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Scientific agreement can neutralize politicization of facts

Nature Human Behaviour volume 2, pages 2–3 (2018)Cite this article

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To the Editor — In light of the continued politicization of facts on critical societal issues, developing ways to effectively communicate with the public about scientific topics is becoming increasingly important1,2. We commend recent behavioural science research for tackling a question that is of paramount interest to this debate: do individuals with more education and science literacy display more polarized beliefs on highly contested issues, such as climate change? Several recent correlational studies3,4 have suggested this, concluding that more education and science literacy may actually increase rather than decrease polarization on issues linked to political and religious identities.

Thus, these findings suggest that communicating facts does not necessarily cause issue polarization. Indeed, although higher educated individuals may engage in more motivated reasoning, this effect can largely be countered with accurate information about the state of scientific agreement. Furthermore, instead of trying to change deep-rooted beliefs about contested issues, it may be easier to correct people’s perception of the norm6,7, as societal norms help set standards against which people evaluate the appropriateness of their beliefs and behaviours. Importantly, as a group, scientists are viewed as non-partisan8. In other words, correcting people’s perception of the scientific norm can help depolarize ideological worldviews and neutralize motivated cognition. In short, we caution against the conclusion that communicating facts about contested issues is necessarily ‘polarizing’3,4.

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Fig. 1: Highlighting scientific norms depolarizes judgements about climate change.

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Acknowledgements

We thank B. Fischhoff for his helpful feedback and comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We also thank S. Rosenthal, M. Mildenberger, B. Zhang and J. Marlon for their help with the survey design and data collection. The study was supported by funding from the MacArthur, Grantham and Energy foundations. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Sander van der Linden

  2. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Anthony Leiserowitz

  3. Center for Climate Change Communication, Department of Communication, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Edward Maibach

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  1. Sander van der Linden
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  2. Anthony Leiserowitz
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  3. Edward Maibach
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Contributions

S.V.L. and A.A.L. designed the study and collected the data. S.V.L. performed the statistical analyses with input from A.A.L. and wrote a first draft of the manuscript. E.W.M., A.A.L and S.V.L. all contributed to the writing and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Sander van der Linden.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Tables 1-2, Supplementary Figures 1-4, Supplementary References 1-6

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Linden, S.v., Leiserowitz, A. & Maibach, E. Scientific agreement can neutralize politicization of facts. Nat Hum Behav 2, 2–3 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0259-2

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