Peter Limburg, JD Anticipated May 2022
Climate change is now more politically polarizing than any issue in American public discourse. In a recent poll from Yale University, American voters were asked to order topics by how important they were to their voting decision in the 2020 presidential election. For liberal Democrats, climate change came third in importance. For conservative Republicans, climate change ranked dead last, in the 29th slot. But it is important to note that global warming was not always this polarizing. After all, in 1988, it was President George H. W. Bush who remarked, “Those who think we are powerless to do anything about the greenhouse effect forgot the White House effect . . . As president, I intend to do something about it.” Why then, has the rift in public opinion on climate change become wider than ever before? And can anything be done to fix it?
Dan Kahan, Professor of Law and Psychology at Yale Law School, and his coauthors investigated this very issue in a 2011 academic study. Their goal was to gather evidence that would either support or refute what was called, in scientific circles, the Public Irrationality Thesis (PIT). PIT was a popular explanation for why the public failed to accept the best available scientific evidence on climate change. It had three parts.
First, PIT assumed that most people did not grasp basic science or the scientific method. Therefore, people had trouble understanding climate science evidence as well as knowing when the science was being misrepresented to them. Second, PIT assumed that most people struggled with technical reasoning. Under this understanding, there were two ways that people processed information: System 1 and System 2. System 1 thinking was a fast, gut-based response. This response was prone to biases and would often feature flimsier modes of reasoning that were faster than System 2 thinking. System 2 thinking, on the other hand, was a slower, conscious reflection and judgment. PIT suggested that most people, because they were not adept at science, failed to use System 2 thinking when processing climate change information. Instead, they relied on System 1. System 1 was flawed, because when people used it instead of System 2 they often chose whatever the popular beliefs were in their cultural group. This last idea—that people chose an opinion that reinforced their group’s values—was called cultural cognition.
To test PIT, Kahan and his coauthors surveyed adults. The goal of the survey was to ask questions to collect information about each piece of PIT, and to have respondents then rank how severe they perceived the risks of climate change to be. Then, the scientists would analyze the survey results to see how important each piece of PIT was in predicting how a respondent would rank the risk of climate change. For the first piece of PIT, scientific literacy, they asked questions from the National Science Foundation to measure respondents’ understanding of basic science. To test the second part of PIT—System 1 and 2 thinking—they asked respondents to solve math problems. This would result in each respondent having a numeracy score to represent how good they were at System 2 thinking. For the third step of PIT, cultural cognition, Kahan and his coauthors asked a uniform set of questions concerning worldviews and societal values to determine what cultural group each respondent was in.
Based on respondents’ answers to the questions on worldview and societal values, the scientists sorted most respondents into two groups, which were hierarchical individualists and communitarian egalitarians. Hierarchical individualists believed that individuals had to secure their own wellbeing without help or disruption from society. They put high value on commerce and industry. They also associated authority with stratified social roles signaled by gender, race, and class. Communitarian egalitarians, on the other hand, believed that society had a duty to ensure the collective welfare of its people. Sometimes, that duty necessarily overrode individual interests. In general, they were distrustful of commerce and industry. In addition, they favored less rigid social classification than did hierarchical individualists. Kahan and his coauthors ended their survey by asking respondents to rank the risk of climate change on a scale of 0 (“no risk”) to 10 (“extreme risk”). Then, the scientists ran statistical analysis to see how much each piece of PIT contributed to respondents’ risk perception of climate change.
Once Kahan and his colleagues finished analyzing the results, they found that their data did not support PIT. If PIT were true, a respondent’s perceived risk of climate change would have increased with scientific literacy and System 2 proficiency. In fact, there was a small negative correlation between the two. The scientists found that the process outlined by PIT—that inadequate education and a lack of technical reasoning led people to agree with their group in rejection of scientific evidence—was not true. The evidence actually showed that the more scientifically literate and skilled in System 2 thinking respondents were, the more hierarchical individualists and communitarian egalitarians diverged from one another. This was because people grew more proficient at using and discarding science to support their group’s beliefs as they became more educated. So, instead of education, the most powerful predictor of how a person would perceive the risk of climate change, Kahan and his coauthors found, was cultural cognition. Hierarchical individualists ranked climate change risk as low. Communitarian egalitarians ranked it as high.
The most significant finding of the study was that the political polarization around climate change did not stem from a disparity in education; it stemmed from cultural cognition. Group values such as equality and authority, individualism and community, influenced people’s opinions on climate change. Yale University’s 2020 presidential poll was a stark picture of climate change risk perception following along cultural group lines. This was illustrated in the previously discussed survey, finding that, climate change was 3rd most important for liberal Democrats, 29th in importance for conservative Republicans.
That cultural divide was also visible elsewhere, like in the documentary Merchants of Doubt. In a particular scene of that film, a climate denier referred to deniers at large as one team. People who believed climate science fell into an opposing team. In response, the climate activist balked. He argued that climate change affected everyone and that there were no teams. Yet, the denier dug in deeper to his position. In that scene, it became apparent that climate science held no real sway there. Tribalism held more power. That denier was communicating his self-identification to his peers through his expression of opinion, aligning himself with them.
Kahan and his co-authors had various theories about why cultural cognition was such a potent influence in their survey results. First, individuals were motivated to correspond their beliefs with those of their cultural group. This minimized the risk that they would be estranged from their group. It also maximized their chances of continuing to get support and affirmation from their group. The motivation to tailor one’s belief to one’s group affected both System 1 and 2 thinking. So, no matter how educated a person was, they were still incentivized to fit their beliefs with their “team.”
As a result of that strong motivation, people tended to disregard evidence that clashed with their beliefs. For example, hierarchical individualists valued commerce and industry. So, they often dismissed climate change evidence because societal-level acceptance of that evidence could result in more regulation of commerce. People also interpreted evidence to support their prior beliefs and those of their group. Lastly, while people did give high deference to experts, they deferred to experts whom they thought shared their values, again reinforcing the cultural cognition effect.
With all this in mind, Kahan and his coauthors made two suggestions on how to reduce polarization. First, they recommended communicating climate science information in a way that affirmed instead of conflicted with people’s values. In practice, that meant speaking with different people in different ways. For example, a hierarchical individualist would respond with more open-mindedness to climate science if they were told that nuclear power and geoengineering numbered among the solutions. Since the hierarchical individualists associated nuclear power and geoengineering with human ingenuity, which was something their cultural group valued, it would be easier for them to accept the science and fit their beliefs to their group. Second, Kahan and his coauthors recommended including experts from different cultural groups to publicly support climate science. That way, people in their respective groups would find it easier to remain open-minded because they had been informed about climate change from an expert that they associated with their group.
On a smaller level, in my personal life, I applied these two techniques in conversation with a friend. My friend—I will call him Bill for his privacy—is someone I would categorize as a hierarchical individualist. He is a libertarian. He ties authority to wealth and power. He is against big government regulation. In conversation, one day, he surprised me by saying that he thought climate change was a hoax. That surprised me because Bill was studying to be a doctor. He is very smart and very scientifically literate. In the years that followed, we had a few discussions about climate change. I learned to not talk about the need for sweeping government action, because it made him dig deeper into his position. Our friendship was significant to both of us. I think that was why, even though I did not shame him for his belief, he read up on climate change. He read about it in the Wall Street Journal and his other preferred news sources. Then, at some point, he let me know that he thought global warming was a real and immense threat to society. However, he still did not think it was caused by humans. He thought that nuclear power should be a central part of America’s strategy, and that geoengineering looked like another promising solution.
Notably, Bill trusted the Wall Street Journal more than he would have ever trusted me. That, I thought, exemplified the effectiveness of Kahan’s recommendation that experts across cultural groups should play in communicating climate science. After Bill shared his new position with me, I did not complain. His new beliefs still resonated with his values. He kept many of his views and fit in with his group. Meanwhile, the gap in our opinion on how much of a risk climate change presented became much smaller.
Months later, my interactions with Bill and my understanding of Kahan’s recommendations led me to think more about how to effectively talk about climate change. Another promising idea I came across was from Saul Griffith, a MacArthur Genius and founder of OtherLab—a research and innovation lab focused on the development of advanced technologies. He suggested that strategies to mitigate effects of climate change should be described from the kitchen table out. Griffith described a scenario in which you heated your coffee each morning on an induction range. You had better air quality, fewer allergies, and less asthma. He described radiant floor heating, which did not give you dry mouth like central heating did. Your car would be electric and charged in the morning. Your energy costs would be much cheaper, saving you perhaps as much as $1,000–2,000 a year. When I heard Griffith’s kitchen-table-out approach, I instantly felt more energized about responding to the climate crisis. I felt more convinced that a global response to climate change could improve life for everyone on average.
Importantly, I realized, the kitchen-table-out story works for the same reasons that Kahan’s suggestions worked on my friend. Griffith’s description does not conflict with hierarchical individualists. The image that Griffith paints is one that would only be possible with human ingenuity and innovation, something that hierarchical individualists value. It does not sound like an attack on capitalism, either. Similar to Kahan’s observation that hierarchical individualists perceive estrangement from their cultural group as a larger risk than climate change, Griffith’s kitchen table picture speaks to people at the individual level. Many hierarchical individualists place a high value on individualism, so the individualist flavor of Griffith’s vision may be appealing to them. If I had told Bill that description, I doubt his kneejerk reaction would have been rejection.
Further, I wondered, could the threat posed by climate change be communicated in a way that conflicted less with the values of hierarchical individualists? Could the same urgency within communitarian egalitarians who see climate change as a high risk be kindled in hierarchical individualists? Significantly, median warming scenarios projected an economic decline of 1.2% GDP for every degree Celsius of warming, and a 23% reduction in per capita earnings by 2100. A worst-case scenario, which has a 12% likelihood of happening, is predicted to result in 50% less global economic output by 2100. For a hierarchical individualist who values commerce and industry, perhaps framing the risk in such a way would not conflict with their group beliefs. Further, framing the risk as economic could give them an opportunity to affirm their group values while still accepting climate science. In that case, the threat to the economy stems from climate change itself rather than solutions to climate change.
All things considered, any methods to lessen the political polarization surrounding climate change are incredibly valuable in a time when the issue has never been more polarized. Kahan’s techniques and Griffith’s story can be used on an individual level to speak with people from different cultural groups. On the broader level of public discourse, the same techniques can help reduce overall polarization. Polarization itself is not an insurmountable outcome of cultural cognition. It is something that can be overcome, and must be, for society to effectively meet the challenge of climate change.