Geeks form cliques too – why better scientific understanding doesn’t guarantee concern about climate change
A new paper in Nature Climate Change suggests highly scientifically literate people are just as susceptible to cultural divides over climate change as those with a less in-depth understanding of the processes changing our climate – and actually may be more polarised than other groups. It says instead of focusing on improving scientific literacy, communicators need to focus on what’s creating cultural divides over climate change.
The issue of scientific literacy is attracting a fair bit of comment at the moment. Just one of the UK’s 650 MPs is a scientist according to Mark Henderson’s new book the Geek Manifesto, which calls for science to be given a bigger space in public life. In the States, meanwhile, the situation is only slightly better – the House of Representatives boasts one physicist, one chemist and one microbiologist among 435 elected officials, and the Republican party’s consistent questioning of mainstream scientific thinking on evolution and climate change has led to accusations of a war on science.
So is officials’ lack of scientific understanding the reason why this year’s climate talks are stalling? Not exactly, argue the authors of the new research. The study tests two theories as to why people care about scientific issues, in an attempt to explain current apathy among the US public about climate change.
Dan Kahan, a professor of law and psychology at Yale Law School, describes two theories the researchers tested against data from members of the public:
“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 says.
Scientific knowledge versus cultural values
The first theory the authors tested was called the science comprehension thesis (SCT). SCT essentially proposes that because most people don’t have much background understanding about scientific information, and because they don’t know how to interpret it, they underestimate the risks posed by climate change. So according to SCT, people with a greater degree of science literacy and technical understanding should perceive climate change risk to be higher.
The second theory is called the cultural cognition thesis (CCT). This theory proposes that an individual’s perception of the level of risk that climate change poses is based upon the values of groups they identify with rather than a critical evaluation of the evidence.
CCT implies that people interpret science to fit their cultural beliefs. The theory distinguishes between those who link authority to social rank and dismiss collectivist solutions to social problems – named hierarchical individualists – and people who favour “less regimented forms of social organisation and greater collective attention to individual needs” – called egalitarian communitarians.
The result
The authors found, contrary to the first theory, that people with a high level of scientific literacy were actually more polarised than those with a more limited understanding of science. Says Kahan:
“Individuals with higher science comprehension are even better at fitting the evidence to their group commitments.”
In other words, if members of your social circle are likely to reject the risk of climate change, then you are more likely to go the same way. So, the paper argues, a hierarchical individualist oil refinery worker in Oklahoma City is unlikely to risk being shunned by his colleagues by expressing anxiety about climate change. In contrast, the subjects identified as egalitarian communitarians in the study tended to be more accepting of the risks associated with climate change than hierachical individualists.
According to the results, the scientifically literate subjects were much more sharply divided over concern about climate change according to whether they were hierarchical individualists or egalitarian communitarians. This result rather undermines the SCT suggestion that people with a scientific training are more likely to view scientific evidence dispassionately than those without.
Image - Nclimate 1547-f2 (note)
Source: Nature Climate Change
The implications for climate science communication
The authors conclude that people need to hear information about climate from individuals they trust, and that messages need to be tailored using information from different disciplines such as psychology and social sciences to resonate with different social groups, creating a new ” science of science communication“. They add that creating a wider variety of climate spokespeople could be one way to ensure people take information about the risks of climate change on board without feeling they could weaken their ties to their peers.
So, funnily enough, if climate communicators want to be more effective, climate change professionals are going to have to look past their own cultural divides, overcoming the natural tendency to keep to their own camp. Worse, scientists may even have to overcome their traditional aversion to so-called soft sciences and work with social scientists if climate messaging is going to get smarter.
Source:xkcd
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UPDATE 4.30pm 28th May: We’ve now received a response to a question we put to the study’s lead author, Professor Kahan, of Yale Law School. He writes that the results give “relatively strong evidence” that the SCT theory is incorrect and “modest” support to the second theory (CCT). The authors are now undertaking more experiments to cement their findings. Prof Kahan also argues that:
“All study results are provisional. That’s in the nature of science.”
Prof Kahan’s full response to us, posted at Yale’s Cultural Cognition blog, is worth reading in full, as it gives an interesting reflection on how easy it can be for media articles to overstate the significance of individual studies when reporting research.
UPDATE 11.30am 29th May: The paper has had some pickup in skeptic outlets, suggesting the results show scientifically literate people are more likely to be skeptical – see Fox News and the Register to compare and contrast with our take on the research.