The Impact of Perceived Scientific and Social Consensus on Scientific Beliefs

Kobayashi, Keiichi

doi:10.1177/1075547017748948

Cited by 59 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…It is reassuring that people do not appear to rely on irrelevant anchoring cues (e.g., the number 97, whether alone or embedded in an unrelated statement about expert agreement among dentists), while they do update their beliefs when given domain‐specific information about the scientific consensus about human‐caused climate change. Consistent with other recent work (e.g., Bolsen & Druckman, ; Kerr & Wilson, ; Kobayashi, ), findings support the GBM (van der Linden, Leiserowitz et al, ) and should encourage further research on the benefits of communicating scientific consensus about controversial science topics.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…In other words, we conclude from these analyses that consensus messaging elicits genuine changes in people’s perceptions and understanding of the scientific consensus. At the same time, we suggest that future research might explore whether competing consensus cues, such as social consensus (e.g., X% of Americans believe that climate change is happening) might also serve as a “gateway belief” (Kobayashi, ). Moreover, consistent with other research (Cook et al, ; Lewandowsky et al, ; van der Linden et al, ), we find a modest but significant interaction with political ideology such that belief updates are stronger for conservatives than for liberals.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Additionally, through “estimate & reveal” techniques, biased perceptions of the norm can be corrected (Myers, Maibach, Peters, & Leiserowitz, ). Expert consensus, in particular, is therefore, often conveyed in the form of a descriptive norm (e.g., “Ninety‐seven percent of climate scientists have concluded that human‐caused climate change is happening”) and exerts informational influence (Kobayashi, ; van der Linden, Clarke, & Maibach, ). Importantly, a core assumption of the GBM is that perceptions of the norm are more malleable than deeply rooted private attitudes, which are more closely associated with ideological worldviews (Tankard & Paluck, ).…”

Section: Gateway Belief Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, research on the GBM finds that communicating the scientific consensus on climate change shifts people’s perception of the consensus (see Bolsen & Druckman, ; Brewer & McKnight, ; Chinn, Lane, & Hart, ; Cook & Lewandowsky, ; Cook, Lewandowsky, & Ecker, ; Deryugina & Shurchkov, ; Dixon, ; Harris, Sildmäe, Speekenbrink, & Hahn, ; Kerr & Wilson, ; Kobayashi, ; Lewandowsky et al, ; Myers et al, ; van der Linden, Leiserowitz et al, ; van der Linden, Leiserowitz, Rosenthal, & Maibach, ; van der Linden et al, ). Interestingly, although some interventions have generated “boomerang” effects (Hart & Nisbet, ), consensus messaging reduces motivated cognition by converging partisan perceptions toward the scientific norm (Cook et al, ; Lewandowsky et al, ; van der Linden, Leiserowitz et al, ; van der Linden et al, ; Zhang et al, ).…”

Section: Gateway Belief Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Additionally, through "estimate & reveal" techniques, biased perceptions of the norm can be corrected (Myers, Maibach, Peters, & Leiserowitz, 2015). Expert consensus, in particular, is therefore, often conveyed in the form of a descriptive norm (e.g., "Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening") and exerts informational influence (Kobayashi, 2018a;van der Linden, Clarke, & Maibach, 2015).…”

Section: G Ate Way B Elief Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

The role of anchoring in judgments about expert consensus

Goldberg

Linden

Ballew

et al. 2019

J Applied Social Pyschol

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Recent scholarship finds that communicating descriptive norms, such as the fact that 97% of climate scientists have concluded that human‐caused climate change is happening, is an effective gateway to changing individuals’ beliefs and attitudes about climate change and support for climate policies. Other scholars, however, have offered an alternative explanation: priming people with any “97%” figure serves as an anchoring heuristic that leads people to adjust their estimates of the scientific consensus. This study investigates this proposed anchoring effect. Results from three parallel experiments indicate that participants consistently update their perceptions of the scientific consensus when they receive a relevant statement about the scientific consensus on climate change, but not when receiving a semantically equivalent but otherwise irrelevant consensus cue that might be used as an anchor. Further, we find that perceived consensus mediates the effect of the consensus treatment on individuals’ attitudes. We also find that conservatives updated their consensus estimates significantly more than liberals. We replicate these results across three large samples from different sources (Total N = 3,132). These findings indicate that when people update their estimates of the scientific consensus, it reflects a genuine update in their beliefs and is unlikely to be a result of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic. This work contributes to a growing literature on the value of communicating expert consensus about contested scientific issues.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%