Making Climate-Science Communication Evidence-Based — All the Way Down
Culture, Politics and Climate Change (eds. M. Boykoff & D. Crow, Routledge Press, 2014 Forthcoming)
19 Pages Posted: 14 Feb 2013 Last revised: 31 Aug 2013
Date Written: February 13, 2013
Abstract
Scientists and science communicators have appropriately turned to the science of science communication for guidance in overcoming public conflict over climate change. The value of the knowledge that this science can impart, however, depends on it being used scientifically. It is a mistake to believe that either social scientists or science communicators can intuit effective communication strategies by simply consulting compendiums of psychological mechanisms. Social scientists have used empirical methods to identify which of the myriad mechanisms that could plausibly be responsible for public conflict over climate change actually are. Science communicators should now use valid empirical methods to identify which plausible real-world strategies for counteracting those mechanisms actually work. Collaboration between social scientists and communicators on evidence-based field experiments is the best means of using and expanding our knowledge of how to communicate climate science.
Keywords: climate change,cultural cognition, motivated reasoning, decision science, science communication
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Cultural Cognition and Public Policy
By Dan M. Kahan and Donald Braman
-
Culture and Identity-Protective Cognition: Explaining the White Male Effect in Risk Perception
By Dan M. Kahan, Donald Braman, ...
-
Fear of Democracy: A Cultural Evaluation of Sunstein on Risk
By Dan M. Kahan, Paul Slovic, ...
-
Cultural Cognition of the Risks and Benefits of Nanotechnology
By Dan M. Kahan, Donald Braman, ...
-
More Statistics, Less Persuasion: A Cultural Theory of Gun-Risk Perceptions
By Donald Braman and Dan M. Kahan
-
Culture and Environment in the Pacific Northwest
By Richard Ellis and Fred Thompson
-
Cultural Cognition and Public Policy: The Case of Outpatient Commitment Laws
By Dan M. Kahan, Donald Braman, ...
-
Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus
By Dan M. Kahan, Hank Jenkins-smith, ...
-
Fixing the Communications Failure
By Dan M. Kahan