Here’s a story that maybe some AGW outliers might want to read. Finally, recognition that doom and gloom, hell and high water, and all that… really aren’t effective, and people are getting “climate fatigue” from all that sort of senseless hype. Surprisingly, many major science news outlets (Physorg, ScienceDaily for example) are carrying this press release from University of California, Berkeley, of all places. But then, after you get past the headline, your realize who’s really in denial. – Anthony
Dire or emotionally charged warnings about the consequences of global warming can backfire if presented too negatively, making people less amenable to reducing their carbon footprint, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley.
BERKELEY — Dire or emotionally charged warnings about the consequences of global warming can backfire if presented too negatively, making people less amenable to reducing their carbon footprint, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley.
“Our study indicates that the potentially devastating consequences of global warming threaten people’s fundamental tendency to see the world as safe, stable and fair. As a result, people may respond by discounting evidence for global warming,” said Robb Willer, UC Berkeley social psychologist and coauthor of a study to be published in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science.
“The scarier the message, the more people who are committed to viewing the world as fundamentally stable and fair are motivated to deny it,” agreed Matthew Feinberg, a doctoral student in psychology and coauthor of the study.
But if scientists and advocates can communicate their findings in less apocalyptic ways, and present solutions to global warming, Willer said, most people can get past their skepticism.
Recent decades have seen a growing scientific consensus on the existence of a warming of global land and ocean temperatures. A significant part of the warming trend has been attributed to human activities that produce greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite the mounting evidence, a Gallup poll conducted earlier this year found that 48 percent of Americans believe that global warming concerns are exaggerated, and 19 percent think global warming will never happen. In 1997, 31 percent of those who were asked the same question in a Gallup poll felt the claims were overstated.
In light of this contradictory trend, Feinberg and Willer sought to investigate the psychology behind attitudes about climate change.
In the first of two experiments, 97 UC Berkeley undergraduates were gauged for their political attitudes, skepticism about global warming and level of belief in whether the world is just or unjust. Rated on a “just world scale,” which measures people’s belief in a just world for themselves and others, participants were asked how much they agree with such statements as “I believe that, by and large, people get what they deserve,” and “I am confident that justice always prevails over injustice.”
Next, participants read a news article about global warming. The article started out with factual data provided by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. But while half the participants received articles that ended with warnings about the apocalyptic consequences of global warming, the other half read ones that concluded with positive messages focused on potential solutions to global warming, such as technological innovations that could reduce carbon emissions.
Results showed that those who read the positive messages were more open to believing in the existence of global warming and had more faith in science’s ability to solve the problem. Moreover, those who scored high on the just world scale were less skeptical about global warming when exposed to the positive message. By contrast, those exposed to doomsday messages became more skeptical about global warming, particularly those who scored high on the just world scale.
In the second experiment, involving 45 volunteers recruited from 30 U.S. cities via Craigslist, researchers looked specifically at whether increasing one’s belief in a just world would increase his or her skepticism about global warming.
They had half the volunteers unscramble sentences such as “prevails justice always” so they would be more likely to take a just world view when doing the research exercises. They then showed them a video featuring innocent children being put in harm’s way to illustrate the threat of global warming to future generations.
Those who had been primed for a just world view responded to the video with heightened skepticism towards global warming and less willingness to change their lifestyles to reduce their carbon footprint, according to the results.
Overall, the study concludes, “Fear-based appeals, especially when not coupled with a clear solution, can backfire and undermine the intended effects of messages.”
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Which means…. people who believe in a just and fair world don’t buy the catastrophe line?
I don’t think that’s the message the study authors wanted you to take away from the story.
What would one expect of psychologists? There is no reason psychology has to be cargo-cult science,but the quality of people attracted to the field pushes it in that direction. I love the implication that people are skeptical because they are stupid. Yeah,that’ll get them far.
I guess it’s not just weather stations that are at the airports. Looks like the climatologists have been standing at the end of runways …
Putting it another way, it doesn’t matter much how pretty the wrapping paper is or how fancy the bow. It’s a present people don’t want if the box is still empty (lacking credibility — scientific or politically). After years of getting empty boxes, the wrappings and bows won’t work.
‘…Willer said, most people can get past their skepticism…’
I very glad for those fortunate souls whose skepticism of “global warming” can be cured.
I’m one of those pitiful individuals who actually believe in “global warming” and that human activity since circa 1945 probably has contributed to it but that (on the evidence of those 65 years) that contribution has been minor (less than 50%) and lessening and that a warmer CO2 enhanced world on balance is a good thing — far better than the global misery that would result from so-called ‘CO2 mitigation’.
Dr Willer, is there any hope of a cure for me?
As per usual, the intellectually superior authors of the study themselves certainly did not fall for all of that exclusive Post Normal Science CAGW disasterizing./sarc.
Why do psychologists try to make very old concepts sound new? The climate scare has backfired because of the old principle: “the boy who cried wolf”.
The greenies need studies like this so that they can communicate their propag … scientific facts more effectively.
I found the study creepy – maybe I need to read it again, but it seemed to be predicated on trying to alter ones world view – all this social justice clap trap – typical liberal nonsense
Well, Berkley should know about alarmism, they’ve spread enough of it. But, really, this is a “duh” moment.
People don’t respond to whines and doom and gloom. They respond to actionable ideas. When confronted with an alleged problem full of predictions that never come true and solutions that include additional taxation, escalating prices, lower employment, wealth redistribution, less reliable sources of energy, living in a tree house and eating granola bars for the rest of our lives, I don’t think its a big surprise people turn a deaf ear to the doomsayers.
I’ll try to help our alarmist friends. You want something done about CO2 emissions, get behind nukes. Understand the great strides coal has made towards emissions and understand we still need to use it for a while. Quit with the insidious windmills. THEY DON’T WORK!! And most importantly, quit with the double talk. It doesn’t cost more to emit less CO2! Its bad enough we pay millions of people not to do anything, but now you want us to pay for the privilege of doing less. What moron thought that up? And why did anyone think our economies would hold for very long under that formula? Jeez, a 10 y/o could figure that one out!
I have not read teh papers so I do not know if it is true there but this statement from the article contains several fallacies
Firstly it assumes that the warnings in 1997 were as strident and preposterous as the warnings are today. it also assumes that the warnings in 1997 were the same as those today.
So assume that the warnings are getting more strident and more preposterous. Then this would mean that the increase in lack of concern about them would be valid
Suppose that the 1997 warnings had predictions and descriptions (tipping points, only months to solve the problem, unprecedented, worse that we expected etc) that tend to discount their own veracity. if your science’s predictions are always wrong, why should we believe you? This sounds like a reasonable attitude to me.
I’ve seen a lot of graphs showing global atmospheric CO2 versus global average temperature, trying to prove the pro and con side of AGW.
Why do we not see graphs of human produced CO2 (ACO2) versus temperature? What I talking about here is total human produced CO2, say going back to 1870, not just the amount remaining in the atmosphere.
The reason I ask is that if AGW is correlated with ACO2, then we should see a stronger correlation between total human produced CO2 as compared to total atmospheric CO2.
This would be strong evidence that AGW from ACO2 is correct. However, is the correlation is weaker, then it would tend to show AGW from ACO2 is not correct.
This seems to be a very simply test. Why not post it? This is my challenge to the pro and con AGW groups. Show that ACO2 is more/less strongly correlated with AGW than total atmospheric CO2.
I live near an Australian country town, and often have conversations with elderly fishermen and farmers. They were not surprised by the severity of our recent drought, nor are they surprised by our cool, wet spring, and the wide-spread flooding over eastern Oz. Talk of AGW will elicit nothing but a faint grin and a snort.
This indifference to science could be due to ingrained rustic conservatism. Their refusal to give credence to the climate boffins, the media, and such bodies as the IPCC could be perceived as mere ignorance. Unless…
I wonder if elderly farmers and fishermen who have made a living from the land and ocean over many decades may not have experienced and observed one or two things. And perhaps they don’t want some kid from Berkeley communicating with them, whether it’s with a positive or apocalyptic message, about weather, climate, land and ocean.
I really like this web page as one of the few places that you kind find coherent alternate viewpoints to the lazy, useless media and the money grubbers who have taken over “science”. It is sad that many readers on this page are characterizing the global warming debate as a left/right political split. Most of the world looks on in shocked horror at what Americans say and apparently believe during elections. Not to be too hard on Americans though, many people around the world have only the most tenuous grip on reality. WUWT is a beacon of truth for people of any political pesuasion. Why are some people on this blog trying to alienate the very people they should be trying to convince. I am afraid that just like the Michael Manns of the world, for quite a number of people, this issue is more about grandstanding, posturing, beating your chests and following your genetic predisposition to loudly declare your group the best, however irrational or pointless that might be. It is no longer about trying to show the warmists the errors in their beliefs. Lighten up and lets all have a good laugh over “factual data provided by the IPCC”. Now that’s a gut buster we can all agree on. At least they used “factual” data as opposed to “imagined” data that some warmist use.
Not so long ago and not so far away, the Messiah said people will come in my good name and make all kinds of claims and say false things. Don’t be a moron.
I add, There is a world of morons out there.
They are going to capture (CO2) for safe keeping and pump it it to the ground for safe keeping. They are already doing this.
I’m just saying.
The lack effectiveness of using fear in advertising is common knowledge. It is business psychology 1A. Insurance companies learned this lesson decades ago. Think of the insurance ads you see on TV; that cute gecko for example.
There are many scientific experiments in peer reviewed journals demonstrating that fear does not sell and that positive reinforcement is much more effective than the threat of punishment in changing human (or animal) behavior.
You reward a dog or horse to get the desired behavior. That is common knowledge among animal trainers.
Reference for previous post;
CCS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage
I thank WUWT for fostering balance in the debate, and not forcing anyone into a corner where they will become defensive. I wish you all the best. Thanks 😉
“The article started out with factual data provided by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change.”
I thought I was pretty current on “global warming”. When did they manage to publish something factual?
Someone on their own or with a bunch of other people had to come up with all that jargon in that Wikipedia link I just gave you.
I’m just saying.
One of the groups pushing the AGW agenda hard is Freinds of the Earth. Here is what they have to say about the soon to be released 2009/2010 winter related deaths in the UK:
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/winter_death_advance_notice_19112010.html
FoE’s logic of the absurd is faultless.
H/T to Richard North, EUReferendum.
“Our study indicates that the potentially devastating consequences of global warming threaten people’s fundamental tendency to see the world as safe, stable and fair.” (Robb Willer)
Talk about disconnected from reality! And talk about projection! Rational adults (in fact probably most people past the age of believing in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy) do not even remotely “see the world as safe, stable and fair” – but Robb Willer and his ilk clearly live on Planet Disney and think the rest of us do too and that surely must be why we cannot accept the Warmistas dire predictions. Robb: Hello?!!! Wake up you idiot. It is precisely this kind of blatant BS that turns people off. It’s insulting and patronising and is based on your own sick prejudices rather than actual evidence.
And as for that joker Matthew Feinberg (psychology student and coauthor): “The scarier the message, the more people who are committed to viewing the world as fundamentally stable and fair are motivated to deny it.” Again, he is so utterly disconnected he cannot see his own psychological projection of world stability onto the rest of us. It is only the alarmist idiots who believe the world has ever been “stable.”
Well, my study indicates that Robb Willer and Matthew Feinberg are a pair of self-inflated idiots, who – in the complete absence of real-world evidence to back up AGW alarmism – have authored a paper which does little more than to scream “YOU’RE ALL DENIERS!” Yawn. It’s been done already. How utterly pathetic.
It only takes about 10 percent of the population to look out for the other 90 percent of the population when you have a good constitutional framework in place,
Like the one we have.
I’m just saying.
Getting sheeple under control don’t come cheep.
Aren’t we up to about $14 trillion in debt right now?
I’m just saying.
I suggest Professor Willer does a study of the effect on volunteers of “a video featuring innocent children” having short and miserable lives due to a lack of cheap reliable electricity.