You Might Persuade Climate Change Skeptics by Giving Them Information

Climate Change and the Amazon Drought

The big problem with most climate change speeches is that the speakers tell the audience that there is a lot of evidence about climate change, but they don’t explain what the evidence is. I showed in my previous post that you can’t persuade climate change skeptics by insulting them and calling them names. You also can’t persuade climate change skeptics just by promising that the scientists agree. That asks them to change their minds on faith, and skeptics are not going to change their minds on faith. They need evidence. That doesn’t mean that evidence will always persuade them; it won’t. But evidence is all we have.

Persuasion Theory

Let’s go over a few basic points of persuasion theory.  A well-established persuasion theory is the Elaboration Likelihood Model, which I have written about a few times. This theory, developed by psychologists Richard E. Petty and John Cacioppo, says that there are two paths by which listeners process persuasive messages. People follow the central path when they think about a message carefully. This occurs when people are motivated to analyze a persuasive message and feel that they have the skill and knowledge to do so. The peripheral path does not involve careful thinking. Instead, the listener relies on peripheral cues, such as whether the listener likes the speaker, finds the speaker attractive, or already has a positive attitude toward the message. The number (as opposed to the quality) of messages gives listeners a peripheral cue.

When people change their attitudes over the central route, the attitude change is likely to be long-lasting and to influence their behavior. For example, it might influence their long-term voting. But attitude change that occurs over the peripheral route is likely to be temporary and easily changed. Furthermore, attitude change over the peripheral route is unlikely to change people’s long-term behavior. Much advertising, including most political advertising, aims at the peripheral route. That, for example, is why many political messages are ridiculously short and convey little actual information. Voters who process information on a given topic by the central route will ignore such short, simple messages.

Speakers cannot control whether the audience will process a message by the central or peripheral route. They can, however, offer the audience opportunities to process information. When a speaker says, “scientists agree about climate change,” the speaker is appealing purely to the peripheral route. That almost all scientists do, in fact, agree about climate change is a peripheral cue. Climate change skeptics, however, are exposed to many other peripheral cues.  For example, they hear Fox News hosts and talk radio personalities call climate change a hoax. When speakers give the audience too little information, they offer the audience little chance to process a message by the central route. Of course, a highly motivated audience member can find the research on Google Scholar. But how many people will do so? Climate change speakers make a mistake when they do not invite central route processing. Here are the reasons why and what to do about them:

First, the evidence for climate change is complex. A superficial speech cannot address complexities.

Second, audience members might not feel that they have the knowledge or ability to analyze the scientific information for themselves. People use the central route only when they feel motivated and capable. That is why it becomes a speaker’s job to present information in a way that is accessible and persuasive. That requires a speaker to do research (and I’ve often commented that speakers need research) and to present that research to the audience in a way that is clear and well-organized. That requires a speaker to make a lot of effort, but the effort might pay off in a higher likelihood that the audience will choose to process the information critically.

Third, the speaker needs to give the audience a reason to think carefully about climate change. The central route requires effort! That is where Greta Thunberg has been doing a great job. She is enthusiastic and knows how to get the audience’s attention. But what she has not done, however, is to help people understand the information. That’s probably too much to expect from any 16-year-old speaker, no matter how smart she is, so it’s time for other speakers to pick up the load and take the next step.

Fourth, it is necessary to anticipate the most common objections that climate change skeptics present. Skeptics will say that scientists once complained about global cooling, which is partially true. They will point out that there are natural causes of climate change. This is also true, although a bit beside the point. Some people will flat-out deny that the climate is changing at all, since day-to day weather changes much more than the two degrees of warming that we’ve seen so far from climate change. Speakers should not expect conservative objectors to give them a reasonable chance to engage in back-and-forth dialogue. That experience, which high school and college debate teams take for granted, rarely occurs in the real world. Instead, speakers need to anticipate and preempt the major objections, and to refute those objections with care. Speakers should assume that they only get one shot to make their case. (That doesn't mean that one speech is enough, but that's a topic for another day.) Again, asking the audience to take something on faith invites them to process the message by the peripheral route.

All effective persuasion comes down to giving people information. The better job a speaker does of presenting information, the more likely it is that audiences will respond. We ask a lot of people when we expect them to cut back how much they use the fossil-fuel energy sources that have made the industrial nations so prosperous. It is wrong to think that changing people’s minds will ever be an easy job. Any time we think about persuasion, we need to think about the audience.

So, that’s what persuasion research tells us. In my next post, I’ll show how these persuasion principles might work in a practical way. 

P.S. Many good sources explain the Elaboration Likelihood Model. Here’s a simple, accurate explanation by an Oregon State University professor. Any current persuasion textbook will also discuss this model. Ambitious (and wealthy) readers can buy an e-book version of Petty and Cacioppo’s book here.

Image from NASA.