Climate threatsPresenting facts as “consensus” bridges political divide over climate change
New evidence shows that “social fact” highlighting expert consensus shifts perceptions across the U.S. political spectrum – particularly among highly educated conservatives. Facts that encourage agreement are a promising way of cutting through today’s “post-truth” bluster, say psychologists. The researchers found that by presenting a fact in the form of a consensus — “97 percent of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused global warming is happening” – climate change skeptics shift their perceptions significantly towards the scientific “norm.”
In the murk of post-truth public debate, facts can polarize. Scientific evidence triggers reaction and spin that ends up entrenching the attitudes of opposing political tribes.
Recent research suggests this phenomenon is actually stronger among the more educated, through what psychologists call “motived reasoning”: where data is rejected or twisted - consciously or otherwise - to prop up a particular worldview.
However, a new study in the journal Nature Human Behavior finds that one type of fact can bridge the chasm between conservative and liberal, and pull people’s opinions closer to the truth on one of the most polarizing issues in U.S. politics: climate change.
Previous research has broadly found U.S. conservatives to be most skeptical of climate change. Yet by presenting a fact in the form of a consensus - “97 percent of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused global warming is happening” - researchers have now discovered that conservatives shift their perceptions significantly towards the scientific “norm.”
Cambridge says that in an experiment involving over 6,000 U.S. citizens, psychologists found that introducing people to this consensus fact reduced polarization between higher educated liberals and conservatives by roughly 50 percent, and increased conservative belief in a scientific accord on climate change by 20 percentage points.
Moreover, the latest research confirms the prior finding that climate change skepticism is indeed more deeply rooted among highly educated conservatives. Yet exposure to the simple fact of a scientific consensus neutralizes the “negative interaction” between higher education and conservatism that strongly embeds these beliefs.
“The vast majority of people want to conform to societal standards, it’s innate in us as a highly social species,” says Dr. Sander van der Linden, study lead author from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology.
“People often misperceive social norms, and seek to adjust once they are exposed to evidence of a group consensus,” he says, pointing to the example that college students always think their friends drink more than they actually do.
“Our findings suggest that presenting people with a social fact, a consensus of opinion among experts,
