case. Instead, a large portion of the variance in risk perception coheres with membership in groups integral to personal identity, such as race, gender, political party membership, and religious affiliation
- LESLIE: Well, I'm not hearing anything that I - that sounds credible to me as an educated adult According to a 2011 study in Public Health Reports, most mothers who refuse or delay vaccination for their children are college-educated. Many commentators have described non-vaccinators as “anti-science” or lacking “trust” in science and medicine. For the most part these are labels that the non-vaccinators would not themselves recognize. I could write another post entirely on whether that matters, but let me sum up for now by saying it does matter, at the very least, because such language is polarizing and alienating. For example, an NPR caller challenged Paul Offit on what she saw as his presumption that non-vaccinators are “yahoos who just don’t look at the scientific process at all.” Did she show a less than scientific mindset when she rejected Offit’s explanations as “pap,” arguing that “a two-year-old cannot accept this kind of chemical onslaught”? Perhaps. But she doesn’t see herself as rejecting science. She sees herself as a critical thinker – indeed, as she says, “an educated adult.”
- The resistance of conspiracist ideation to contrary evidence renders its prominence in the rejection of science particularly troubling, because providing additional scientific information may only amplify the rejection of such evidence, rather than foster its acceptance. Instead, conspiracist misconceptions of scientific issues are best met by indirect means, such as affirmation of the competence and character of proponents of conspiracy theories, or affirmation of other beliefs they hold dearly. Such self-affirmation is known to facilitate the dislodging of attitudes in response to information that would otherwise be considered too threatening. Alternatively, efforts should be made to rebut many conspiracy theories at the same time because multiple rebuttals raise the complexity of possible conspiracist responses, thereby rendering it increasingly baroque and less believable to anyone outside a committed circle of conspiracy theorists. There is, however, an over-arching conceptual link between cultural worldviews and conspiratorial thinking: Irrespective of their statistical association (or lack thereof), they both arguably represent mechanisms of motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning refers to the discounting of information or evidence that challenges one's prior beliefs accompanied by uncritical acceptance of anything that is attitude-consonant. However, from a basic cognitive perspective, the next question of interest is to examine why people hold the worldviews they do, thereby going beyond a descriptive role of worldview to an explanatory account of the underlying cognitions and beliefs. Initial work in this direction has been promising [41], [57], [58].
- However, there are several important things the NIS can’t tell us. Notably, it doesn’t give insight into the reasons behind non-vaccination. We are right to ask what economic, psychological and social factors are behind parents’ failure to immunize against measles, particularly in geographic or socioeconomic pockets that fall below target immunity, because knowing the causes of missed immunizations will help us formulate the best science communication response. One study that has engaged with this question is Dempsey et al, “Alternative Vaccination Schedule Preferences Among Parents of Young Children.” The results of this study have been misrepresented by the Advisory Board Company and subsequently by the Post’s Petula Dvorak – the latter, for example, says “one in 10 parents are avoiding or delaying vaccines in their children because of safety concerns.” Dempsey’s findings are more complex. She found that 13 percent of parents of young children reported using an alternative vaccination schedule (that is, they reported that did not completely adhere to the CDC vaccination schedule). Of these, a strong majority of 82 percent – but by no means all – agreed that, “Delaying vaccine doses is safer for children than providing them according to the CDC-recommended vaccination schedule.” Some parents who followed an alternative vaccination schedule may have done so because of difficulty accessing medical care, or because they simply failed to immunize on time. I would note Dempsey’s small-ish sample size of under 800 (compared to over 13,000 in the CDC’s survey), and also potential motivated reasoning on the part of her respondents. That is, a parent whose original reason for delaying vaccine was a lack of time or simply forgetfulness might convince himself retroactively that the reason was “delaying vaccine doses is safer for children.” But, even given all these caveats, I think Dempsey makes a decent case for the power of safety concerns to drive non-vaccination – so I would be interested to hear any rebuttals.
- In a January 22 piece on the Washington Post’s Wonkblog, Christopher Ingraham blames “the anti-vaccine movement” for the worrying rise in measles cases, citing an AP-GfK survey that found, as Ingraham puts it, “only 53 percent of Americans were confident that vaccines are safe and effective.” For a start, that’s a pretty big misrepresentation of the survey, in which 53 percent were very or extremely confident that childhood vaccines are safe and effective. Another 30 percent were somewhat confident. In any case, Kahan argues that the AP-GfK survey isn’t a good measure: “Indeed, no public opinion survey of the general public can give anyone useful information on vaccine risk concerns. The only valid evidence of that generally is the National Immunization Survey, which uses actual vaccine behavior to determine vaccination rates,” he told Kloor.
- In a January 22 piece on the Washington Post’s Wonkblog, Christopher Ingraham blames “the anti-vaccine movement” for the worrying rise in measles cases, citing an AP-GfK survey that found, as Ingraham puts it, “only 53 percent of Americans were confident that vaccines are safe and effective.” For a start, that’s a pretty big misrepresentation of the survey, in which 53 percent were very or extremely confident that childhood vaccines are safe and effective. Another 30 percent were somewhat confident. In any case, Kahan argues that the AP-GfK survey isn’t a good measure: “Indeed, no public opinion survey of the general public can give anyone useful information on vaccine risk concerns. The only valid evidence of that generally is the National Immunization Survey, which uses actual vaccine behavior to determine vaccination rates,” he told Kloor.
- Similar inattention to the quality of the science communication environment leaves other childhood vaccines vulnerable to con- troversy too. In the United Kingdom, child- hood vaccination rates are only now recover- ing from the scare induced by the now-dis- credited 1998 study of Dr. Andrew Wakefield linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism. By contrast, the United States experienced no such decline— vaccination rates for MMR, pertussis, and polio have been at or above 90% (the target level) for over a decade, and the proportion of children receiving no vaccinations has remained below 1% (9, 10)
- Given that the country has been "burned" by some drugs whose serious side effects emerged only after they were in wide use, including Merck's withdrawn painkiller Vioxx, Francis said, it would be better to wait awhile before mandating Gardasil usage.
- WHEN WAS HPV VACCINE DEVELOPED?
- So why aren't people clamoring for an anticancer shot? Because somewhere on the road to disease prevention, the HPV vaccine came to embody everything that's wrong with America, at least in some circles — premarital promiscuity, Big Pharma greed, and government control. "The vaccine acquired this kind of identity as an STD shot for young girls," says Dan Kahan, a professor of law and psychology at Yale Law School. Meanwhile, unfounded rumors about the shot's safety and effectiveness have spread. Not the lifesaving image developers envisioned. The HPV vaccine isn't the first shot against a sexually transmitted cancer. Immunization for hepatitis B, which can cause liver cancer, has been around since 1981 without much controversy. Nearly 90 percent of children are protected from the virus, mostly because the shot is included in the routine round of infant vaccines. The HPV vaccine is at a disadvantage because the immunization rates for adolescents always lag behind those for toddlers. But consider a vaccine that appeared about the same time as Gardasil: A shot given to middle schoolers that protects against meningococcal meningitis. The latest figures indicate that about 74 percent of teenagers who should be getting the shot are, in fact, immunized. Deadly meningococcal bacteria can be spread through kissing, but no one objects to the meningitis vaccine on the grounds that it will suddenly inspire teenagers to start making out. Yet this is exactly what happened to HPV — it got a brand of prosex, not anticancer. When it introduced Gardasil, Kahan explains, Merck pushed the government for a fast-track approval for girls only, not wanting to wait on data for both sexes (today, young men and boys can also get it). Given pervasive double standards when it comes to sex — it's fine for boys, never okay for girls — having a girls-only STI shot may have helped turn it into a divisive symbol in the culture wars. The abstinence movement had already been highlighting the threat of HPV as a reason to avoid sex. In 2005, the Abstinence Clearinghouse posted on its website, "Premarital sex is dangerous, even deadly. Let's not encourage it by vaccinating 10-year-olds so they think they're safe." Years later, surveys find that parent concerns about promiscuity continue to be one of the big reasons for refusing the vaccine. A study published in the journal Pediatrics deemed these fears unfounded — that sexual activity does not differ between vaccinated and unvaccinated teenagers. http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/advice/a5848/hpv-vaccine-truth/
- BoykoV and BoykoV (2004) quantitatively explored how the balance norm has been applied to anthropogenic climate change. This study found that, over a 15-year period, a majority (52.7%) of prestige-press articles featured balanced accounts that gave “roughly equal attention” to the views that humans were contributing to global warming and that exclusively natural fluctuations could explain the earth’s temperature increase.
- Coverage was divergent from the IPCC discourse in a statistically significant way from 1990 through 2002. In other words, through ‘balance,’ US newspaper coverage perpetrated an informational bias.
- If the journalistic norms of dramatization, personalization, and novelty are not met, the chances for extensive, in-depth coverage of this environmental problem are diminished. Notable increases in global warming coverage in 1990, 1992, 1997, 2001-2002, and 2004 In 1988, the following events converged to bring attention to climate change, even though the phenomenon had been recognized among scientists for yrs: Drought in N. Amer; Margaret Thatcher warned UK public about it and James Hansen of NASA warned Congress; the UN and WMO formed the IPCC and it held its first conference in Canada. 1990: IPCC released its 1st assessment report, and climate skeptics first emerged. Contentious, novel comments fed the journalistic norms of drama & novelty, as well as the norm of balance. 1992: Rio Summit. 1997: Kyoto Climate Summit 2001-02: IPCC 3rd Assessment showed strong evidence that global warming had anthropogenic origins; climate talks in Bonn, Germany; G-8 summit in Genoa, Italy; President George W. Bush repudiated the Kyoto Protocol; 2002= political fallout after Bush’s stance on Kyoto; under political pressure, Bush released alternative plan to Kyoto 2004: Russian ratification of Kyoto Protocol
- Increasing coverage over time; more coverage in the US than Sweden. But, coverage in Sweden focused more on activities abroad; US coverage more focused on actions and stances of President and Congress. Still, domestic politics do not generate the majority of CC coverage in either case. Only looked at NYT and WP
- Lagged Model A was best fit, although they all were good fits. Results demonstrate that conservative media use decreases trust in scientists which, in turn, decreases certainty that global warming is happening. By contrast, use of non-conservative media increases trust in scientists, which, in turn, increases certainty that global warming is happening.
- The interaction is visualized in Fig. 2, which shows predicted 7 AGWb scores for the two conditions as a function of the centred 8 free-market scores specified at three points; viz. low (one s.d. 9 below the mean), medium (mean), and high (one s.d. above the 10 mean)23. The figure clarifies that the association between free- 11 market endorsement and AGWb was effectively non-existent in 12 the consensus condition, β = −0.02, p > 0.10. By contrast, there 13 was a clear negative effect in the control condition, β = −0.63, 14 p = 0.003, such that a one unit increase in free-market endorsement 15 was associated with a 0.63 unit decrease in acceptance of AGW. 16 The latter effect replicates much previous work on the importance 17 of worldview in the rejection of climate science9,10, whereas the 18 former represents the novel finding that the role of ideology 19 was drastically attenuated when participants were provided with 20 information about the scientific consensus.
- Came out in 2013. What’s the lesson? The position someone adopts on climate change conveys who she is—whose side she’s on, in a hate-filled, anxiety-stoked campaign for status between opposing cultural groups. If the viewer had not yet been informed that the message “97% of scientists agree” is one of the stock phrases used to signal one cultural group’s contempt for the other, she has now been put on notice. From: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013EF000226/full Fortunately, an effective, nonpolitical response is available to scientists and their professional societies. A recently published Australian study (Lewandowsky et al., 2013)—and a series of studies conducted at research centers in the United States (Maibach et al., 2013; Kotcher et al., 2014)—demonstrates that clear messages that simply state the extent of the scientific consensus can help correct this widespread misperception. In controlled experiments, a single exposure to a message describing the extent of scientific consensus on human-caused climate change (i.e., 97%) significantly increased participants' subsequent estimates of the consensus—by as much as 10 to 20 percentage points. Importantly, these simple messages were most effective with the very people who are currently the least likely to understand the scientific consensus: political conservatives. Methods of effective scientific communication are well known in some parts of the scientific community (National Research Council, 1989; Maibach and Parrott, 1995; Hornik, 2002; Wakefield et al., 2010; Lundgren and McMakin, 2013). The public health and medical communities, for example, have mounted highly effective campaigns to reduce sudden infant death syndrome (Markestad et al., 1995), human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (McCombie et al., 2002; Wellings, 2002), stroke (Roccella, 2002), tobacco use among adults and teens (Pierce et al., 2002a, 2002b; Worden and Flynn, 2002), and to promote seat belt use (Williams et al., 2002). While each of these successful campaigns had unique circumstances, they all conformed to a relatively simple formula: simple clear messages, repeated often, by a variety of trusted voices.
- Two variations were used to establish an implied comparison with an easily relatable and common type of expert consensus, namely; a “doctor metaphor” (i.e., “If 97% of doctors concluded that your child is sick, would you believe them? 97% of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening”) and a “bridge metaphor” (i.e., “If 97% of engineers concluded that a particular bridge is unsafe to cross, would you believe them? 97% of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening”). The metaphors were further subdivided into text-only vs. full (text + image) and belief vs. action metaphors (e.g., “If 97% of doctors concluded that your child was sick, would you have your child treated?”). The remaining treatments consisted of just the descriptive text describing the degree of consensus and a pie chart representing the consensus visually. Participants in the control group received no information. Examples of the treatments are provided as supplementary information.
- The Six Americas do not vary much by age, gender, race or income – there are members of every demographic group in each of the groups. They range instead along a spectrum of belief, concern and issue engagement, from the Alarmed to the Dismissive. Groups on the left of this spectrum are more concerned and desire more action to reduce global warming, while groups on the right are relatively unconcerned and oppose action. The middle groups tend to have low issue involvement, do not think about global warming often and do not have strong – if any – opinions on the course the U.S. should pursue. As of September 2012, the largest audience segment is the Concerned (29%), who are moderately certain that global warming is occurring, harmful and human-caused; they tend to view global warming as a threat to other nations and future generations, but not as a personal threat or a threat to their community. They support societal action on climate change, but are unlikely to have engaged in political activism. The Cautious (25%) – the second-largest group – are likely to believe that climate change is real, but are not certain, and many are uncertain about the cause. They are less worried than the Concerned, and view global warming as a distant threat. They have given little thought to the issue and are unlikely to have strongly held opinions about what, if anything, should be done. The third largest group – the Alarmed (16%) – are very certain global warming is occurring, understand that it is human-caused and harmful, and strongly support societal action to reduce the threat. They discuss the issue more often, seek more information about it, and are more likely to act as global warming opinion leaders than the other segments. They are the most likely of the six groups to have engaged in political activism on the issue, although only about a quarter have done so. These three groups – the Alarmed, Concerned and Cautious – currently comprise 70 percent of the American public. Although they range in certainty about the reality and dangers of climate change, they are similarly inclined to believe it is a real threat that should be addressed. Thus, some level of support for action is the predominant view among the majority of Americans. Yale/George Mason Six Americas, Sept. 2012 5 The Doubtful (13%) – the fourth largest group – are uncertain whether global warming is occurring or not, but believe that if it is happening, it is attributable to natural causes, not human activities. They tend to be politically conservative and to hold traditional religious views. The Disengaged (9%) have given the issue of global warming little to no thought. They have no strongly held beliefs about global warming, know little about it, and do not view it as having any personal relevance. They tend to have the lowest education and income levels of the six groups. The smallest audience segment is the Dismissive (8%), who are very certain that global warming is not occurring. Many regard the issue as a hoax and are strongly opposed to action to reduce the threat. About one in nine have contacted an elected representative to argue against action on global warming. When the audience segments were first identified in the fall of 2008, just over half the U.S. population fell into the two most concerned segments – the Alarmed and Concerned. By January 2010, the proportion in these two segments had decreased by 11 percentage points, and the proportion in the least concerned segment, the Dismissive, had more than doubled from 7 to 16 percent of the population. These changes were consistent with multiple national polls showing similar shifts in public opinion at that time, and are likely the result of several factors, including the recession, decreases in media coverage, “climategate,” and cues from political elites. By June of 2010, however, the Alarmed had rebounded by 3 percentage points, while the Dismissive shrank by 4 percent. In 2011 there was little change in the segment sizes, beyond a further decrease in the Dismissive and a corresponding growth in the Doubtful. In 2012 there was a gradual increase in the sizes of the more concerned segments: in April we found an increase of 5 percentage points in the Cautious, and a decline in the Disengaged. By September, the Alarmed had increased to 16 percent and the Concerned to 29 percent, while the Dismissive (8%), Doubtful (13%) and Cautious (25%) had all contracted.3 Another central factor is beliefs about the outcomes resulting from action; studies show that people tend to dismiss evidence if they believe that acting on the evidence will lead to outcomes they fear or dislike.4 Individuals who believe that the economy will be harmed, government regulation will increase, and individual freedoms curtailed are more likely to dismiss the evidence for climate change, while those who believe that inaction will result in harm to people and other species are more supportive of action.
- Framing “reducing fossil fuel use” versus “reducing global warming” Four of the Six Americas support a large-to-medium-scale effort to reduce global warming. Majorities of all Six Americas say the U.S. should increase its use of renewable energy. In five of the six segments, larger proportions prefer to reduce, rather than increase fossil fuel use; only the Dismissive prefer to increase the nation’s use of fossil fuels. In every segment except the Dismissive, half or more favor the elimination of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, and oppose the elimination of subsidies to renewable energy companies. Majorities of the Alarmed, Concerned and Cautious – comprising 70 percent of the U.S. population—say the U.S. should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of what other nations do. Among the Six Americas, support for a candidate who supports a carbon tax varies considerably, depending on the details of the proposal. The most popular versions – supported by half or more of the Alarmed, Concerned and Cautious – specify that the tax will either create more jobs in the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries; decrease pollution by encouraging companies to find less polluting alternatives; or be used to reduce the federal income tax. The least popular version proposes to use the revenue to provide a tax refund of $180, on average, to each American household. Funding research on renewable energy, and providing tax rebates for purchases of energy-efficient vehicles and solar panels have remained popular policies among five of the Six Americas since tracking began in 2008. Opposition to building more nuclear power plants has increased among all segments; four of the Six Americas currently oppose building more plants. Support for offshore drilling has decreased in all six segments, but four of the six groups still support offshore drilling on average.
- Climate change has historically been framed as an environmental problem. More recently, it is increasingly being framed as a political problem. Social scientists, however, have suggested a variety of potential alternative frames, each of which can validly and accurately emphasize other relevant dimensions of the issue—such as public health, national security, extreme weather events, and/or the economy (Nisbet 2009; Nisbet and Scheufele 2009; Maibach et al. 2010). Such alternative frames may be more effective at engaging audiences than the environmental or political frames that currently dominate public discourse. Finally, outside of this experimental condition, in the context of real world communication efforts, these effects may differ due to a variety of factors. One particularly important factor is the messenger, specifically the congruence between the messenger and the frame. Other potentially important factors include whether the message is delivered by the media or face-to-face, the availability of competing frames or arguments, the nature of any policy actions proposed to address the problem, and the salience of other linked trends—particularly those involving the economy and/or political polarization more generally. Excerpt from the public health framed story used in this experiment: The federal report concludes that global warming is a “key issue” likely to harm Americans’ health in many ways. Changes in climate may cause food-borne illness outbreaks and promote the spread of infectious diseases such as West Nile Virus, Lyme disease and malaria. More frequent and severe heat waves – and the reduced air quality that often comes with increased heat – may lead to more hospitalizations and deaths due to heat exposure, asthma, heart disease and lung disease. Young children, the elderly, the poor, and people with chronic illnesses are especially vulnerable to this kind of extreme heat and reduced air quality. Rising global temperatures may also cause more severe storms, flooding, droughts and wildfires that can lead to injuries, death, mental health problems, and displace large numbers of people from their homes. Because they tend to be physically weaker and harder to evacuate than younger adults, the elderly are particularly vulnerable to these threats.
- According to system justification theory, our evaluations of social systems and institutions are influenced by epistemic needs to maintain a sense of certainty and stability, existen- tial needs to feel safety and reassurance, and relational needs to affiliate with others who are part of the same social sys- tems (Jost & Hunyady, 2005; Jost, Ledgerwood, & Hardin, 2008). These needs give rise to a motivation to perceive the system as fair, legitimate, beneficial, and stable, as well as the desire to maintain and protect the status quo (Jost, Liviatan, et al., 2009). System justification can have positive effects in the short term, such as alleviating the anxiety, uncertainty, and fear elicited by threats to the societal status quo (e.g., Jost & Hunyady, 2002; Jost, Wakslak, & Tyler, 2008). How- ever, the long-term implications of pursuing the system justification goal can be negative, especially for members of disadvantaged groups (e.g., Jost & Thompson, 2000; O’Brien & Major, 2005; Rankin, Jost, & Wakslak, 2009). Although system justification can stimulate a process of rationalization of the way things are, helping people cope with unwelcome realities (Kay, Jimenez, & Jost, 2002), it can also interfere with forming intentions or taking action to correct injustices or system-level problems (Wakslak, Jost, Tyler, & Chen, 2007). Consistent with self-interest, those who are advan- taged by the system typically engage in system justification more enthusiastically than those who are disadvantaged. However, system justification needs may lead people to sup- port and rationalize the social system even in situations in which they are harmed by it (Henry & Saul, 2006; Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, & Sullivan, 2003). Experiment Forty-one New York University undergradu- ates (30 women, 11 men) participated in this study for course credit.
- If you want to know what that sort of science communication environment looks like, I can tell you where you can see it: in Florida, where all 7 members of the Monroe County Board of Commissioners -- 4 Democrats, 3 Republicans -- voted unanimously to join Broward County (predominantly Democratic), Monroe County (predominantly Republican), and Miami-Dade County (predominantly Republican) in approving the Southeast Climate Compact Action plan, which, I quote from the Palm Beach County Board summary, “includes 110 adaptation and mitigation strategies for addressing seal-level risk and other climate issues within the region.” I’ll tell you another thing about what you’ll see if you make this trip: the culturally pluralistic, and effective form of science communication happening in southeast Florida doesn’t look anything like the culturally assaultive "us-vs-them" YouTube videos and prefabricated internet comments with which Climate Reality and Organizing for American are flooding national discourse. And if you want to improve public engagement with climate science in the United States, the fact that advocates as high profile and as highly funded as that still haven’t figured out the single most important lesson to be learned from the science of science communication should make you very sad.
- He or she gets just as much of a thrill in getting to know something about how much our species knows as I do, but doesn't get to experience it nearly as readily or as easily.