Do people “personally experience” global warming, and if so how, and does it matter?

Akerlof, Karen; Maibach, Edward; Fitzgerald, Dennis; Cedeno, Andrew Y.; Neuman, Amanda

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.07.006

Cited by 497 publications

(344 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Furthermore, the anomalies are not compared with natural variability, and therefore, they are moot about their probability. As such, these anomalies do not proxy changes in climate, which suggests that poor heuristics could bias previous results regarding the effect of experiential learning on the degree to which the public accepts climate change (3,14,18,(20)(21)(22).To evaluate how the spatial heterogeneity of climate change affects the public's willingness to accept scientific results that the climate is changing, we propose an index that accurately measures local changes in climate based on the number of days per year for which the year of the record high temperature is more recent than the year of the record low temperature. The index (23) is calculated as follows:…”

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confidence: 83%

“…This skepticism is likely caused by many reasons, including two psychological phenomena: climate change is hard to perceive via everyday experience, and climate change is ancillary to everyday concerns (3)(4)(5)(6). Under these conditions, experiential learning tends to be more powerful than statistical results (4,(7)(8)(9)(10).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Previous analyses calculate climate heuristics by comparing temperature during a given day (14,15), week (16), season (3,17,18), or year(s) (19,20) with a long-run average for the corresponding period and classifying this anomaly as either warmer or cooler than average. However, these daily, weekly, seasonal, or annual differences from the mean do not represent a change in climate, which is a change in the long-run weather means.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Spatial heterogeneity of climate change as an experiential basis for skepticism

Kaufmann

Mann

Gopal

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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We postulate that skepticism about climate change is partially caused by the spatial heterogeneity of climate change, which exposes experiential learners to climate heuristics that differ from the global average. This hypothesis is tested by formalizing an index that measures local changes in climate using station data and comparing this index with survey-based model estimates of county-level opinion about whether global warming is happening. Results indicate that more stations exhibit cooling and warming than predicted by random chance and that spatial variations in these changes can account for spatial variations in the percentage of the population that believes that "global warming is happening." This effect is diminished in areas that have experienced more record low temperatures than record highs since 2005. Together, these results suggest that skepticism about climate change is driven partially by personal experiences; an accurate heuristic for local changes in climate identifies obstacles to communicating ongoing changes in climate to the public and how these communications might be improved.climate change | climate skepticism | experiential learning | recency weighting | local climate D espite overwhelming scientific evidence, a significant fraction of the US population does not believe that climate is changing as proxied by a general warming, (1, 2), which we term skepticism. This skepticism is likely caused by many reasons, including two psychological phenomena: climate change is hard to perceive via everyday experience, and climate change is ancillary to everyday concerns (3-6). Under these conditions, experiential learning tends to be more powerful than statistical results (4, 7-10).Here, we test the hypothesis that skepticism about climate change is partially caused by variations in the direction (warming or cooling) and magnitude of climate change over space (herein spatial heterogeneity), which expose experiential learners to climate heuristics that differ from the global average, by formalizing a simple index that measures local changes in climate and comparing this index with survey-based model estimates of countylevel opinion about whether global warming is happening (1). Beyond the predictable impact of demographic factors (11-13), our results indicate that the index for local changes in climate (which may proxy an individual's climate experience) can account for a significant fraction of county-level variations in the percentage of the population that believes that "global warming is happening." These results are tempered by our finding that belief is shaped by more recent experiences. Specifically, belief is diminished by record low temperatures since 2005. Together, these results suggest that skepticism about climate change is driven partially by personal experiences; an accurate heuristic for local changes in climate identifies obstacles to and potential solutions for communicating ongoing changes in climate to the public.Previous analyses calculate climate heuristics by comparing temperat...

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confidence: 83%

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Spatial heterogeneity of climate change as an experiential basis for skepticism

Kaufmann

Mann

Gopal

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…People who report having experienced changes or events in the natural environment that they think were caused by climate change are more likely to believe that climate change is relevant to their local area and themselves 42 than people who did not report such experience. More specifically, experiencing phenomena attributed to climate change was associated with increased perceptions of personal and local risks from climate change [41][42][43] and higher levels of concern and worry about this threat 41,42 . Last but not least, people who felt that they had personally experienced climate change through weather-related events or changes were more likely to support mitigation 41,42 and adaptation 44 measures (for an overview, see ref.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…More importantly, the finding that personal experiences have the most consistent positive effects when individuals attribute them to climate change [40][41][42][43] An alternative way to bring climate change closer to people is to reduce the psychological distance that people perceive when they think about this issue. Support for this idea comes from a study that explored how people perceived climate change relative to several dimensions of psychological distance.…”

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confidence: 99%

Psychological responses to the proximity of climate change

et al. 2015

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A frequent suggestion to increase individuals' willingness to take action on climate change and to support relevant policies is to highlight its proximal consequences, that is, consequences that are close in space and time. However, previous studies that have tested this proximising approach have not revealed the expected positive effects on individual action and support for addressing climate change. We present three lines of psychological reasoning that provide compelling arguments as to why highlighting proximal impacts of climate change might not be as effective a way to increase individual mitigation and adaptation efforts as is often assumed. Our contextualisation of the proximising approach within established psychological research suggests that, depending on the particular theoretical perspective one takes to this issue, and on specific individual characteristics suggested by these perspectives, proximising can bring about the intended positive effects, can have no (visible) effect, or can even backfire. Thus, the effects of proximising are much more complex than is commonly assumed. Revealing this complexity contributes to a refined theoretical understanding of the role psychological distance plays in the context of climate change and opens up further avenues for future research and for interventions. KeywordsPsychological distance, personal experience, place attachment, threat, risk perception, defensiveness, mitigation, adaptation 3 Research on public perceptions of climate change often shows that people, at least in Western countries, typically perceive climate change as a distant threat, as something that affects strangers, and as something that happens in remote times and places, rather than in the here and now [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] (for an exception, see ref. 8 ). This perception of climate change as a distant threat is problematic because it implies little personal relevance. Low levels of personal relevance in turn are problematic because individuals' perception of being personally at risk can be an important motivation to take action against the source of that risk 9-14 .Consistent with this analysis, it has repeatedly been suggested that highlighting the proximal consequences of climate change could be an important part of strategies to engage and mobilize publics around this issue 3,[15][16][17][18][19][20] . Although the assumed psychological mechanism of proximising is often not verbalised (see also ref. 21 , where the term is used to describe a discursive strategy in which the speaker presents physically and temporally distant events as close and directly relevant to the addressee), the rationale behind proximising climate change seems to be that this approach (a) decreases the psychological distance between the issue and individuals who could or should act 17,22 and, (b) makes the consequences of climate change easier to visualise 4,23 and more personally relevant 24,25 . Moreover, proximising climate change is believed to increase (emotional) concern 16,22,26,27 and the feeling o...

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