Effects of consensus messages and political ideology on climate change attitudes: inconsistent findings and the effect of a pretest.

ABSTRACT: There are inconsistent findings concerning the efficacy of consensus messages to persuade individuals to hold scientifically supported positions on climate change. In this experiment, we tested the impact of consensus messages on skeptics' climate beliefs and attitudes and investigated how the decision to pretest initial climate beliefs and attitudes prior to consensus message exposure may influence results. We found that although consensus messages led individuals to report higher scientific agreement estimates, total effects on key variables were likely an artifact of study design; consensus messages only affected climate attitudes and beliefs when they were measured both before and after message exposure. In the absence of a pretest, we did not observe significant total effects of conse

SUBMITTER: Chinn S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8380189 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature