Climate Change and Conceptual Change

Global Warming (“GW”) is easily one of the most pressing concerns of our time,/nand its solution will come about only through a change in human behavior./nCompared to the residents of most other nations worldwide, Americans report/nlower acceptance of the realities of GW. In order to address this concern in a/nfree society, U.S. residents must be convinced or coerced to take the necessary/nactions. In spite of the democratic appeal of education, however, many climate/ncommunicators appear to be settling on the notion that emotional persuasion is/nsuperior to education./nWe'll set an empirical foundation in Chapter 2, reviewing an experiment in/nthe Numerically Driven Inferencing (NDI) paradigm that sheds some light on the/ncognitive processes involved in learning and attitude shifts in response to/nsurprising policy-relevant information. Chapters 3–6 contain results from/na comprehensive program of research specifically targeting climate-related/nattitudes and beliefs in the United States. As alluded to above, there have been/nmany surveys of American attitudes. Chapter 3 provides an overview of our/napproach to assessing climate-related beliefs and attitudes. In particular, we/nnote relationships observed in one survey between scientific literacy regarding/nthe GW mechanism on one hand and attitudes, including “willingness to/nsacrifice” on the other. As with some other empirical approaches, our/nresults suggest that U.S. residents generally accept anthropogenic (i.e.,/n“human caused”) climate change, and support action on this issue./nBut even if this is the case, Chapter 4 describes an experiment demonstrating/nthat these beliefs and attitudes are disturbingly fragile in the face of/ncherry-picked, misleading numerical facts. Chapter 5 then describes a pair/nof experiments evaluating the effects of representative numerical facts./nChapter 5's Study 1 (Section 5.1) demonstrates that even when/nstudents report strong psychological effects after receiving a set of surprising/nnumbers, their beliefs and attitudes will not necessarily be affected./nChapter 5's Study 2 (Section 5.2) improves upon the clarity of/nmaterials used in Study 1 and demonstrates that such materials/ncan effectively increase climate change acceptance and concern./nIn both of these studies, as with the study presented in Chapter 4, this/nrelatively uncontextualized, surprising numerical information undermines/nstudents' confidence in their own knowledge. Chapter 6 reports on three/nsuccessful experiments (spanning four samples) that provide a coherent/nexplanation of the mechanism of climate change that includes relevant numerical/nfacts. As with Study 2 in Chapter 5, this intervention shifts/nparticipant attitudes towards the scientific consensus. Unlike uncontextualized/nnumerical information, however, this mechanism intervention additionally leaves/nparticipants feeling that they know more than they did prior to instruction./nChapter 6's Study 1 (Section 6.1) establishes this effect in/nclassroom-based settings at two culturally distinct universities./nChapter 6's Study 2 (Section 6.2) provides an initial evaluation/nof the time-course of retention for the cognitive shifts that followed our/nmechanism intervention, and Chapter 6's Study 3 (Section 6.3)/nprovides a successful demonstration of durable shifts with the general/npopulation online./nTaken together, these experiments point the way towards effective curricula and/non-line materials that can help bolster support to combat climate change. While/nwe must certainly be sensitive to the needs, values, and interests of our target/naudiences, we should not reflexively steer away from science education. Indeed,/nthe experiments in this dissertation provide empirical support for the notion/nthat science education materials can have a meaningful and lasting impact on GW/nattitudes and beliefs. While this may not provide the complete behavioral/nsolution we need for the United States (and the world), it seems likely that/nsuch shifts will make behavioral and policy changes far more tractable in the/ncoming years.

Advisor: Ranney, Michael A.
Ivry, Richard B.