Last week I explained how the media blew the story of UC Berkeley study on climate messaging. The study found the best message is also the most science-based: Doing nothing risks “many devastating consequences” but “much of the technology we need already exists.” We just need to deploy it already!
Brad Johnson has more analysis of the study’s findings, which were almost the reverse of what was reported.
New psychological research finds that dire messages about the threat of global warming will strengthen people’s acceptance of climate science when combined with solutions, which is the approach taken by leading climate activists. For some people, their response to dire messages is strongly dependent on whether hope is offered. The research, by University of California Berkeley psychologists Robb Willer and Matthew Feinberg, investigated the application of “just world belief” theory to how people interpret the threat of global warming. Unfortunately, the press release announcing the study “” to be published next year in Psychological Science “” gave a confusing portrayal of the study’s results, leading some prominent climate journalists to draw incorrect conclusions from their research.
Just-world-belief theory, first developed by Melvin Lerner in 1965, studies the concept that “people need to believe in a just world” “” i.e. “good things happen to good people” “” “thus, evidence that the world is not just is threatening, and people have a number of strategies for reducing such threats.” Experimental research has found since then that there are systematic ways of identifying the level of someone’s belief in a just world (or at least that is how the results of a standard questionnaire are interpreted), and those results are strongly correlated with their response to various situations that involve injustice and justice “” from how victims are perceived to how people cope with traumatic events.
Willer and Feinberg have hypothesized that belief in a just world influences people’s understanding of climate change, in part because the concept of a planet tilting toward devastation due to human action could come into conflict with the perception of an inherently stable, just world. Their paper explores two different experiments involving just world belief that can also be understood as straightforward focus-group message testing “” which is how the research was presented in their press release, and how most climate journalists reported on the work.
The messages tested in their first experiment began with an accurate portrayal of the dire nature of the science: “many devastating consequences,” “a major heat wave that killed at least 35,000 people,” “much of Florida, California, Texas, and Hawaii” could disappear under rising seas. They then concluded with one of two alternative endings, with opinions from fictitious scientists “” a hopeless, fatalistic conclusion (“Science Can’t Help”), and a hopeful, empowering one (“How To Fight Global Warming”). They tested how these messages affected participants’ degree of skepticism about the threat of climate change.
Skepticism among participants who had a low belief in a just world declined similarly for both conclusions “” they responded to the dire scientific threat alone. However, participants who had a high belief in a just world responded very differently depending on the conclusion. Given a hopeful conclusion, skepticism plummeted among those with a high belief in a just world. Given the hopeless conclusion, skepticism shot up by a similar amount:
RESPONSE TO DIRE CLIMATE SCIENCE MESSAGE
In the second experiment in the paper, the researchers primed participants toward thinking about the world as either just or injust, then exposed them to two public service announcements from EDF in 2007 that make a strong emotional appeal, one with a train accelerating toward a child and the other with children “ticking”. They were able to mirror the results of the first study, finding that priming on “justice” made respondents reject the message of the PSAs.
In short, the researchers found that the approach taken by leading climate messengers such as Al Gore (“An Inconvenient Truth”), Van Jones (“The Green Collar Economy”), and Bill McKibben (350.org) of combining scientific urgency with solution-oriented hopefulness should be successful, and particularly powerful with people who believe strongly in an inherently just world. That audience includes a significant proportion of conservatives and religiously observant people. Another example of the dire-plus-hope message is Harmony, the new book and film from the Prince of Wales and Tck Tck Tck:
However, the conclusions of the research have been somewhat misleadingly presented. In particular, the researchers repeatedly call the hopeless conclusion “dire,” implying that the text about the effects of global warming was not dire (it was). But “dire” simply means desperately urgent or implying horror “” not fatalistic, apocalyptic, or hopeless. The scientific text they gave all participants in their first experiment was in fact extremely dire, discussing the devastation from wildfires, drought, sea level rise, hurricanes, and heat waves.
In part because of the misleading presentation in the paper and the press release, journalists like the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin, NY Times‘ Andy Revkin (who apparently rejects the science that significant climate impacts are already being felt in the United States), Greener World Media’s Adam Aston, Discovery News’s Kieran Mulvaney, and social scientist Matthew Nisbet misinterpreted the results.
– Brad Johnson, in a WonkRoom cross-post.
Related Posts:
- A stunning year in climate science reveals that human civilization is on the precipice
- An introduction to the core climate solutions
- Introduction to climate economics: Why even strong climate action has such a low total cost
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
This is a very interesting Post and most Hopeful. You can’t tell a story with a Bad Ending and expect people to like it. In light of the UC Berkley Study I have modified my Climate Disaster one-liner to read like this:
“The Global Heating Disaster which we are causing will hurt us if we don’t fix it”.
Albert Einstein : Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size. # Leaders and Leadership # Doubt # Courage
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7rvdTjfgv2IJ:www.iwise.com/bFvKg+albert+einstein+quote+lion&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk
The problem, from what I find in discussing the climate message, is the hopeful solutions really require some type of sacrifice which most people are not amenable to.
The bark beetle’s impact on coniferous forests is pretty in your face, so I do not know how any thinking person can fail to believe that the change is here and now.
Also, if the solutions appear to leave the reader helpless because they feel their job is threatened, or made financially insecure.. that’s the same as hopeless… so that’s something to watch out for.
It really is the ultimate test, and we have not yet decided to win.
Heck, we have not even recognized our plight. It will however, command our full attention…and too soon.
Lore, @3: …”hopeful solutions really require some type of sacrifice”…
Doing nothing to address climatic disruption, THAT will be painful. In my view succeeding at positive mitigation will be exhilarating beyond imagination. To contemplate a society built on sustainability keeps me going in these dark days. All my humble efforts to achieve sustainability have been rewarding to me and I see no reason that they should not be for society as well.
I’m not surprised Nisbet ‘framed’ the results incorrectly. Seems Brad got a good handle on the study and its implications.
Lief #5:
But Lief, you are obviously here and commenting because you are one of the forward thinking people. Convincing others that a little pain must be endured for the common good down the road is a message most persons reject. People are now suffering a dose of reality in a faltering and stagnating economy and living under the fear that their expectations will not now or ever be met. Asking for further sacrifice seems like piling on regardless of the future consequences.
The message needs to concentrate more on what the sacrifices are and why we must do them. The solutions aren’t pretty. Yes, it’s going to hurt like hell and no, things won’t be the same, but it will end up being a lot better then the alternatives in attempting to keep business as usual.
I often find myself going back to medical analogies. I think many mainstreamers react as if they already had some serious medical problems, which included non-trivial financial impacts, and now they’re told they have something new and really horrible to deal with, like advanced cancer. Their doctors assure them they can deal with the cancer successfully, but they know it will require what they perceive to be a very high cost in terms of dollars and the unpleasantness of the treatment. Of course, they look for a second opinion, which in the case of climate change, means they go running into the open arms of the deniers, the equivalent of medical quacks. While the quacks are telling them not to believe all those nasty doctors from the CCT (Church of Cancer Treatment), the cancer, oblivious to their needs and desires, continues to spread.
This isn’t a perfect analogy, of course, as it ignores the fact that most of the people making decisions regarding CC are not making an ill-informed decision to suffer the future pain and suffering directly, but are passing it on to their children and following generations.
If we persist on this BAU path of myopia and greed, in time it will prove to be the saddest event in human history.
For some quite blunt discussion of where BAU takes us, see:
Adapting to climate change: Facing the consequences:
—————————–
But for the two-degree scenario 2.8% is just the beginning; from 2020 to 2035 the rate of decarbonisation needs to double again, to 5.5%. Though they are unwilling to say it in public, the sheer improbability of such success has led many climate scientists, campaigners and policymakers to conclude that, in the words of Bob Watson, once the head of the IPCC and now the chief scientist at Britain’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, “Two degrees is a wishful dream.”
—————————–
I’ve sat in focus groups from London to Beijing on climate messaging and the public is extraordinarily consistent in their response. This research is spot on in content, but misses the importance of order.
All our research shows you must open with the solution, and only then clearly outline the problem. The low carbon ‘vision’ acts as a psychological lifebelt when publics have to confront the reality of climate change. And lifebelts don’t work superbly if you don them after you’ve hit water.
We call this ‘Sizzle’ and it’d proving extremely effective in live campaigns (including Greenpeace’s new global climate vision).
For a nice little message builder on climate change download the Sizzle report here; http://bit.ly/4HtEho
A just world? Probably not. Most of the people on our planet don’t even have the ability or means to read this very interesting post. To begin with, they need power, a computer and the time, which they don’t have if they’re out struggling to find food and water.
I think our work should combine explaining the dire need for immediate action to prevent uncontrollable global warming and delivering honest and encouraging information about solutions, present and potential – along with increased efforts to press for global climate justice.
I don’t believe our world is just now. But I have hope that one day it will be.
Social Class, Contextualism, and Empathic Accuracy
Recent research suggests that lower-class individuals favor explanations of personal and political outcomes that are oriented to features of the external environment. We extended this work by testing the hypothesis that, as a result, individuals of a lower social class are more empathically accurate in judging the emotions of other people. In three studies, lower-class individuals (compared with upper-class individuals) received higher scores on a test of empathic accuracy (Study 1), judged the emotions of an interaction partner more accurately (Study 2), and made more accurate inferences about emotion from static images of muscle movements in the eyes (Study 3). Moreover, the association between social class and empathic accuracy was explained by the tendency for lower-class individuals to explain social events in terms of features of the external environment. The implications of class-based patterns in empathic accuracy for well-being and relationship outcomes are discussed. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/21/11/1716.abstract
Why do people behave badly? Maybe it’s just too easy
Many people say they wouldn’t cheat on a test, lie on a job application or refuse to help a person in need.
But what if the test answers fell into your lap and cheating didn’t require any work on your part? If you didn’t have to face the person who needed your help and refuse them? Would that change your behaviour?
New research out of the University of Toronto Scarborough shows it might. In two studies that tested participants’ willingness to behave immorally, the UTSC team discovered people will behave badly – if it doesn’t involve too much work on their part.
“People are more likely to cheat and make immoral decisions when their transgressions don’t involve an explicit action,” says Rimma Teper, PhD student and lead author on the study, published online now in Social Psychological and Personality Science. “If they can lie by omission, cheat without doing much legwork, or bypass a person’s request for help without expressly denying them, they are much more likely to do so.” http://media.utoronto.ca/media-releases/why-do-people-behave-badly-maybe-its-just-too-easy/
Request and Thought
This post is very helpful and clarifying. Thanks for it.
Given the post, at this point I’d like to hear directly (here on CP if possible) from the leaders of this research at Berkeley: In the face of all the confusion so far (resulting in part from an unclear press release, apparently, and perhaps also by reporting from people who didn’t actually read the research itself), can the leaders of the research provide a final, helpful, clarifying view of what THEY see as the “conclusions” of this research? In other words, can we please get a clarification in their own words, or can they at least write in to let us know whether they agree with the summary in the present post?
Also, some years back I had a great (and lengthy) dinner conversation with a leading film scholar from UCLA — a person who has spent a lifetime studying plots, films, the factors that make films popular, and so forth. In the case of many sorts of films, we like (and “need” and want) for them to have endings that are “just” — i.e., the good side wins, the world is saved, justice ultimately prevails, and so forth. Even if (and as) one or two or three of the favorite characters die in the process, we usually want to see that “justice has prevailed” and that their efforts were not for naught. We humans want to believe that, when times are terrible, heroes will step in to save the day. (And many people like to think that they would also step up to the plate in heroic ways if the situation called for them to do so.)
A great deal can be learned from understanding what we “want” our entertainment to tell us about how the world works and about just outcomes.
It also helps to note that media organizations are usually portrayed as bumbling bureaucracies, that don’t get it, and that are more part of the problem than part of the solution. When reporters are sometimes heroes (e.g., Superman), it’s usually because the individual reporter is not following the orders and conventions given to him/her by the boss, but instead is acting heroically as an individual, outside of the conventional mold. That is, of course, the public perception of the mainstream media, and for understandable reasons.
In any case, I’d enjoy hearing from the Berkeley folks, at least to hear that they “second” and agree with the interpretation provided in the present post, if they do.
Thanks,
Jeff
The Next Crash Will Be Ecological — and Nature Doesn’t Do Bailouts http://huff.to/dWV1MG via @huffingtonpost
#3 Lore – It certainly seems true that in today’s politics in the US, sacrifice seems unacceptable. Yet there are plenty of examples, including in the US, when broad acceptance of sacrifice was demonstrated. So I think the question is what it will take to draw that back out. The most obvious examples are after dire experiences – 9/11, Pearl Harbor. This is a challenge here since the broader impacts of AGW come on gradually. But as we have seen, extreme events, while difficult to connect to AGW, do happen. If we had a heat wave like the unimaginable one in Russia last year (imagine multiple days at 110 degrees on the East Coast – 30 degrees above average), or the floods in Pakistan, it might trigger such a reaction. And either of those experiences is certainly plausible for the United States. I don’t know if that’s the only thing that can do it. I’d prefer to believe that good and honest leadership could bring the best of us out, but I don’t see much of that leadership around now, and in a partisan political world, it isn’t easy to do. That’s the subject of this post and it would be good to see it show itself.
What??
“As well as a clear increase in air temperature observed above both the land and sea, we see observations which are all consistent with increasing greenhouse gases,” he added.
However, short-term trends in temperature and sea ice seem to be at odds with each other. The rate of temperature increases has slowed over the past 10 years, while the level of sea ice has increased.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101126/sc_nm/us_climate_trends
[JR: Not what Met Office said. I'll do some posts.]
In attempting to analyze the success f the denier tactics I believe that Solitary Townsend, @ 10 hit the nail on the head stating that “you must open with a solution”…
For over 200 hundred years society has lived by the adage of increasing GDP and Corporate power. That premiss has served our nation well thru war and peace, catapulting the nation to the top of the heap. That is why the opposition swan song has always been, “don’t hurt the economy”. That is why we have not been able to offer a viable alternative. All of our solutions by definition require restraint, conservation, recycling, in short return to the dark ages. Even though most of us realize that does not represent a successful solution and that the status quo is in fact the dead end, our efforts to over come that inertia of thought has hit a brick wall; the GOBP and all it stands for. There efforts require nothing more than funding the cannon fodder, represented by the “Tea Party”. We have made inroads with stressing JOBS but efforts are easily dismissed as socialist, communist or hippy fantasy. We have been incapable of presenting the “utopian” outcome without sounding like stoned weirdoes. Added efforts showing successful solutions are warranted.
When a process starts to go out of control, only an application of true information and appropriate corrective action can bring it back into control.
So, I don’t worry about messaging. I just tell the truth.
Even if this story was true, and talking about disaster scenarios did turn people off, we’d still have to talk about them, because we’re trying to bring the climate system back into control by proposing appropriate corrective action. The corrective action has to be based on the truth, otherwise it won’t work.
So, when I saw the initial headlines about toning down the gloom and doom, I simply ignored them.
Glad to see this correction, but even if people weren’t being sensible, we’d still have to tell the truth.
Wow. So many words. Here is a solution that is politically viable, low-tech, proven, available now, and can be done locally. Free public transit. Google it.
It is urgent that all people everywhere and especially their governments stop tip-toeing around the Real issue of Global Warming. It is rediculous to continueto deny the facts and remain aloof to this dire threat. If not for ourselves, then for our children and grandchildren, lie our personal responsibilities for takeing whatever actions are necessary to correct current distructive patterns.
Well, I already ride the bus, most days.
Free WiFi is nice. If all of the buses in our transit system had it, so you could count on it, that would be nicer.
But half of our CO2 problem is a coal problem.
Free public transit wouldn’t do much for that.
Still, it’s a good idea, and would solve a percentage of the problem.
For it to happen, the public must become aware and demand it.
Hence, the words.
Interesting post – Thanks.
A question i wasn’t able to find on Google – What percentage of the general population have a low belief in a just world (ie rational) versus the opposite?
PS I’m not very sure I want to know the answer…
re: #22. A large amount of coal is burned due to waste caused by sprawl. Each house must be heated and cooled separately. The best way to end sprawl is by ending the sprawl subsidies. The biggest sprawl subsidy is the restraint-of-trade tariff [fare] on public transit, [in the US, a public investment], a tariff which exists solely to ration use. Removal of this tariff would increase the attractiveness of urban life. There already is an international campaign for free public transportation — hence action. Debate is good, and climateprogress is one of the best, just realize that the people you are debating are not deniers, they are delayers. They will morph as need arises. And, thanks for riding the bus, but it is not about you, it is about policy.
I’ve said before, when people believe that they have a stake in their world, they feel some responsibility as caretakers; no matter how “dire” the news, they understand that to take a positive action, no matter how small, is important to achieve the larger goal of healing the planet, than to become negative, do nothing and suffer psychic pain as an outcast member of society.
In a just world, living sustainably, the idea of mining the lithosphere for materials to oxidize or fission, thereby contaminating all of planetary and public health via toxins like carbonic acid gas, would seem absurd. We are, after all, the only species that can destroy the Holocene this way, unleashing exponentially increasing disastrous impacts, and call it progress. Yes, we are progressing. But to what? Cryosphere meltdown and grain failures? Time to reboot. Time to redefine “energy resource.”
“The paper benefited from the helpful comments of F. Flynn, T.J. Horberg, T. Nordhaus, A. O’Connor and M. Shellenberger.”
[JR: I saw. Irony can be so ironic!]
And it inappropriately measures the effectiveness of the messaging, by participants’ inclination to do personal carbon-footprint reduction.
Note to authors: “The very idea that changing our own lives into models of sustainability will transform the world is wrongheaded… it encourages us to believe that problems which demand systemic solutions can be fixed by personal virtue.”
and
“even with an 80% participation rate the strategy of ‘living poor’ isn’t working”
Joe, part of the problem is that we still have so many misleading interpretations of the science out there downplaying accelerated climate change, or even putting a positive spin on it. Like this regarding a recent study on the PETM (apparently a slower event in an already somewhat warm-adjusted period – something we could possibly exceed with the help of feeback):
theresilientearth.com/?q=content/rapid-paleocene-global-warming-caused-diversity-explosion
In some cases we get a brief look at the caveats after the hoopla:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rapid-warming-boosted-ancient
The message needs to be clearer that the threat is not merely climate change, as has occurred throughout Earth’s history, but rapid holocene climate change that puts many of today’s ecosystems and human societies at risk.
Thanks for the article. I agree on Andy Revkin. WHY do people believe in a just universe? It is clearly NOT.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/8165784/Cancun-climate-change-summit-deaths-from-floods-and-drought-double.html
Conservatives tend to believe everyone should pay their way – no free lunch.
Her’s a rough idea- when you buy coal, you pay for the equipment, you pay for the work. Why not pay for the coal? Who really owns it?
Landowners may own the land, but do they REALLY own everything under it down to the centre of the Earth? If you get the fuel without paying ALL the costs, you are a freeloader.
Perhaps someone can work this up into an idea. The idea of ‘global commons’ is still unheard of in conservative circles.
I would guess that people with a tendency to deny they have been diagnosed with cancer (despite hard evidence and three medical opinions) are the same type of people who will be the first to deny climate change. And — I agree — this will especially be the case when a “cure” is not offered up, a cure with a reasonable chance of success. This has been obvious from day one, for me anyway. And the problem could have been easily solved with effective education and outreach showing people what the solutions are. But — wait a minute — we DID all that! People WERE TOLD that the solutions are available. Here’s where it breaks down: corporate power hooked on fossil fuels. Exactly – precisely — down to the playbook — those whose profits and personal wealth are tied to oil, gas, and coal, intervened. Lies were told, lots of them. Scientific facts obfuscated. The resulting confusion, and thus inaction, was PLANNED. And, it worked. It was diabolical, and brilliant. And it’s still working today. And it will continue to work until a force as powerful as, or more powerful than, the corporate fossil interests put a stop to it. It has come down to that, pure and simple. Frederick Douglass was spot on when he proclaimed: “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” I hate to say this, I hate to admit it, but just citing the science and putting forth sensible solutions ain’t gonna cut it. The “demand” has got to pack a much bigger punch. There has got to be a grassroots movement that exceeds that of our civil rights movement. There has got to be leadership that exceeds that of FDR or Lincoln or even our founding fathers. And, to be honest, I just don’t see it. Not yet. It’s there in little hot spots, but, these little flames of energy are insufficient to get the job done. Drastic problems require drastic measures. Unless and until we reach that level of critical energy, we can expect more of the same.
Oops — addendum to last comment — the playbook I am talking about, but neglected to state, was the playbook used by the tobacco industry to deny the harmful effects of smoking!
Anna Haynes @ 28: “The very idea that changing our own lives into models of sustainability will transform the world is wrongheaded… ”
I do not believe that changing my life will change the world, however if I cannot change my life the world can not change. By exploring low carbon foot print options in my sphere of influence I get to sharpen my vision on what I can accomplish on my own and where I need to team up with neighbors, politicians, National governments and even the world community to accomplish needed change. I have real life experiences to expound upon to make my arguments biting. “Live simply so others can simply live,” is fine as far as it goes but I feel it must be amended to to something like; Live sustain-ably so life can prosper…
or
Leave the world a better place, it is the home of your children.
Re: #28 (Anna Haynes): I agree that what we have created are systemic problems, but even the bottom 80% are complicit in the creation of these problems: usually, they are the foot soldiers in the violence being perpetrated against Nature, while the rich detach themselves to prevent their hands from getting dirty. It is the poor who are the workers in the slaughterhouses, who skin the leather for the rich’s shoes, who burn down the forest to create grazing lands for the cattle to supply the rich with milk and cheese. But, it is the rich who support all this violence through their purchasing decisions.
I think the Berkeley researchers got it right: true awareness of these systemic problems will result in personal life changes. And, I don’t think that the changes are about adopting a sackcloth and ashes lifestyle either, but about making personal life changes that maximize the productivity of the land that we have taken for human use, about re-greening the deserts that we have stupidly created, about nurturing Life in general.
What we truly need is a non-violent movement to end the violence against Nature. And, the solution starts within.
I thought I read that in some places where free transit was tried that ridership went down. The reason was that buses became the “hang out” place for enough teens and yahoos that the broader public was turned off.
Seattle contemplated it but went with a modified version that allows free rides within the downtown core during commute hours but it ends when the partying begins. I’m sure they have some interesting stats.
Is price the reason most single-occupancy SUV and car drivers aren’t on the bus? Hard to believe. Those things cost far more.
Here is message to try out: “Cut income taxes now! Cut property and sales taxes! Tax GHG emissions instead. Taxing income reduces the incentive to work more or invest. Taxing sales reduces consumer spending. Taxing GHG emissions will reduce our reliance on foreign oil, off shore oil and reduce many types of pollution. It might even stave off catastrophic climate change.”
The problem, from what I find in discussing the climate message, is the hopeful solutions really require some type of sacrifice which most people are not amenable to.