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. 

You Can't Persuade Climate Change Skeptics by Calling Them Names

Global Climate Change, National Park Service

I promised to offer suggestions for persuading people that global warming is real. Young Swedish firebrand Greta Thunberg has been traveling the world telling world meetings that they need to listen to the scientists and act. But many Americans don’t believe that global warming is occurring, or they deny that human activity is causing it. Five percent of Americans in a recent survey said that the climate is not changing, while another thirteen percent said that human beings are not causing climate change. Unfortunately, if these eighteen percent dominate the Republican primary voting bloc, they wield influence far beyond their numbers.

Thunberg has us thinking about climate change. Good for her. Most responses to Thunberg’ speeches have relied almost entirely on ad hominem attacks as people criticize her parents, her mental health, the way she dresses, and her physical appearance. Those weak attacks reflect her opponents’ intellectual and moral poverty. So, people might wonder, how might we persuade the doubters?

Before we think about that, however, let’s talk about how not to persuade people about climate change. This is important, because, as any teacher will tell you, it is a lot harder to get wrong ideas out of a person’s head than it is to get good ideas into them. This post shows an ineffective (but all-too-common) way to persuade people about climate change. My next post will talk about how to persuade people with at least some hope that you will succeed.

Let's put this into context. Ignorance reigns. Not knowing things is our natural state. Bad ideas float everywhere, like malicious mind gremlins that attack everything smart. The mind gremlins block out knowledge. Mind gremlins work because many people don’t know much about science. The mind gremlins fill the void. Climate change is a relatively new scientific research field. In one survey a few years ago, about one out of four Americans did not know that the earth travels around the sun. About half deny the theory of evolution by natural selection. It should be no surprise that something as obscure and seemingly subjective as climate change encounters stubborn ignorance rather than reception. 

Some of these attitudes may never be overcome. Still, there are basically three ways to go about persuading climate change deniers: (1) Persuade climate change deniers that the sources to which they listen, typically the conservative media, are unreliable. Or, (2) persuade climate change deniers that people who tell them about science are credible. Or, (3) present the evidence in detail. None of these will work all the time. I pretty much guarantee you that (1) and (2) are hopeless. Conservatives have very strong commitment to conservative media, and attacking those media directly is unlikely to change anyone’s mind. The conservative media have trained their listeners to mistrust experts. People won't start to trust experts just because you say so.

But this frustrates climate change activists and leads them to give useless speeches. Consider the following (imaginary) speech by a climate change activist:

"What is wrong with you clowns? We have thousands of scientific studies showing that climate change is real. Human beings have pumped zillions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air, and of course it has affected our climate. Where do you think you’re going to live after the earth boils? Look at all the conservatives living in Tampa and St. Petersburg and Galveston. Are you eager to be flooded out of your homes? Are you stupid? Why do you listen to people on Fox News, let alone talk radio announcers who have no scientific training? Why do you ignore anyone who has actually taken a science course? Are you a bunch of nuts? Are you completely ignorant? Are you proud to be ignorant and stupid? Grow up and quit being idiots."

Unfortunately, with only a little exaggeration, that could be a typical climate change talk. And, in their frustration, some climate advocates get even worse. Science personality and Dancing with the Stars dancer Bill Nye lit a globe on fire and said: 

“The average temperature could go up another 4 to 8 degrees. What I’m saying is that the planet’s on f---ing fire. There are a lot of things we could do to put it out. Are any of them free? No! Of course not! Nothing’s free, you idiots. Grow the f--- up. You’re not children any more. I didn’t mind explaining photosynthesis to you when you were twelve. But you’re adults now, and this is an actual crisis. Got it?” 

Nye was venting, not persuading. Yes, he was frustrated, but no wild diatribe will persuade skeptics. Nye probably felt better after his rant. It was probably cathartic. But was it his goal to feel superior – or to change people’s minds?

Guess what? Lashing out at people isn’t persuasive. First, people don’t like to be insulted. People who really are stupid, ignorant, bigoted, or uneducated are sick and tired of being told that they are stupid, ignorant, bigoted, or uneducated. People insult them every day. Listening to insults is the background of their lives. They are not impressed when someone insults them.

Second, neither Nye’s speech nor my imaginary climate change advocate gave us much climate change information. Oops.

So, strive for something better. Let climate change activists present the research and try to activate the listeners’ willingness and ability to understand the scientific information. That requires us to know the details of what scientists have said, and it also requires us to present that information in a clear, understandable way. It might not work. But it’s all that you can do. I’ll talk about that in an upcoming post. I'll also explain a persuasion theory that helps us understand how that works. Hint: the only cure for ignorance is information. Stay tuned!


P.S.: If 1 out of 4 Americans don’t know that the earth travels around the sun, there is something seriously wrong with science education. Oops again.

Trump's Twitter Speech: Short Speeches, Sound Bites, and Politics in the Digital Age. Or, Who Needs Facts, Anyway?

Faced with likely impeachment and possible removal from office, Donald Trump combined the two things he does best: posting on Twitter and giving speeches. A few days ago, he attacked his opponents in a 30-second Twitter speech. He called impeachment "a scam." Most Twitter speeches are clips from speeches that were first given at more public forums, but Trump’s speech was created to be posted on social media. It lived only on social media. And it was very, very short. By my count (see my previous post), Trump made nine attacks against his opponents in half a minute. Trump did not prove his points. No one can prove, document, or even illustrate nine accusations in 30 seconds. So what was Trump doing? The political environment, which has long been driven by partisanship, does not invite serious discussion. Trump is “Teflon Don” because he understands that short, shallow, mindless, partisan persuasive messages rule American politics.

First, the day is long past when most voters listen to entire speeches. Although hundreds or even thousands of people show up for Trump’s rallies, they represent only a tiny fraction of voters. A politician (including Trump) who gives a campaign rally speech hopes to get maybe 10 seconds pasted into the evening news. The rest of the speech is for show.

Second, most politicians spend most of their campaign budget on television advertising. The typical campaign advertisement is only 30 seconds. A political advertisement’s text is often even more shallow than Trump’s Twitter speech. Consider, for example, George W. Bush’s series of infamous 2004 commercials, which showed menacing wolves prowling through the woods while a husky-voiced announcer intoned this shallow, inaccurate text:

“In an increasingly dangerous world, even after the first terrorist attack on America, John Kerry and the liberals in Congress voted to slash America’s intelligence operations. By $6 billion. Cuts so deep, they would have weakened America’s defenses. And weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm.”

The wolf commercials combined a fear appeal combined with a misleading statistic that FactCheck.org debunked easily. The real question, though, is, how much information can one present in 30 seconds? Not much, obviously. But drivel like that helped Bush win the election, did it not? So why won't drivel work for Trump, too?

Here's the crux: issues don't make much difference. Alas, most people make political decisions superficially on the basis of party loyalty, group membership, religion, ethnicity, and similar factors. Of those, partisanship ranks first.  Social scientists have known this for many years. In the 1950’s, Bernard Berleson, Paul Lazersfeld, and William McPhee investigated how people make voting decisions, and their conclusions still stand more than half a century later.  Indeed, an international research team led by Dartmouth College’s Sean J. Westwood concluded in 2015 that “in integrated and divided nations alike, citizens are more strongly attached to political parties than to the social groups that the parties represent.”

Unlike most of his opponents, Trump understands perfectly well that impeachment is as much a political process as a legal one. His 30-second Twitter speech addresses raw partisanship – and nothing else.

That is why Trump could describe impeachment as a “scam.” Given the evidence so far, it obviously is no scam, but partisanship drives Republican primary voters to sympathize with his complaint. His attack on the Democrats didn’t need to prove that the Democrats are bad; he just needed to sound partisan: 

“The Democrats want to take away your guns; they want to take away your healthcare: they want to take away your vote: they want to take away your freedom; they want to take away your judges; they want to take away everything.”

As long as he maintains his base’s support, Trump has little to fear from a Senate trial. Since partisanship drives people’s political decisions, and voter attitudes drive the Senate’s decisions, Trump’s strategy, which is to appeal the raw partisanship, is exactly on point. And Trump doesn’t need to hold onto all Republican voters. He only needs to hold onto the primary election voters, who tend to be the most partisan and ideological. As long as they support him, Republican Senators will fear primary challenges from the right and they may hold firm for Trump.

Trump’s defense, like the defenses offered by his Republican supporters, has been incredibly shallow and mostly irrelevant to the issues. However, Americans are used to hearing shallow discussions – that’s why 30-second campaign ads and 10-second soundbites on the evening news make such a difference – and that is why Trump’s 30-second Twitter speech has a chance to persuade the primary voters whom Trump needs to reach. So far, Trump has displayed terrible judgment about legal issues, but his political instincts hold strong.

Will Trump survive impeachment proceedings? Based on the evidence we’ve seen so far, his legal case seems to be extremely weak. But as long as pro-Trump partisan attitudes hold within his base, he could still complete his term in office. Time will tell.