Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half.

ABSTRACT: Pluralistic ignorance-a shared misperception of how others think or behave-poses a challenge to collective action on problems like climate change. Using a representative sample of Americans (N = 6119), we examine whether Americans accurately perceive national concern about climate change and support for mitigating policies. We find a form of pluralistic ignorance that we describe as a false social reality: a near universal perception of public opinion that is the opposite of true public sentiment. Specifically, 80-90% of Americans underestimate the prevalence of support for major climate change mitigation policies and climate concern. While 66-80% Americans support these policies, Americans estimate the prevalence to only be between 37-43% on average. Thus, supporters of climate policies o

SUBMITTER: Sparkman G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9399177 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature