From Yale University, it seems the climate debate has become completely tribal. On the plus side, this study blows the “if only we could communicate to the public better” meme out of the water. The great climate divide deepens even further.
Yale study concludes public apathy over climate change unrelated to science literacy
Are members of the public divided about climate change because they don’t understand the science behind it? If Americans knew more basic science and were more proficient in technical reasoning, would public consensus match scientific consensus?
A study published today online in the journal Nature Climate Change suggests that the answer to both questions is no. Indeed, as members of the public become more science literate and numerate, the study found, individuals belonging to opposing cultural groups become even more divided on the risks that climate change poses.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, the study was conducted by researchers associated with the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School and involved a nationally representative sample of 1500 U.S. adults.
“The aim of the study was to test two hypotheses,” said Dan Kahan, Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology at Yale Law School and a member of the study team. “The first attributes political controversy over climate change to the public’s limited ability to comprehend science, and the second, to opposing sets of cultural values. The findings supported the second hypothesis and not the first,” he said.
“Cultural cognition” is the term used to describe the process by which individuals’ group values shape their perceptions of societal risks. It refers to the unconscious tendency of people to fit evidence of risk to positions that predominate in groups to which they belong. The results of the study were consistent with previous studies that show that individuals with more egalitarian values disagree sharply with individuals who have more individualistic ones on the risks associated with nuclear power, gun possession, and the HPV vaccine for school girls.
In this study, researchers measured “science literacy” with test items developed by the National Science Foundation. They also measured their subjects’ “numeracy”—that is, their ability and disposition to understand quantitative information.
“In effect,” Kahan said, “ordinary members of the public credit or dismiss scientific information on disputed issues based on whether the information strengthens or weakens their ties to others who share their values. At least among ordinary members of the public, individuals with higher science comprehension are even better at fitting the evidence to their group commitments.”
Kahan said that the study supports no inferences about the reasoning of scientific experts in climate change.
Researcher Ellen Peters of Ohio State University said that people who are higher in numeracy and science literacy usually make better decisions in complex technical situations, but the study clearly casts doubt on the notion that the more you understand science and math, the better decisions you’ll make in complex and technical situations. “What this study shows is that people with high science and math comprehension can think their way to conclusions that are better for them as individuals but are not necessarily better for society.”
According to Kahan, the study suggests the need for science communication strategies that reflect a more sophisticated understanding of cultural values.
“More information can help solve the climate change conflict,” Kahan said, “but that information has to do more than communicate the scientific evidence. It also has to create a climate of deliberations in which no group perceives that accepting any piece of evidence is akin to betrayal of their cultural group.”
In addition to Dan Kahan and Ellen Peters, other study researchers were Maggie Wittlin of the Cultural Cognition Project, Paul Slovic of Decision Research, Lisa Larrimore Ouellette of the Cultural Cognition Project, Donald Braman of George Washington University, and Gregory Mandel of Temple University.
Citation: The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks, Nature Climate Change, DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1547.
The Cultural Cognition Project at Yale Law School is an interdisciplinary group of scholars interested in studying how cultural values shape public risk perceptions and related policy beliefs. Previous studies, funded by the National Science Foundation and the Oscar M. Ruebhausen Fund at Yale Law School, have looked at perceptions of environmental and public health risks and of expert scientific consensus on such issues. For more information, visit www.culturalcognition.net.
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Social studies aren’t worth the space they take on a harddrive. There is no measure of objectivity possible. A social study only serves to ‘prove’ a preconception.
Discussing the outcome of social studies is like discussing religion. A waste of time
“individuals with higher science comprehension are even better at fitting the evidence to their group commitments”
“What this study shows is that people with high science and math comprehension can think their way to conclusions that are better for them as individuals but are not necessarily better for society.”
“has to create a climate of deliberations in which no group perceives that accepting any piece of evidence is akin to betrayal of their cultural group”
Yep. Describes behavior, motivations & peril of the Team nicely. On society at large, I wouldn’t bet.
The science doesn’t really matter to me anymore. It is clear that if they can can get the world to buy AGW, they will do far more damage to civilization than any climate change.
Citation from the original article (not from comments about the article):
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nclimate1547.pdf
“This result suggests that public divisions over climate change stem not from the public’s incomprehension of science but from a distinctive conflict of interest: between the
personal interest individuals have in forming beliefs in line with those held by others with whom they share close ties and the collective one they all share in making use of the best available
science to promote common welfare.”
“What guides individual risk perception, on this account, is not the truth of those beliefs but rather their congruence with individuals’ cultural commitments.”
“A hierarchical individualist who expresses anxiety about climate change might well be shunned by his co-workers at an oil refinery in Oklahoma City. A similar fate will probably befall the egalitarian communitarian English professor who reveals to colleagues in Boston that she thinks the scientific consensus on climate change is a hoax.”
“Hence, polarization actually becomes larger, not smaller, as science literacy and numeracy increase.”
Conclusion: when you belong to a tribe you will behave in accordance with its basic tenets, regardless of any “objectivity” that you can derive from scientific or rational analysis.
The study has nothing to reveal about climate but much about human behaviour. And it is scary… and confirmed in many historical cases.
even educated people can be incredibly ignorant outside their area of expertise…especially the so called social scientists and journalists
Do you ever get the feeling that these people never leave their offices? I mean, I don’t remember WUWT running a meet and greet session for any researchers wanting to find out why sceptics are so ornery. Am I incredibly naïve to think that the best way to study something is to get close to it? Is it so alien to social science to venture into the territory of your subject matter? Or are we too scary?
There are a few huge misconceptions in these studies.
1) That people like to think the way they do because it fits in with their social group. Well what about if people already think a particular way and join social groups that reflect that? It’s called the internet! We don’t all think the same on every subject. It would be interesting to find out if educated sceptics are more diverse on wider viewpoints than educated warmists. The researchers have a reasonable theory – that improved education would lead to a better decision about AGW. But then ruin it by assuming that sceptics are making a worse decision and have to look for some mental condition that explains it. “Congruence with individuals’ cultural commitments” is code for “comfort zone”.
2) That the egalitarian communitarian (for that read warmist) point of view is the right life choice and that deviations from that must be intrinsically wrong. They offer no proof of that. They also make it a black and white choice, where in truth most people are a blend of hierarchical individualist and egalitarian communitarian. I for one appreciate the benefits of a fossil fuel society, am I less communitarian for wanting to maintain the security that those energy sources have given us and even extend it to developing countries? Since the Industrial Revolution we’ve seen an end to legal slavery, the liberation of women, huge improvements in health and lifespan and freedoms unimagined before coal became our work horse. Were those things bad for society? Now if I was to engage in psycho babble too I’d say warmists have an irrational fear of things they perceive as ‘dirty’ like coal, industry, nuclear, etc and find it easy to reject them in favour of an unachievable utopia. Also they tend to be over cautious and if humanity had been mostly made up of these personalities we’d still be swinging from the trees.
3) They return to the old favourite of a need to communicating the science better without ever questioning if they need better science to communicate.
The first principle you should apply to how people take decisions is whether the decision will affect their ability to eat, feed their family and protect their children. So you could be the most educated scientist on the planet, but if you unemployable as anything else and being a climate skeptic stops you bringing in grant money or even getting employed, what would you do? Sacrifice your kids or sacrifice a scientific conclusion??
Not hard to answer that one, is it?
The questions which need to be asked are these:
1. What are the economic consequences for individuals of fearless examination of evidence, drawing of tentative conclusions and changing your position in the light of new, perhaps contradictory evidence in future?
2. What are the economic consequences for a nation of varying answers to question 1?
3. As a result of the answers to the first two questions, what are the most likely political positions going to be in a variety of scenarios??
The answers will tell you that the incorruptibiity of science and scientists only goes so far; the relevance of science to political decision-making depends on its vote-winning capacity; and the kinds of societies we live in are a consequence of those answers.
When you have those answers, you can then ask how easy it is to change things, assuming you want change to occur.
The Yale study has much in common with Monty Python & the Holy Grail, extract follows:
WOMAN: We don’t have a lord.
ARTHUR: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take
it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
ARTHUR: Yes.
DENNIS: But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified
at a special biweekly meeting.
ARTHUR: Yes, I see.
DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,–
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: –but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more–
ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
WOMAN: Order, eh — who does he think he is?
ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn’t vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don’t vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, ‘ow did you become king then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake,
[angels sing]
her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur
from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I,
Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.
[singing stops]
That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen — strange women lying in ponds distributing swords
is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power
derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical
aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power
just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin’ I was an empereror just
because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they’d
put me away!
ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
HELP! HELP! I’m being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a give away. Did you here that, did you here that,
eh? That’s what I’m on about — did you see him repressing me,
you saw it didn’t you?
If people’s worldview determines their intellectual position, then considering AGW, what causes the poll numbers to change? Or are they suggesting that people’s worldview is changed first?
So I need to become a facist hippie before I can change my world view to believe in AGW?
The study is self defeating.
Those who know all the answers do not know which questions to ask.
“According to Kahan, the study suggests the need for science communication strategies that reflect a more sophisticated understanding of cultural values.”
How about they just produce the raw data and models!
If this study is correct (and thats a big IF), then we all make our minds up first and then choose the interpretation of the science that supports our position. Which, incidentally, is what we have been accusing the alarmists of all along.
So now we, the sceptics are doing the same thing
In that case, where would we look for people who are immune to this human condition ?
A very good question.
There is good evidence that making up our mind and then interpreting the facts in the light of our ‘beliefs’ is just how the human brain works. I’d say no one is immune to it, but some are more able to revise their beliefs in the light of new facts. To a large extent it seems to depend on how emotionally dependent (invested in the term used) you are on a belief.
Enter the scientific method and process, which should allow beliefs (aka theories) to be rigorously examined in a way that overcomes this natural tendency to a biased interpretation of the facts.
There are several ways in which the scientific process got subverted in climate science. I’ve read hundreds of climate science papers, well at least the abstracts, and an astonishing number make a statement about AGW that is either only one of several possible interpretations of the study or not supported by the study at all.
The above explains why interested outsiders, like many here, arrive at the sceptical position. We don’t have significant emotional or financial/career investment (as defined above) in whether AGW/CAGW is true, and therefore are more able to critically evaluate the AGW theory and claims in the light of facts.
Dr. John M. Ware
I am with you part of the way. I suspect that you are in a not-insignificant minority. The majority have given the science of the climate issue only cursory attention and sre probably swayed by group-thin.
Bill- you are onto something there.
“That almost sounds like code for saying that the better someone comprehends the technical aspects of the science, the more likely they are to be skeptical of the alarmist position.”
Great comment.
Absolutely stunning arrogance. I have a Ph.D. from a top school, worked as a college professor, post-doc and got paid on gov funds, all that stuff. I also believe the climate is warming, but is it outside natural variation, caused by CO2 alone, and what really gets my goat is that they have cooked the books, the studies truly are manipulated! Am I science literate, absolutely. Are the people who did the Yale study science literate or did they not bother to do their own analysis and took Hansen word for gospel. Who is the real scientist then, me or them?
“individuals’ group values shape their perceptions”
“ties to others who share their values”
“What this study shows is that people with high science and math comprehension can think their way to conclusions that are better for them as individuals but are not necessarily better for society.”
“information has to do more than communicate the scientific evidence. It also has to create a climate of deliberations in which no group perceives”
“When forming my opinions based on evidence, I do not try to figure out what ‘group’ or ‘community’ I belong to.”
But the collectivists do, and are determined to “prove” it.
IOW, the Yale “study” authors are biased in favor of collectivism and against individualism. “Groups” don’t perceive; individual human beings do. “Groups” cannot think; only individual human beings do. And individual human beings can and do communicate with each other.
“In both cases you have a similar mechanism at work: many ‘authorities’ who figure it’s ‘better to err on the side of the angels’ and figure ‘The harm caused by taking these ‘precautions’ is far…'” greater than the harm of not taking them. All economics is about trade-offs.
This approach has been becoming more prevalent. For the last decade or more, the “sociologists” and “psychologists” have been producing “studies” saying that group loyalty determines opinions. If a close family member commits murder, he was just misunderstood, but if one of those other people touches his nose, he was being so extremely disrespectful that he must be slapped down. If one of my people says it, I believe him; but if it was one of those others, I won’t, regardless of how it is said, or what evidence is presented.
It’s a gimmick based on political POV, aimed at undermining science and dividing and undermining the opposition.
The first idea is that political controversy over climate change is caused by the public’s limited ability to comprehend science.
The second idea is that the political controversy about climate change is caused by the public’s opposing sets of cultural values.
Neither of these is a scientific hypothesis simply because there are so many variables and fuzzy concepts that the statements cannot be quantified and scientifically tested.
Nevertheless Peters and Kahan appear to have concluded that people who understand science are good at distorting scientific evidence to benefit themselves and their cultural group even if it disadvantages society. But they make no inferences about climate scientists.
Dan Kahan proposes that we should consider climate science as “deliberations in which no group perceives that accepting any piece of evidence is akin to betrayal of their cultural group.”
Dan you should spend a bit of time reading WUWT where you will find that scientific evidence is considered on its own merits and nothing else whatsoever. Then you should read the Climategate emails or perhaps an analysis of them such as this:
http://assassinationresearch.com/climategate/
Eric (skeptic) says: @ur momisugly May 27, 2012 at 7:35 pm
…..But the core issue is that the use of fossil carbon to create atmospheric carbon dioxide is the basis of a civilized and prosperous society, a fact which you fail to understand since you only believe in central planning…..
_________________________________
Oh they comprehend that very well, too well as a matter of fact.
“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.” Henry Kissinger 1970
The key word of course is CONTROL.
““What this study shows is that people with high science and math comprehension can think their way to conclusions that are better for them as individuals but are not necessarily better for society.”
These ideologues lack any awareness of their assumptions, so we shouldn’t be surprised when they fail to question them.
“Society doesn’t even exist” — Margaret Thatcher
But human nature does, we skeptics probably have more unadorned perspective on that as well.
Brad says:
May 28, 2012 at 4:29 am
“…I have a Ph.D. from a top school, worked as a college professor, post-doc and got paid on gov funds, all that stuff. I also believe the climate is warming, but is it outside natural variation, caused by CO2 alone…”
Good for you.
A Goebbels-Pravda study by a leftist organization favorable to advanced manipulation of information…
TinyCO2 says:
May 28, 2012 at 2:09 am
………………Since the Industrial Revolution we’ve seen an end to legal slavery, the liberation of women, huge improvements in health and lifespan and freedoms unimagined before coal became our work horse. Were those things bad for society?
I dunno, ask a Progressive Muslim. My impression is these things [are] against Islam.
The study wouldn’t make sense if there were not unsettled issues and uncertainty in the outcomes. There has to be wiggle room: the more educated find more wiggle room as they recognize possible errors, overenthusiasm and outright bias.
There is no divided opinion on gravity, nor that if you breathe in sea water you drown. Divided opinion reflects a subject not yet nailed down.
There is an old wise expression which states that it is your attitude , not your aptitude that determines your altitude . The divide will continue to exist as long as the attitude of some of those with scientific aptitude is one of science by decree only ,where debate is regularly muzzled and where the threat of the sky is falling is a frequent call. Higher aptitude does not always equate with public good or better public communications as we observe on Wall street and the political domain. As long as there is greed and the desire for ever more power over others , the divide will exist.
Doug Proctor says:
May 28, 2012 at 7:13 am
“There is no divided opinion on gravity, nor that if you breathe in sea water you drown. Divided opinion reflects a subject not yet nailed down.”
Please note there is no consensus needed to validate gravity or drowning, and that gravity can be experimentally and reproducibly verified.