Yvew right here. On one stage, it shouldn’t come a shock that people cling to pre-existing beliefs on politicized subjects like local weather change even when information pile up in opposition to them. This propensity has been properly demonstrated within the social psychology literature, even when these findings haven’t gone mainstream.
As an illustration, one examine a few years in the past demonstrated that when individuals are introduced with contradictory proof, most as an alternative double down. Within the interval when even the US press had began retreating from the WMD in Iraq fabrication, a researcher gathered a bunch of still-true believers. He confirmed them a video of demonstrating why the declare was false, together with, critically, a clip of President Bush admitting as a lot.
Even with the seeming showstopper of the Bush walk-back from his Administration’s once-dogged assertions, the viewers afterward scored as extra, not much less, satisfied of the validity of the WMD in Iraq story.
However, the notion that some who’ve really suffered a local weather change associated catastrophe would go deeper into denial appears excessive. However this well-done examine additionally consists of the function of partisan media protection round these occasion in assist the doubters discover backing for his or her views.
By Milena Djourelova, Ruben Durante, Elliot Motte, and Eleonora Patacchini. Initially printed at VoxEU
As climate-related disasters change into more and more frequent and harmful, one may anticipate first-hand expertise of those occasions to convey consensus on the urgency of addressing local weather change. But, the deep ideological divide on this difficulty within the US and past – mixed with extremely polarised media protection – might hinder this course of. Combining information on the timing and placement of US-based pure disasters with large-scale electoral surveys, this column reveals that experiencing disasters really deepens partisan divisions in local weather change attitudes, with important implications for the general public debate and policymaking.
The query of how you can improve public assist for local weather motion is on the forefront of coverage debates in lots of international locations and is turning into more and more pressing (Dechezleprêtre et al. 2022, Furceri et al. 2021, Douenne and Fabre 2022).
But, partisan variations in public perceptions concerning the existence and significance of local weather change have been rising over the previous many years. As an illustration, in 2001, 48% of Republicans and 61% of Democrats within the US believed that the results of local weather change had already begun. In the present day, solely 29% of Republicans share this perception, in comparison with 82% of Democrats (Saad 2021). These diverging tendencies are regarding, as they counsel that discovering widespread floor on local weather options might change into more and more tough sooner or later.
On the identical time, the frequency and severity of local weather disasters have been rising over time (Worldwide Panel on Local weather Change 2014). Quite a few research have explored the connection between catastrophe expertise and views on local weather change or environmental behaviours; but, the proof stays blended. Some research discover a important optimistic influence (Hazlett and Mildenberger 2020, Deryugina 2013, Baccini and Leemann 2020), others a blended or qualitatively small optimistic influence (Konisky et al. 2016, Bergquist and Warshaw 2019), and but others discover no impact (Marquart-Pyatt et al. 2014, Carmichael et al. 2017).
In a latest paper (Djourelova et al. 2024a), we revisit the proof by inspecting how particular person beliefs about local weather change reply to catastrophe experiences within the brief time period, with a selected concentrate on ideology as a lens via which these experiences are filtered.
Ideological Variations within the Attribution of Disasters to Local weather Change
Our evaluation proceeds in two steps. First, we conduct on-line surveys to grasp how people cause concerning the causes of disasters and their affiliation with local weather change, utilizing Hurricane Ian as a salient case examine. Our findings counsel huge ideological variations within the attribution of the hurricane to local weather change and, respectively, within the willingness to assist local weather motion (Determine 1). This implies that the prevalence of the identical catastrophe is interpreted very in another way relying on particular person ideology. Eliciting second-order beliefs, we additionally discover that people are very a lot conscious of those partisan cleavages.
Determine 1 Attribution of disasters to local weather change: Prolific survey
Ideological Variations within the Impact of Catastrophe Expertise on Local weather Change Beliefs
Within the second and predominant a part of our evaluation, we examine how particular person beliefs on local weather change evolve after publicity to a pure catastrophe. We accomplish that by linking observational information on individual-level views on local weather change, expressed in a big electoral survey (the Cooperative Election Examine), to the precise timing and placement of disasters declared by the Federal Emergency Administration Company.
Our empirical technique leverages variation within the prevalence of pure disasters in time and house relative to the survey’s roll-out. Extra particularly, we examine the attitudes of respondents surveyed within the 4 weeks after an area catastrophe to these surveyed within the 4 weeks earlier than the occasion. We isolate the impact of disasters from different elements affecting local weather change attitudes, akin to geographical, temporal, or socio-demographic determinants, by evaluating respondents residing in the identical county, who’re interviewed throughout the identical yr and who share comparable traits. In an effort to study how polarisation on the problem evolves following a catastrophe, we enable for the results of catastrophe publicity on local weather change beliefs to vary based mostly on respondents’ political ideology.
Our findings are putting. We observe that catastrophe publicity tends to widen the ideological hole in local weather change beliefs, not shut it. After experiencing a catastrophe, liberal respondents show a rise of their issues about local weather change of round 1.4–2.6 share factors relative to their pre-disaster stage. In the meantime, conservative respondents’ issues for local weather change lower by 2.5–2.6 share factors. These modifications are significant as they signify a widening of the partisan hole by round 11%. We don’t discover comparable divergence in views on coverage points apart from local weather change and the setting, and are in a position to rule out differential reactions by socioeconomic traits correlated with ideology, akin to revenue or age, as a proof for this sample.
Determine 2 Change in local weather change beliefs following an area catastrophe
The Position of Media Narratives
One cause people might revert to and strengthen their pre-existing local weather change beliefs is publicity to ideologically biased media accounts of disasters. Certainly, the media is a robust lens via which individuals interpret advanced occasions, and the best way information shops report on these occasions can considerably have an effect on public opinion (Djourelova et al. 2024b).
To discover this clarification, we study how native newspapers cowl disasters and local weather change and whether or not this protection influences people’ beliefs. We collect all newspaper articles mentioning key phrases associated to pure disasters, on one hand, and to local weather change, on the opposite, from round 1,200 native newspapers. We then measure variations within the amount and tone of protection devoted to disasters and to local weather change between liberal and conservative shops round native catastrophe occasions.
Our findings reveal stark variations between liberal and conservative shops, each within the amount and within the tone of protection. While the amount of local weather change protection produced by liberal shops will increase following an area catastrophe, conservative shops don’t cowl local weather change extra. That is regardless of liberal and conservative shops rising disaster-related protection at the same price.
Moreover, we used the brand new capabilities supplied by massive language fashions akin to GPT to seize delicate variations within the tone and content material of reports tales collectively associated to local weather change and disasters. Determine 3 reveals that liberal shops usually tend to counsel a causal connection between local weather change and disasters. In addition they suggest that local weather change is a vital difficulty extra typically than conservative shops. Conversely, conservative newspapers have the next tendency to actively negate the causal connection between local weather change and disasters and to make use of sarcasm when discussing local weather change. Our evaluation reveals that these ideological variations in tone are additional amplified within the wake of disasters.
Determine 3 Partisan content material variations in articles about local weather change and disasters
Lastly, our evaluation means that these ideologically biased media narratives might play a task in polarising local weather beliefs. Two items of proof level on this course. First, we discover that the polarising impact of disasters is current solely in counties with an energetic native newspaper, the place residents usually tend to encounter ideologically framed local weather tales. Second, the impact is extra pronounced when native media protection on local weather change clashes with respondents’ ideology. For instance, conservative people residing in areas with excessive climate-change protection show the strongest lower in climate-change issues after a catastrophe. Conversely, liberals in areas with restricted local weather protection strengthen their environmental issues extra.
Taken collectively, these findings underline a regarding pattern: somewhat than fostering a united response to local weather change, pure disasters might deepen ideological divides, particularly when conflicting media narratives reinforce pre-existing beliefs. Our findings have implications for policymakers and activists. First, they counsel that the timing of makes an attempt to lift consciousness about local weather change issues – as such, efforts might set off conservative backlash within the speedy aftermath of disasters. Second, they reveal that the politicisation of local weather change and conflicting messaging within the mass media is a significant impediment to reaching consensus on this matter.
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