Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Edge Hill University Professors Geoff Beattie and Laura McGuire, the way to prevent people ignoring climate change and Covid-19 messages is to “avoid presenting both sides of the argument”.
Coronavirus shows how to get people to act on climate change – here’s the psychology
July 29, 2020 8.22pm AEST
Geoff Beattie Professor of Psychology, Edge Hill University
Laura McGuire Research Fellow in Education, Edge Hill University…
With COVID-19, the early messaging attempted to circumscribe the nature of the threat. In March, the WHO announced that: “COVID-19 impacts the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions most severely.” Similar statements were made by the UK government.
A reasonable interpretation of this would be that the virus does not “affect” young people. But as new clinical data came in, this message was changed to emphasise that the virus could affect people of all ages and doesn’t discriminate.
…
The initial positive message for young people also created an “optimism bias”. This bias is very powerful – we know of various brain mechanisms that can ensure that a positive mood persists. One study found that people tend to have a reduced level of neural coding of more negative than anticipated information (in comparison with more positive than anticipated information) in a critical region of the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in decision making. This means that we tend to miss the incoming bad news and, even if we don’t, we hardly process it.
…
To make climate change messages more effective, we need to target these cognitive biases. To prevent temporal and spatial biases, for example, we need a clear message as to why climate change is bad for individuals in their own lives in the here and now (establishing an appropriate affect heuristic).
And to prevent optimism bias, we also need to avoid presenting “both sides of the argument” in the messaging – the science tells us that there’s only one side. There also needs to be a clear argument as to why recommended, sustainable behaviours will work (establishing a different sort of confirmation bias).
We also need everyone to get the message, not just some groups – that’s an important lesson from COVID-19. There can be no (apparent) exceptions when it comes to climate change.
Read more: https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-shows-how-to-get-people-to-act-on-climate-change-heres-the-psychology-143300
I guess big tech shutting down dissenting voices on Coronavirus was just a test run, for what these two professors from Edge Hill University want to inflict on us.
Things have sure changed since I went to school. I remember my professors arguing for logic, debate and reason, rather than an authoritarian shutdown of dissent.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“We also need everyone to get the message, not just some groups – that’s an important lesson from COVID-19.”
Propaganda everywhere (MSM, social media, University, School) is indeed the best way to drown out any contrary argument and achieve a perfect brainwashing of most of the populace, with matches to keep your eyes open while being “formated” in a mental asylum if you don’t comply.
I did trust the experts on Covid but they made really bad predictions so I no longer trust them.
– they initially predicted low human to human transmission
– then they overshot and predicted millions deaths in USA
– they changed their minds in masks
So the statement says:
Oops – bad html formatting by me!
The real figures are probably around a quarter of the ones in your post as 75-80% of those infected are asymptomatic, and therefore not counted.
If the “second wave” these criminals are talking about and preping for, does happen, it will make what they call the “first wave” look like a very very small ripple,
and it will not discriminate.
It will be all inclusive, where the young will have it very very bad too.
What do you guys think happens when the healthcare system fails and capitulates in it’s main act?
And in this, we are talking global show, globally.
What do you think happens if healthcare system does not provide, as it can not anymore provide coherent and efficient monitoring-detecting-tracing,
tackling-management-containment and control- suppression of infection-diseases, like for example hepatitis or tuberculosis,
just to name two in a very long list of very very nasty diseases,
especially when such end up getting a chance to flare aggressively and widely in populations and even reaching to epidemic stage??
What do you think happens at that point guys?
How long do you think it will take to get at that point, under the extraordinary pressure of the
criminally insane inducing of global scare mongering global panic which keeps still being inflated forcefully and massively all around the world?
2 months, 3, 4, 5 maybe six or more perhaps?
cheers
The IPCC tells us ECS could be less than 1C. Is that dissent?
Typical sassenach Imperialist-Colonialist thinking: dominate subject races by taking away their language, culture, property, and liberty while publicly instisting that you’re just trying to help.
The evidence tells us that the Apollo missions are real and happened as described (and there is no adventure ever in History where these conclusions are as strong) and that presenting “both sides” (that is presenting what happened and the nutty claims) actually makes that case, and plenty of YouTube videos do just that.
Why wouldn’t it work for “climate”?
It is hard to develop a level of trust with people that do not admit their mistakes.
I have met quite a few academics and most of them are extremely UNimpressive – even in their own field!
It’s a sad place.
Definitely some are really smart and are focused on their fields and the quest for truth be in science. The ones involved in shutting down speech are usually the ones who are not very competent in their fields.
Yep, the USSR was a master of only presenting one side.
“To make climate change messages more effective, we need to target these cognitive biases. To prevent temporal and spatial biases, for example, we need a clear message as to why climate change is bad for individuals in their own lives in the here and now (establishing an appropriate affect heuristic). ”
This quote along shows they are clueless and think that climate does not change naturally. These pundits are psychologists and scientifically illiterate. Not only do they know what they know only because they have been told, but, more importantly, they totally lack the capacity to judge what they have been told on its veracity and completeness. They do not know what they don’t know outside their field.
A first rate psychologist would be wel aware of his or her own ‘unknown unknowns’ bias. not so these quacks.
As long as the narrative agrees with me, it’s okay. Otherwise, if the argument is weak or wrong, opposition to it must be silenced. You must agree with me at all times.
I think that’s essentially the message. No need for them to dress it up. It’s Jackboot time.
I’d say that we live in the Age of Propaganda but it seems that more is in play here. These “educators” want to silence dissenting thoughts and voices much like religious fanatics want to silence heretics! At least they haven’t resorted to the torture and burnings of auto-da-fe as yet. Right now canceling and job loss seem to satisfy the thirsty, but for how long? When more and more holes are poked in their pet theories, fanatics tend to become MORE fanatical!
As more studies and evidence point to the HCQ/zinc cocktail being a prophylactic for the Wuhan Virus will those that suppressed it be held accountable? How many thousands died unnecessarily by having an effective treatment withheld? How many elderly were infected and died when their care facilities were forced to take in Chi-Com 19 infected patients; the polar opposite of what any sane epidemiologist would recommend!
The Age of Propaganda will not end until our leaders, schools and media are forced to speak the truth and WE are the only ones who can do that!
Previously, I thought that perhaps folks like these “professors” just needed shock therapy and perhaps medication to snap them out of their Climate Confusion™. An interesting symptom of said state is an inability to understand why all others are not also in that world, and wanting to “fix” them, when it is actually they who are hopelessly, and dangerously wrong. I see now though, that what they clearly need are frontal lobotomies. These “universities” have indeed become nothing short of cuckoos nests.
Shameful and downright deceitful behaviour, who the hell do they think they are these people?
They think they are smarter than you, and know what’s best for you. How can they save the planet if you don’t stop questioning your betters?
Screecher of the House Nancy Piglosi has just made masks mandatory in the House:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nancy-pelosi-mandatory-face-mask-policy-house-of-representatives/
Jackboots indeed. The mask fascists are winning. For now.
No-one should go to university these days if they want to broaden their mind.
They want to be Gods or something. Gods are The Absolute Authority. No one questions what’s handed down by The Gods.
I’ve been trying to come up with a real reason for the ridiculous panic attack behavior locally about CV19 and can only conclude the whole thing is aimed at creating a new religion, with punishment for not knuckling under and not kowtowing to these people. The power trip leaves a distinct scent of Hubris mixed with Egomania in the air. It even oozes out of the screen when I watch the news.
This isn’t the first time in history something like this has happened, nor will it be the last. Just don’t get into arguments with those Fanatics. Just ask yourself how often it has to happen before it is stopped.
To let you know just how ridiculous these marones are, the Mayor of Chicago has put out a demand that ANYONE traveling to Chicago from Wisconsin is to self-quarantine for 14 days. Now, unless there’s a way to track such people, she is – in her panic attack petty dictator mindset – making a public ass of herself. If I still lived in Chicago (left nearly 2 decades ago), and went across the state line to a very nice shopping center, that means I’m supposed to stay in “quarantine” or some such thing, even though it’s a round trip. The obvious question is: how would that silly cow know where I’ve been unless I phoned it in????
She is NUTZ! And she’s a certified control freak who will willingly let Chicago burn to the ground if she thought she could gt away with it. It makes me quite happy that I no longer live there and haven’t been there in nearly 20 years. She’s is certifiably incompetent and just plain NUTZ.
This bunch of nutbars styling themselves academics? They’re just about the same level of idiocy as the May’r of Chicago. They all deserve each other. Don’t send them any food packets. Just herd them into whatever building they work in, lock the doors, and keep them isolated from the rest of us, so that we can go about our daily lives without them. They are NOT needed, NOT necessary to anyone’s existence.
End of rant.
If history has revealed anything it demands that authoritarian tyrants never be allowed to ascend to positions of power.
The most powerful people all US Institutions (Press, Academia, Science, Medicine, Entertainment, Education, Deep State Government, Law, Justice, Commerce, Finance, Social Media, even Religion) are all leftist authoritarian types. Censorship is rife in all of our institutions.
Our freedoms are in peril. Some are already gone. We may never get them back.
As a measure of what a disaster this decision is for Australian Science, had the standards being applied here been extant in the early noughties, Barry Marshall who is one of Australia’s 16 Nobel prize winner would never have got his Nobel prize. He came within a whisker of being struck off at the behest of the American Medical Association, and under these rules he would have been. It seems likely that his research would have been lost with his career, at the very least for some years.
Yep, Edge Hill ‘University’; so lowly ranked I have never heard of it and not even in the top 1,000 globally: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/edge-hill-university. Dross.
“Things have sure changed since I went to school.”
That’s because, Eric, when you went to school, an institution conducting itself like this would not have been recognized as a “university”.
Yes, it would ave been referred to as a “Teachers Training College”
Referring to individuals who want to stop dissent and reveal only one side of an issue as “academics” is like referring to Jack the Ripper as a social engineer.
That sentence doesn’t even make sense. In what way does “science” say that there is only one side to an “argument”? By definition, the word means that two sides are being presented.
If there is only one side, there is no “argument”!
They aren’t even trying to put forward the canard that “there are only one set of facts”.
“If there is only one side, there is no “argument”!”
That’s right. That’s what they want: No argument.
For a climate change to be evident there must actually be a difference from some norm. Now we need to establish what is normal. But extremes in climate happen constantly sometime or someplace so therefore must be the normal situation. So does deviation from some average constitute a change. Well perhaps, but the longer the time period of available data the less obvious the extremes are. In almost all cases it has all happened before.
So will our future be warmer? Perhaps, it has happened before. Will it be colder? Perhaps, it has happened before. Will it matter to me, my children or my grandchildren? Not very likely.
Beyond that there are so many possibilities of a catastrophe ending my bloodline that a changing climate seems to be of no consequence. It seems more logical to worry about the sun suddenly exploding. In other words, totally pointless.
Two professors give a scientific explanation of how to make better propaganda. That’s all it is.
It’s a poor ‘scientific explanation’ as well.
Individual optimism bias and social pessimism bias is the norm.
The 1930’s kings of propaganda took advantage of the above.
Crushing individual optimism is not proper form in the propaganda business.