Does economic self-interest explain climate change skepticism?

Nope.

First, some common sense:

Let's assume self-interest explains the formation of beliefs about climate change by ordinary members of the public (I'm very happy to do that). In that case, we should expect the economic impact of climate change & proposed climate change policies on the public's perception of climate change risks to be 0.00, and the impact of cultural identity to be [some arbitrarily large number].

What the ordinary member of the public believes about climate change won't have any impact on the threat it poses to the environment or on the policies society adopts to repel that threat. The same is true about how he or she votes in democratic elections or behaves as a consumer. As an individual, he or she just isn't consequential enough to matter. 

Accordingly, there is no reason to expect much if any correlation between, say, economic class, etc., and climate change risk perception.

In contrast, what an ordinary individual believes and says about climate change can have a huge impact on her interactions with her peers. If a professor on the faculty of a liberal university in Cambridge Massachusetts starts saying "cliamte change is ridiculous," he or she can count on being ostracized and vilified by others in the academic community. If the barber in some town in South Carolina's 4th congressional district insists to his  friends & neighbors that they really should believe the NAS on climate change, he will probably find himself twiddling his thumbs rather than cutting hair.

It's in people's self-interest to form beliefs that connect rather than estrange them from those whose good opinion they depend on (economically, emotionally, and otherwise).  As a result, we should expect individuals' cultural outlooks to have a very substantial impact on their climate change risk perceptions.

(For elaboration of this argument, see CCP working paper No. 89, Tragedy of the Risk Perceptions Commons.)

Second, some data:

I have constructed some regression models to examine the impact of household income (hh_income) and cultural worldviews (hfac for hierarchy and ifac for individualism) on climate change risk perceptions (z_GWRISK; for explanation of that measure, see here).  The data come from a nationally representative survey of 1500 US adults conducted by the Cultural Cognition Project with a grant from the National Science Foundation. To see the regression outputs, click on the thumbnail to the right.

The analyses show, first, that differences in income have a very small negative impact on climate change risk perceptions (B = -0.07, p < 0.01) when consdired on its own (model 1).

Second, the analyses show that cultural worldviews have a very large impact -- a typical egalitarian communitarian and a typical hierarchical individualist are separated by about 1.6 standard deviations on the risk perception measure -- controlling for income (model 2). When cultural worldviews are controlled for,  income turns out to have an effect that is practically nil (B = -0.02, p = 0.56).

But wait: the third thing the analyses show is that income does have a modest effect -- one that is conditional on survey respondents' cultural worldviews. As they become wealthier, egalitarian communitarians become slightly more concerned about climate change, while hierarchical individualists become less (Model 3).

Bottom line: economic self-interest doesn't matter; cultural identity self-interest does.

Coolest debiasing study (I've) ever (read)

So this is another installment (only second; first here) in my series on cool studies that we read in my fall Law & Cognition seminar at HLS.

This one, Sommers, S.R. On Racial Diversity and Group Decision Making: Identifying Multiple Effects of Racial Composition on Jury Deliberations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90, 597-612 (2006), looked at the impact of the racial composition of a (mock) jury panel on white jurors. Sommers found that white jurors on mixed African-American/white panels were more likely than ones on all-white to form pro-defendant fact perceptions and to support acquittal in a case involving an African-American defendant charged with sexual assault of a white victim.

That's plenty interesting -- but the really amazing part is that these effects were not a product of any exchange of views between the white and African-American jurors in deliberations. Rather they were a product of mental operations wholly internal to the white subjects.

There were two sorts of evidence for this conclusion. First, Sommers found that the pre-deliberation verdict preferences of the white subjects on the mixed juries was already more pro-defense than the preferences of those on the all-white juries. Second, during deliberations the white subjects on the mixed juries were more likely to mention pro-defendant evidence spontaneously (that is, on their own, without prompting the by African-American ones) and less likely to inject mistaken depictions of the evidence into discussion.

In sum, just knowing that they would be deliberating with African-American jurors influenced -- indeed, demonstrably improved the quality of -- the cognition of the white jurors.

How many cool things are going on here? Lots, but here are some that really register with me:

1. OCTUSW ("Of course--that's unsurprising--so what") response is DOA & No ITMBSWILESP, either!

OCTUSW is a predictable, lame response to a lot of cool social science studies. What makes it lame is that it is common to investigate phenomena for which there are plausible competing hypotheses; indeed, the clash of competing plausible hypotheses is often what motivates people to investigate. This is one of the key points in Duncan Watt's great book, Everything Is Obvious Once You Know the Answer.

But here the result was a real surprise (to me and my students, at least) -- so we can just skip the 10 mins it usually takes to shut the (inevitably pompous & self-important) OCTUSW guy up.

At the same time, the result isn't insane-there-must-be-something-wrong-it's-like-ESP (ITMBSWILESP), either. ITMBSWILESP results can take up 30-40-50 mins & leave everyone completely uncertain whether (if they decide the study is valid, reliable) they've been duped by the researcher or (if they dismiss it out of hand) they've been taken in by their own vulnerability to confirmation bias.

2. Super compelling evidence that unconscious bias is defeating moral commitments of those experiencing it.

The results in this study suggest that the white subjects on the all-white juries were displaying a lower quality of cognitive engagement with the evidence than the whites on the mixed-race juries. Why?

The most straightforward explanation (and the animating conjecture behind the study) was that the racial composition of the jury interacted with unconscious racial bias or "implicit social cognition." Perhaps they were conforming their view of the evidence to priors founded on the correlation between race and criminality or were failing to experience a kind of investment in the interest of the defendant that would have focused their attention more effectively. 

Knowing, in contrast, that they were on a jury with African Americans, and would be discussing the case with them after considering the evidence, jolted the whites on the mixed juries into paying greater attention, likely becuause of anxiety that mistakes would convey to the African-American subjects that they didn't care very much about the possibility an African-American was being falsely accused of an interracial sexual assault. Because they paid more attention, they in fact formed a more accurate view of the facts.

But this "debiasing" effect would not have occurred unless the unconscious racial bias it dispelled was contrary to the white subjects' conscious, higher-order commitment to deciding the case impartially.

Obviously, if the white subjects in the study were committed, conscious racists, then those who served on the mixed-race juries would have gotten just as much satisfaction from forming anti-defendant verdict preferences and inaccurate, anti-defendant fact perceptions as ones on the all-white juries.

Likewise, it is not very plausible to think the whites on the mixed-race juries would have been jolted into paying more attention unless they had a genuine commitment to racial impartiality. Otherwise, why would the prospect that they'd be perceived otherwise have been something that triggered an attention-focusing level of anxiety?

The conclusion I draw, then, is that the effect of unconscious bias on the jurors in the all-white juries is something that they themselves would likely have been disappointed by.  They and others in their position would thus concur in, and not resent, the use of procedures that reduce the likelihood that this cognitive dynamic will affect them as they perform that decisionmaking task.

That’s a concluison, too, that really heartens me.

My own research on “debiasing” cultural cognition rests on the premise that identity-protective cognition (a cousin of implicit social cognition) disappoints normative commitments that ordinary citizens have. If that’s not true--if in fact, individuals would rather be guided reliably to conclusions that fit the position of “their team” than be right when they are evaluating disputed evidence on issues like climate change and the effectiveness of the HPV vaccine — then what  I’m up to is either pointless or (worse) a self-deluded contribution to public manipulation.

So when I see a study like this, I feel a sense of relief as well as hope!

 3. The debiasing effect can't be attributed to any sort of "demand effect."

This is a related point. A "demand effect" describes a result that is attributable to the motives of the subjects to please the researcher rather than to the cognitive mechanism that the researcher is trying to test.

One common strategy that sometimes is held forth as counteracting motivated cognition -- explicitly telling subjects to "consider the opposite" -- is very vulnerable to this interpretation. (Indeed, studies that look at the effect of explicit "don't be biased" instructions report highly variable results.)

But here there's really no plausible worry about "demand effect." The whites on the mixed-race juries couldn't have been "trying harder" to make the researchers happy: they had no idea that their perceptions were being compared to subjects on all-white juries, much less that those jurors were failing to engage in the evidence in as careful a way as anyone might have wanted them to.

4. The effect in this study furnishes a highly suggestive model that can spawn hypotheses and study designs in related areas.

Precisely because it seems unlikely to me that simply admonishing individuals to be "impartial" or "objective" can do much real good, the project to identify devices that trigger effective unconscious counterwights to identity-protective cognition strikes me as of tremendous importance.

We have done a variety of studies of this sort. Mainly they have focused on devices -- e.g., message framings, and source credibility -- that neutralize the kinds of culturally threatening meanings that provoke defensive resistance to sound information.

The debiasing effect here involves a different dynamic. Again, as I understand it, the simple awareness that there were African-Americans on their jury activated white jurors' own commitment to equality, thereby leading them to recruit cognitive resources that in fact promoted that commitment.

Generalizing, then, this is to me an example of how effective environmental cues (as it were) can activate unconscious processes that tie cognition more reliably to ends that individuals, at least in the decisionmaking context at hand, value more than partisan group allegiances. 

Seeing the study this way, I now often find myself reflecting on what sorts of cues might have analogous effect in cultural cognition settings.

That's something cool studies predictably do. They not only improve understanding of the phenomena they themselves investigated. They also supply curious people with vivid, generative models that help them to imagine how they might learn, and teach others something, too. 

Is the "culture war" over for guns?

One of the students in my HLS criminal law class drew my (and his classmates') attention to this poll showing that a pretty solid majority (73%) of Americans now oppose banning handguns. What caused this? Did the Supreme Court's 2nd Amendment opinions (Heller and MacDonald) change norms? Or induce massive cognitive dissonance avoidance? Or maybe the NRA is behind the new consensus? Or maybe the public finally learned of the scientific consensus that there's no reliable evidence that concealed-carry laws have any impact on crime one way or the other? Is there a model here to follow for ending the culture war on climate change? Or maybe the climate change battle just made people forget this one?

More evidence that good explanations of climate change conflict are not depressing

I explained recently (here & here)  why it is a mistake to conclude that cultural cognition implies that trying to resolve the climate change conflict is "futile" (not to mention a fallacious reason for rejecting the evidence that the cultural cognition explains the conflict).

Today I came across a great paper that extends the theme "good social science explanations of climate change conflict are not depressing":

Law, Environment, and the 'Non-Dismal' Social Sciences

U of Colorado Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 12-01 

Boyd, William, Univ. Colorado Law School

Kysar, Douglas A., Yale Law School

Rachlinski, Jeffrey J., Cornell Law School 

Abstract:   Over the past 30 years, the influence of economics over environmental law and policy has expanded considerably. Whereas politicians and commentators once seriously questioned whether tradable emissions permits confer a morally illicit “right to pollute,” today even environmental advocacy organizations speak freely and predominantly in terms of market instruments and economic efficiency when they address climate change and other pressing environmental concerns. This review seeks to counterbalance the expansion of economic reasoning and methodology within environmental law and policy by highlighting insights to be gleaned from various “non-dismal” social sciences. In particular, three areas of inquiry are highlighted as illustrative of interdisciplinary work that might help to complement law and economics and, in some cases, compensate for it: the study of how human individuals perceive, judge, and decide; the observation and interpretation of how knowledge schemes are created, used, and regulated; and the analysis of how states and other actors coordinate through international and global regulatory regimes. The hope is to provide some examples of how environmental law and policy can be improved by deeper and more diverse engagement with social science and to highlight avenues for future research.

Boyd, William, Univ. Colorado Law SchoolKysar, Douglas A., Yale Law SchoolRachlinski, Jeffrey J., Cornell Law School 

Climate change & the media: what's the story? (Answer: expressive rationality)

Max Boykoff has written a cool book (material from which played a major role in a panel session at the 2012 Ocean Sciences conference) examining media coverage of climate change in the U.S. 

Who Speaks for the Climate? documents in a more rigorous and informative way than anything I've ever read the conservation of "balance" in the media coverage of the climate change debate no matter how lopsided the scientific evidence becomes.

Boykoff's own take -- and that of pretty much everyone I've heard comment on this phenomenon -- is negative: there is something wrong w/ norms of science journalism or the media generally if scientifically weak arguments are given just as much space & otherwise treated just as seriously as strong ones.

I have a slightly different view: "balanced" coverage is evidence of the expressive rationality of public opinion on climate change.

News media don't have complete freedom to cover whatever they want, however they want to. Newspapers and other news-reporting entities are commercial enterprises. To survive, they must cover the stories that people want to read about.

What people want to read are stories containing information relevant to their personal lives. Accordingly, one can expect newspapers to cover the aspect of the "climate change story" that is most consequential for the well-being of their individual readers.

The aspect of the climate change story that's most consequential for ordinary members of the public is that there's a bitter, persistent, culturally polarized debate over it. Knowing that has a much bigger impact on ordinary individuals than knowing what the science is.

Nothing an individual thinks about climate change will affect the level of risk that climate change poses for him or her. That individual's behavior as consumer, voter, public discussant, etc., is just too small to have any impact --either on how carbon emissions affect the environment or on what governments do in response. 

However, the position an individual takes on climate change can have a huge impact on that' person's individual social standing within within his or her community.  A university professor in New Haven CT or Cambridge Mass. will be derisively laughed at and then shunned if he or she starts marching around campus with a sign saying "climate change is a hoax!" Same goes for someone in a mirror image hierarchical-individualistic community (say, a tobacco farmer living somewhere in South Carolina's 4th congressional district) who insists to his  friends & neighbors, "no, really, I've looked closely at the science -- the ice caps are melting because of what human beings are doing to the environment." 

In other words, it's costless for ordinary individuals to take a positon that is at odds with climate science, but costly to take one that has a culturally hostile meaning within groups whose support (material, emotional & otherwise) they depend on.

Predictably, then, individuals tend to pay a lot of attention to whatever cues are out there that can help them identify what cultural meanings (if any) a disputed risk or related fact issue conveys, and to expend a lot of cognitive effort (much of it nonconscious) to form beliefs that avoid estranging them their communities.

Predictably, too, the media, being responsive to market forces, will devote a lot more time and effort to reporting information that is relevant to identifying the cultural meaning of climate change than to information relevant to determining the weight or the details of scientific evidence on this issue.

So my take on Boykoff's evidence is different from his.

But it is still negative.

It might be individually rational for people to fit their perceptions of climate change and other societal risks to the positions that predominate in their communities but it is nevertheless collectively irrational for them all to form their beliefs this way simultaneously: the more impelled culturally diverse individuals are to form group-congruent beliefs rather than truth-congruent ones, the less likely democratic institutions are to form policies that succeed in securing their common welfare.

The answer, however, isn't to try to change the norms of the media. They will inevitably cover the story that matters to us.

What we need to do, then, is change the story on climate change. We need to create new meanings for climate change that liberate science from the antagonistic ones  that now make taking the "wrong" position (any position) tantamount to cultural treason.

Ocean Science Meeting science communication panel

Here's where I am (or will be in few hrs).  

Plan to say (1) there is a science of science communication; (2) it has assembled a good deal of data on why the public is divided on climate change; (3) what that data show is that the explanation is neither lack of scientific knowledge nor the inability to engage scientific information in a rational or systematic fashion ("system 2" etc); (4) what does explain conflict is motivated reasoning (cultural & otherwise); and (5) dispelling the conflict requires communication strategies that are responsive to this dynamic.

More later!

 

Could geoengineering cool the climate change debate?

Geoengineering (according to the National Academy of Sciences) “refers to deliberate, large-scale manipulations of Earth’s environment designed to offset some of the harmful consequences of [greenhouse-gas induced] climate change.” But what impact might the advent of this emerging technology have on the science-communication environment in which the public makes sense of the evidence for climate change and its significance?

Geoengineering is still very much at the drawing board stage, but the sketches of what it might look like—from solar-reflective nanotechnology flying saucers to floating mist-emitting “cloud whiteners”—are pretty amazing.

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society in the U.K. are among the preeminent scientific authorities that have called for stepped up research efforts to develop geoengineering—and to assess the risks that it might itself pose to the physical environment.

Also very much in need of research (and getting it from an expert UK team that includes Nick Pidgeon) are the science-communication challenges that geoengineering is likely to confront.

Indeed, anxiety over the impact that geoengineering could have on public opinion is now putting research into the underlying science at risk. 

All the issues surrounding geoengineering, including the ethical ones, obviously demand open public deliberation.

But critics oppose even permitting research to begin lest it lull the public into a state of false security that will enervate any support for carbon emission limits—a dynamic labeled (mislabeled really, given the well-established and familiar technical meaning of the term in economics) the “moral hazard” effect.  

Political resistance fueled by this argument resulted in postponement of a very rudimentary scientific experiment (one involving the operation of a high-pressure water hose attached to a helium balloon) that was supposed  to be conducted by scientists at Cambridge University last fall.

CCP recently conducted a study to see what impact geoengineering might have on the science-communication environment. We found no support for the “moral hazard” hypothesis.  Indeed, the study, which was conducted with both US and UK subjects, found that geoengineering might well improve the quality of public deliberations by reducing cultural polarization over climate change science.

The study involved an experiment in which subjects assessed a scientific study on climate change. The study (a composite of two, which appeared in Nature and Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences) reported researchers’ conclusion that previous projections of carbon dissipation had been too optimistic and that significant environmental harm could be anticipated no matter how much carbon emissions were reduced in the future.

The subjects, all of whom read the dissipation study, were divided into three groups, each of which was assigned to read a different mock newspaper article. Subjects in the “anti-pollution” condition read an article that reported the recommendation of scientists for even stricter CO₂ limits. Subjects in the “geoengineering condition” read an article that reported the recommendation of scientists for research on geoengineering, on which the article also supplied background information.

Finally, a “control condition” group read an article about a municipality’s decision to require construction companies to post bonds for the erection of traffic signals in housing developments.

Logically speaking, what one proposes to do about climate change (implement stricter carbon emission limits, investigate geoengineering, or even put up more traffic signals) has no bearing on the validity of a scientific study that purports to find that climate change is a more serious problem than previously had been understood.

But psychologically one might expect which newspaper article subjects read to make a difference. The “moral hazard” argument, for example, posits that information about geoengineering will induce members of the public to discount the seriousness of the threat that climate change poses.

That’s not what we found, however. Indeed, contrary to the “moral hazard” hypothesis, subjects in the geoengineering were slightly more concerned than ones in the anti-pollution and control conditions.

We also found that the experimental assignment affected how culturally polarized the study subjects (in both countries) were. The subjects in the anti-pollution condition were the most polarized over the validity of study (whether computer models are reliable, whether the researchers were biased, etc.); subjects in the geoengineering condition were the least.

 We had hypothesized this pattern based on cultural cognition research.

That research shows that individuals tend to form perceptions of risk that fit their values. Thus, egalitarian communitarians, who are morally suspicious of commerce and industry, find it congenial to believe those activities are dangerous and thus worthy of regulation. Hierarchical individualists, in contrast, tend to be dismissive of environmental risk claims, including climate change, because they value commerce and industry and perceive (unconsciously) that such claims will result in their being restricted.

These meanings were reinforced by the newspaper article in the anti-pollution condition, resulting in the two groups becoming even more divided in that condition on the validity of the carbon-dissipation study.

But the information on geoengineering, we posited, would dissipate the usual cultural meanings associated with climate change science. Because it shows that there are policy responses aside from restricting commerce and industry, information on geoengineering reduces the threat that evidence of climate change poses to hierarchical individualist sensibilities and thus the psychic incentive to dismiss that evidence out of hand.

This conjecture was the basis for predicting the depolarization effect actually observed in the geoengineering condition.

What’s the upshot?

Well, certainly not that geoengineering should be embraced as a policy solution to climate change. Whether that’s a good idea depends on the sort of research that the Royal Society and National Academy of Sciences have proposed.

Moreover, although this study furnishes evidence that engaging in that sort of research—and inviting public discussion of its implications—will actually improve the science communication environment, rather than harm it as the “moral hazard” position asserts, that proposition, too, certainly merits further research.

But the one conclusion I think can be made without qualification is that claims about the impact of scientific research on public risk perceptions, just like ones about the impact of human activity on the environment, admit of scientific investigation. 

When predictions of adverse public reactions are not only advanced without any supporting evidence but also asserted as decisive reason to block scientific inquiry, there should be little doubt that those making them lack a genuine commitment to the principles of science.

References:

Allen, M.R., et al. Warming caused by cumulative carbon emissions towards the trillionth tonne. Nature458, 1163-1166 (2009).

Corner, A. & Pidgeon, N. Geoengineering the Climate: The Social and Ethical Implications. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 52, 24-37 (2010).

Hamilton, C. Ethical Anxieties About Geoengineering: Moral hazard, slippery slope and playing God.  (unpublished, Sept. 27, 2011).

Kahan, D.M. Cultural Cognition as a Conception of the Cultural Theory of Risk. in Handbook of Risk Theory: Epistemology, Decision Theory, Ethics and Social Implications of Risk (eds. Hillerbrand, R., Sandin, P., Roeser, S. & Peterson, M.) (Springer London, 2012), pp. 725-60.

Kahan D.M., Jenkins-Smith, J., Taranotola, T., Silva C., & Braman, D., Geoengineering and the Science Communication Environment: a Cross-cultural Study, CCP Working Paper No. 92 (Jan. 9, 2012). 

Keith, D.W. Photophoretic levitation of engineered aerosols for geoengineering. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, 16428-16431 (2010).

National Research Council. Advancing the Science of Climate Change, (The National Academies Press, 2010).

National Research Council. America's Climate Choices, (The National Academies Press, 2011).

Parkhill, K. & Pidgeon, N. Public Engagement on Geoengineering Research: Preliminary Report on the SPICE Deliberative Workshops, Understanding Risk Working Paper 11-01 (Understanding Risk Research Group, Cardiff University, June 2011).

Parson, E. Reflections on Air Capture: the political economy of active intervention in the global environment. Climatic Change 74, 5-15 (2006).

Royal Society. Geoengineering the climate: science, governance and uncertainty, (Royal Society, London, 2009).

Solomon, S., Plattner, G.-K., Knutti, R. & Friedlingstein, P. Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, 1704-1709 (2009).

Time to act. Nature 458, 1077-1078 (2009).

Report from Garrison Institute Climate Change conference: the good & not so good...

As noted previously, I attended the Garrison Institute meeting on Climate, Mind and Behavior.

On positive side, the highlight, in my view, was very interesting presentation by George Marshall.

George Marshall: He gets science communication!Marshall, a man of apparently unbounded curiosity, creativity, and public spirit, is organizing a set of related initiatives aimed at improving climate-change science communication. 

One of these is http://talkingclimate.org/, essentially a mega-wearhousing facility for collecting, organizing, & promoting transmission of empirical studies on communication.

Another is a research project aimed at production of effective targeted messaging. Marshall outlined a research protocol that is, in my view, just what's needed because it focuses on fine grained matching of cultural meanings to the diverse information-processing dispositions that exist in the public. It uses empirical measurement at every stage -- from development of materials, to lab testing, to follow-up work in field in collaboration with professional communicators.

This is exactly the systematic approach that tends to be missing from climate change science communication, which is dominated by impressionistic throw-everything-against-the-wall-but-don't-bother-measuring-what-sticks strategy...  Marshall offered a devastating (and devastatingly funny) analysis of that. 

I look forward to the distribution of the video of his talk (the organizers were filming all the presentations).

On downside:

1.  Goldilocks was also there. Lots of just-so story telling -- "engage emotions ... but don't scare or numb" -- based on ad hoc mix and match of general psychological mechanisms w/o evidence on how they play out in this context (indeed, in disregard of the evidence that actually exists). The antithesis, really, of the careful, deliberate, fine-grained, and genuinely empirical approach that Marshall's protocol embodied. Sigh...

2. I was also genuinely shocked & saddened by what struck (assaulted) me as the anti-science ethos shared by a large number of participants.  

Multiple speakers disparaged science for being "materialistic" and for trying to "put a number on everything." One, to approving nods of audience, reported that university science instruction had lost the power to inspire "wonder" in students because it was disconnected from "spiritual" (religious, essentially) sensibilities.  

For anyone who is inclined to buy that, I strongly recommend watching The Relation of Mathematics to Physics, Lecture 2 of Richard Feynman's 1964 Messenger Lectures on the Character of Physical Law!

Actually, I think it is a huge problem in our culture that we don't make it as easy for people who have a religious outlook and love science (there are many of them!) as it is for those who have a more secular outlook & love it to participate in the thrill and wonder of knowing about what we know about nature.

But that problem is one rooted in an imperfect realization of the Liberal ideal of making all the resources of a good society (including access to its immense and inspiring knowledge of nature!) available to all citizens irrespective of their cultural worldviews or moral/political outlooks.

Those who ridicule science for being insufficiently "spiritual" or for being excessively "materialistic" etc. are engaged in a form of illiberal discourse.  They are entitled to pursue their own vision of the best way to live but should show respect -- when engaged in civic deliberations -- for those who see virtue and excellence in other aspects of the human experience.

That these anti-liberals happen to be concerned about climate change does not excuse their cultural intolerance.

Slides from Garrison Institute talk

Gave talk today on "Climate Change and the Science Communication Problem" at Garrison Institute's Climate, Mind and Behavior Initiative.  Basic gist -- "it's cultural cognition, not deficiencies in rationality, so communicate meaning and not just content" -- is clear from the slides, which are here.

Update on Friday, March 2, 2012 at 8:30PM by Dan Kahan

Now the talk is on youtube (can't watch-- weirds me out to watch/listen to self!)  

Scientists of science communication: Profiles #1 & #2

There is no invisible hand that guides valid scientific knowledge into the beliefs of ordinary citizens whose lives it could improve.

If simple logic doesn't make that clear, then historical experience ceratinly does -- from the public's rejection of "expert consensus" on deep geologic isolation of nuclear wastes to the massive backlash today against the CDC's proposal for universal vaccination of girls against HPV (just to name a couple that come to mind).

The emerging science of science of science communication uses scientific methods (drawn from a variety of disciplines) to identify the processes that enable nonexperts to recognize valid scientific knowledge, the dynamics that predictably disrupt those processes, and the steps that can be taken to preempt those dynamics or to reverse them when they are not successfully averted.

I will post now & again (very brief) profiles of scholars who are doing important work in this high interdisciplinary field.

One explanatory note, though: after the first entry, the profiles will not be based on any assessment on my part of the contribution the individual has made to the science of science communication. Pretty much going to list in random-ass order ones that I happen to think of at the time!

1. Paul Slovic. Slovic invented the field of public risk perceptions with his pioneering work on the "psychometric paradigm" in the late 1980s (e.g., Slovic, P. Perception of risk. Science 236, 280-285,  (1987)) and is the scholar whose work in the last decade crystallized the "affect heuristic," which identifies the decisive role of emotional perception as the faculty of cognition most consequential to the formation of lay perceptions of risk (e.g., Slovic, P., Finucane, M.L., Peters, E. & MacGregor, D.G. Risk as Analysis and Risk as Feelings: Some Thoughts About Affect, Reason, Risk, and Rationality. Risk Analysis 24, 311-322 (2004)). Through his teaching and collaborations, moreover, he is also contributed immeasurably to the ability of countless other scholars to contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the risk perception and communication field (just as math has its Erdös number, so the field of public risk perception as its Slovic number!).  Many of his key works (not all; it would take a library to assemble them) can be found in two collections: Slovic, P. The Perception of Risk, (Earthscan Publications, London ; Sterling, VA, 2000) & Slovic, P. The feeling of risk : new perspectives on risk perception, (Earthscan, London ; Washington, DC, 2010).

 2. James N. Druckman.  Druckman, the Payson S. Wild Professor of Political Science and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, is, to my mind, a great model of what a genuine science of science communication looks like. An editor of Public Opinion Quarterly. He is a first-rate-- world-class even -- political scientist, who has done immensely work on framing (e.g., Druckman, J.N. Political Preference Formation: Competition, Deliberation, and the (Ir)relevance of Framing Effects. American Political Science Review 98, 671-686 (2004)). At the same time, he has turned his attention systematically to the way in which political economy and political psychology interact with (and can distinctively distort) societal dissemination of scientific information (e.g.,  Druckman, J.N. & Bolsen, T. Framing, Motivated Reasoning, and Opinions About Emergent Technologies. Journal of Communication 61, 659-688 (2011)). What's more, he doesn't just grab recognized mechanisms (one he is worked on or is simply familiar with from the general political psychology literature) and use them as a story-telling simulacrum of explanation; he conjectures and tests with actual science communication phenomena.  We need more Druckmans: people whoare not only great social scientists but who get that there is a distinctive set of processes affecting the dissemination of policy-relevant science and who are genuinely involved in empirically studying them.