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In the persuasion game, beware the backfire effect
For a generation, activists have built their protest movement on the scientific facts of climate change. But the facts of another kind of science — neuroscience — indicate that this only reinforces the point of view of the unconvinced.
Thu, May 05 2011 at 9:39 AM
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HEY-HEY, HO-HO!: A 350.org protest event in San Francisco presents the facts of the case. (Photo: Steve Rhodes/Flickr)
There's a terrific feature story in the current issue of Mother Jones that should be required reading for anyone engaged in the art and science of persuasion, and it's a must-read in particular for climate activists. It's called The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science, and it's one of the best single-link introductions I've found to the neuroscientific underpinnings for that common activist's dilemma: the facts that so compel you to act fail utterly to compel others to do so.
The piece centers on "an array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience [that have] demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions." In particular, there's a phenomenon that neuroscientists call "motivated reasoning," which refers to a vast array of emotions, biases, and other point-of-view tics we all use to filter new information. Even when — maybe especially when — we think we're bringing our intellect most fully to bear on an issue, at the very moments we believe reason is our copilot, we're actually looking for ways to deflect and deny, to counter-argue and dissuade, to stuff this new data into the worldview we already hold dear.
"It would seem," Mother Jones' Chris Mooney explains, "that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts."
What's more, the impact of this motivated reasoning is sometimes strongest when we encounter the most passionate arguments. Mooney: "In fact, head-on attempts to persuade can sometimes trigger a backfire effect, where people not only fail to change their minds when confronted with the facts — they may hold their wrong views more tenaciously than ever."
As Mooney notes, this is not a partisan thing. Though it can be found in the entrenched views of death penalty diehards and Iraq warhawks, it's just as big a factor in the uncompromising stances of those who take to the Huffington Post with counterfactual arguments about the link between vaccines and autism.
One of Mooney's strongest cases in point is the rational gulf between climate activists and climate denialists. "If you wanted to show how and why fact is ditched in favor of motivated reasoning," he writes, "you could find no better test case than climate change."
Reading the article, I was reminded of a couple of other long(ish) reads/watches well worth your time. The first is the report of the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Interface Between Psychology and Global Climate Change, which runs through a lengthy checklist of the many cognitive and perceptive biases that discourage many people from feeling the fight-or-flight urgency so evident among climate activists.
If APA Task Force reports aren't your cup of tea, I highly recommend checking out a series of videos posted recently at Climate Change Denial, a website run by George Marshall, head of the U.K.-based Climate Outreach Information Network. Here's Marshall on his website's raison d'etre: "It seeks to answer a question that has puzzled me for years: why, when the evidence is so strong, and so many agree that this is our greatest problem, are we doing so little about climate change?"
I first met Marshall at a climate-and-peak-oil conference five years ago, when he'd just begun his investigation of what he calls "the psychology of denial." (I can report, among other things, that I've rarely had the good fortune to meet a conference-goer who makes as engaging and entertaining between-session company as he does.) These most recent videos are from a 2009 lecture he gave on the topic, which he introduces like this: "When we look at climate change, we actually have something that you could say is in many ways perfectly designed to confound our immediate risk and threat assessment process. This therefore means that when it comes to climate change, our perception of risk or threat has to be generated. And it leads us into a world of belief."
I'll let George explain how to navigate that world for those interested. The takeaway from all of this, for now, is that the key challenge facing climate activists is ultimately one of innovation. They need to reinvent the way they engage the general public on the topic. They need to recognize, first of all, that more facts, delivered more forcefully, might very well be counterproductive. They are engaged not in the Green civil rights movement but in something more akin to a Green New Deal (or better yet in catalyzing the Second Industrial Revolution).
How you do that is a topic beyond the scope of one humble blog post; it's one I intend to return to often in this space.
To compare cognitive biases in 140-character bursts, follow me on Twitter: @theturner.
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Global warming is about global control. If this doesn't work they'll think of something else.
It seems that the "denial crowd" is primarily conservative, and the "believer crowd" is primarily liberal. Anyone else notice that over the years? So what does that suggest? Hmmm........maybe it means that this debate has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics. Just a thought.
"It seeks to answer a question that has puzzled me for years: why, when the evidence is so strong, and so many agree that this is our greatest problem, are we doing so little about climate change?"
Perhaps that is the problem, namely that the evidence is not that strong for AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming). According to two different satellite data sets, RSS and UAH, 1998 was the warmest modern day record year. And so far, 2011 is one of the coolest of the last 15 years.
The orbital drift problem was solved in 2005, however if you still do not trust satellite data, the Hadcrut3 data also show no global warming since 1998 and thereby agrees with the satellite data. If you wish, you can check that for yourself at: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt
They show that there really hasn't been any substantial warming for ten years or so.
If you're claiming to be a global climate modeller and you don't understand that the satellite data has argued strongly against your models, then you're either delusional or a liar.
I think you don't even have a technical degree, let alone work as a modeller.
What this debate needs is for less liberal arts people pretending to have a scientific background.
I couldn't agree with you more.
Why do we need scientists to tell us that clean air and water is important? If you believe otherwise go suck your cars exhaust.
This is funny. In the end the facts really are irrelevant. They have been twisted by all parties. No one really knows the "truth." But the truth is not what is important, it is the story......Stories propogated by powerful interests designed to serve political ends........In the end, their story comes down to...."trust me! This fact is true!"......."but if it is true, why do I need to trust you......."
So funny. There are so many comments on here that absolutely prove the point of the article. Hilarious!
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