How to Combat Distrust of Science - The Surprising Power of the Psychology of Consensus

Climate Change, Anthropocene, & Associated Issues

Date posted: 05/04/15

Sander van der Linden and Stephan Lewandowsky report that the acceptance of science has become increasingly polarized in the United States. Indeed, a recent Pew poll shows that there is a substantial and growing amount of public disagreement about basic scientific facts, including human evolution, the safety of vaccines and whether or not human-caused climate change is real and happening. What is causing this, you might ask? People often interpret the same information very differently. As psychologists, we are more than familiar with the finding that our brains selectively attend to, process and recall information. One consequence of this is confirmation bias, a strong tendency to automatically favor information that supports our prior expectations. When we consider issues that we feel strongly about - e.g., global warming, confirmation bias reaches a new height - it transitions into motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning is the additional tendency to defensively reject information that contradicts deeply held worldviews and opinions. One example of this is the motivated rejection of science; if you are personally convinced that global warming is a hoax, you are likely to reject any scientific information to the contrary regardless of its accuracy. Yet, if our personal values, beliefs and worldviews really dictate our reality, then are not science communicators just blowing in the wind? Not necessarily so. Although some research has indeed shown that factors such as scientific literacy are not always associated with, say, more concern for climate change, we have investigated a different, social type of fact. i.e., expert consensus. Our research shows that highlighting how many experts agree on a controversial issue has a far-reaching psychological influence. In particular, it has the surprising ability to neutralize polarizing worldviews and can lead to greater science acceptance. .