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Effects of consensus messages and political ideology on climate change attitudes: inconsistent findings and the effect of a pretest
There are inconsistent findings concerning the efficacy of consensus messages to persuade individuals to hold scientifically supported positions on climate change. In this experiment, we tested the impact of consensus messages on skeptics’ climate beliefs and attitudes and investigated how the decis...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer Netherlands
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8380189/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34456399 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03200-2 |
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author | Chinn, Sedona Hart, P. Sol |
author_facet | Chinn, Sedona Hart, P. Sol |
author_sort | Chinn, Sedona |
collection | PubMed |
description | There are inconsistent findings concerning the efficacy of consensus messages to persuade individuals to hold scientifically supported positions on climate change. In this experiment, we tested the impact of consensus messages on skeptics’ climate beliefs and attitudes and investigated how the decision to pretest initial climate beliefs and attitudes prior to consensus message exposure may influence results. We found that although consensus messages led individuals to report higher scientific agreement estimates, total effects on key variables were likely an artifact of study design; consensus messages only affected climate attitudes and beliefs when they were measured both before and after message exposure. In the absence of a pretest, we did not observe significant total effects of consensus messages on climate outcomes. These results highlight the limitations of consensus messaging strategies at reducing political polarization and the importance of experimental designs that mimic real-world contexts. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10584-021-03200-2. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8380189 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Springer Netherlands |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-83801892021-08-23 Effects of consensus messages and political ideology on climate change attitudes: inconsistent findings and the effect of a pretest Chinn, Sedona Hart, P. Sol Clim Change Article There are inconsistent findings concerning the efficacy of consensus messages to persuade individuals to hold scientifically supported positions on climate change. In this experiment, we tested the impact of consensus messages on skeptics’ climate beliefs and attitudes and investigated how the decision to pretest initial climate beliefs and attitudes prior to consensus message exposure may influence results. We found that although consensus messages led individuals to report higher scientific agreement estimates, total effects on key variables were likely an artifact of study design; consensus messages only affected climate attitudes and beliefs when they were measured both before and after message exposure. In the absence of a pretest, we did not observe significant total effects of consensus messages on climate outcomes. These results highlight the limitations of consensus messaging strategies at reducing political polarization and the importance of experimental designs that mimic real-world contexts. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10584-021-03200-2. Springer Netherlands 2021-08-21 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8380189/ /pubmed/34456399 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03200-2 Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2021 This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. |
spellingShingle | Article Chinn, Sedona Hart, P. Sol Effects of consensus messages and political ideology on climate change attitudes: inconsistent findings and the effect of a pretest |
title | Effects of consensus messages and political ideology on climate change attitudes: inconsistent findings and the effect of a pretest |
title_full | Effects of consensus messages and political ideology on climate change attitudes: inconsistent findings and the effect of a pretest |
title_fullStr | Effects of consensus messages and political ideology on climate change attitudes: inconsistent findings and the effect of a pretest |
title_full_unstemmed | Effects of consensus messages and political ideology on climate change attitudes: inconsistent findings and the effect of a pretest |
title_short | Effects of consensus messages and political ideology on climate change attitudes: inconsistent findings and the effect of a pretest |
title_sort | effects of consensus messages and political ideology on climate change attitudes: inconsistent findings and the effect of a pretest |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8380189/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34456399 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03200-2 |
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