RAPPORT
Sociale psychologie sleutel voor aanpak klimaatprobleem?
Informatie is één, maar hoe deze gebracht wordt is bepalend voor de vraag of de boodschap overkomt en tot actie leidt. Een Amerikaans boek over psychologie en klimaat. De World Business Council for Sustainable Development bericht over het boek 'The Psychology of Climate Change Communication'.
Uit een bericht van World Business Council for Sustainable Development
>> A greater understanding of human nature may be the key to protecting Mother Nature from climate change, a new book says.
Climate scientists, politicians and journalists are not typically known for probing the depths of human nature. But "The Psychology of Climate Change Communication" says that's exactly what they should be doing -- if they want to get their messages across to the public.
Drawing on research from psychology, communication, anthropology and other social sciences, the book, published last week by Columbia University's Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, or CRED, says that the enduring gap in understanding about climate change between scientists and the public stems from a lack of effective communication.
Understanding how people think, in particular about climate change, can help anyone from scientists and educators to journalists and politicians sharpen their messages to penetrate more clearly through the clutter of information to their audiences.
"Having information about climate is one thing," said Sabine Marx, associate director at CRED and one of two lead authors of the book. "But then how it is presented will determine whether people, whether it will resonate with people, whether it will lead to action."
Scientists have been publishing research for three decades showing that greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are causing climate change. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international body of scientists that later won the Nobel Peace Prize for its work on climate, published a report saying that evidence of global warming is "unequivocal."
But as climate legislation moves through the Senate, a poll conducted last month by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that only 36 percent of Americans believe that climate change is happening and is primarily caused by humans -- a drop of 11 percent from last year.
"Very often, perception, as we all know, is reality, in politics," said Stephen Schneider, a climate scientist at Stanford University, referring to the scientist-public disconnect at a press conference last week.
Marx said shaping public opinion can be a critical step toward passing climate policy, as well as promoting voluntary individual behavior to broaden the fight against climate change.
First, correct fuzzy, faulty public views of a complex problem
Marketers and advertisers have understood this principle for years -- that understanding the minds of those you are trying to reach can help guide you in shaping your messages to them, Marx said.
The lessons in the book are not about manipulating or deceiving people, however, the authors assert, but "to make credible climate science more accessible to the public."
Research presented in the book found that lots of Americans have a very fuzzy understanding of how climate change works.
For example, many people confuse climate change with the hole in the ozone layer and envision that a hole in the "greenhouse" lets in more ultraviolet radiation, warming the Earth. Others think the hole lets heat escape, cooling the Earth.
The reason such faulty beliefs exist is because people incorporate new information that they hear into pre-existing "mental models" of how the world works. Mental models, rather than being cohesive theories, often are based on fragmented bits of information, intuition, and personal experiences, the book says, which is why some people might get the handy, but erroneous, notion that the ozone hole is an escape valve for CO2.
Communicators can make use of this insight, first, by recognizing that people have mistaken views about climate change -- "Understand Your Audience" is the title of the first chapter -- and then correcting them.
Second, redirect emotional content to push for long-term changes
Mental models also filter what people learn, causing people to preferentially "uptake" the views that agree with their pre-existing beliefs.
"Both believers and skeptics find it tempting to over-interpret short-term hot or cold swings in temperature as evidence for or against climate change," the book wrote, in describing the psychological phenomenon called "confirmation bias."
Seven other chapters explore how other fundamental aspects of how humans process information have made mass understanding of climate change difficult and suggest ways to work with those realities.
Focusing on today's impacts is more powerful than focusing on future impacts, for example. Stories with a local angle also resonate with people.
And people fear loss more than they desire gain. For example, the book says, rather than telling a homeowner that energy-efficient appliances will save him money, a stronger message would be that he will avoid losing money on higher energy bills in the future.
Another lesson explains why scientific graphs don't make people jump out of their seats: The mind processes information in two ways, one based on emotion and the other based on logic, and research shows that emotion spurs people to action more than logic. That's why personal stories and vivid imagery are powerful ways to communicate messages.
But the book also warns that emotion only motivates action in the short term, so the best communication combines emotional and logic-based messages.
"You can grab people's attention with the emotional appeal, and then, when you have their attention ... people probably want to dig deeper once they're excited about something," Marx said. Even if many of the lessons seem intuitive, she added, most people do not incorporate them into their actual communication.
Third, extract the blame and eliminate the jargon
Marx said the point is not to blame the public.
"There's something to human nature," she said. "Of course we don't want to change. It's hard to change. But there are ways to present information so that it triggers more of a willingness to absorb the information and possibly act."
She also said the point is not to blame scientists, who often confound people with jargon.
Schneider, the Stanford scientist, was less hesitant to assign responsibility both to journalists and to scientists. "Inside of the tent of most of my colleagues, we are trained, as the journalists say, to bury our ledes," he said.
Schneider and Marx said many of the challenges facing climate change communication are very similar to those surrounding communicating about other complex sciences, like health.
Andrew Revkin, environmental reporter for The New York Times , said in an e-mail that he spent two decades focused on the physical science and impacts of climate change. "But in the last few years it's become clear that critical questions driving any policy on climate can only be understood by examining human nature, and the way we deal with such 'somewhere, someday' risks." He added that it is "vital" for climate change reporters to pay more attention to research on the psychology and sociology surrounding the issue.
Other books have been written about climate change communication, but the new book may be the best at practicing what it preaches. The 49-page book was designed with text, simple charts and even cartoons to help refine the message. One chart lists several terms that scientists could easily avoid to bring their message out of academia and into homes. For example, rather than "anthropogenic," the book suggests "human induced" or "man-made."
Marx said that everyone from scientists to local governments has expressed interest in the book.
Scientists have been accumulating data on climate change since former Vice President Al Gore was a Harvard University undergraduate. However, the work of social science researchers looking at how people think about climate change only got under way in the past three to five years, noted Susanne Moser, co-editor of the 2007 book "Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change." <<
Bron:
World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), 11 november 2009 (ontleend aan ClimateWire)
Bestellen: "The Psychology of Climate Change Communication", uitgegeven door Columbia University's Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (pdf of print)
Rapport: Internetversie van het boek