Key Insight
A growing body of research examines the effects of 'scientific consensus messaging.' But how confident can we be that findings from laboratory studies translate to real-world communication environments?
The scientific consensus messaging literature has produced a range of findings about whether and how communicating the degree of expert agreement on issues like climate change affects public beliefs. Some studies find positive effects; others find null or even negative effects. The field is genuinely contested.
This post focuses on external validity — the question of whether effects found in laboratory settings are likely to persist in the real-world science communication environment, characterized by motivated interpreters, competing messages, and identity-expressive dynamics that laboratory designs typically cannot replicate.
Laboratory studies of consensus messaging measure immediate attitude change in controlled settings. Real-world science communication involves repeated exposure to competing messages over time, where cultural identity is continuously salient — conditions that may systematically differ from laboratory conditions in ways that reverse laboratory findings.
Cultural cognition research provides specific reasons to worry about external validity in this domain. If identity-protective cognition becomes more pronounced when cultural identity is more salient, then laboratory settings that suppress this salience may systematically underestimate resistance to consensus messaging in real-world contexts. This does not mean consensus messaging is ineffective — it means that conclusions from laboratory studies should be held with appropriate uncertainty, and that field studies in naturalistic environments are essential.