Myers Teresa A, Maibach Edward, Peters Ellen, Leiserowitz Anthony
Center for Climate Change Communication, Department of Communication, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, United States of America.
Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2015 Mar 26;10(3):e0120985. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0120985. eCollection 2015.
Human-caused climate change is happening; nearly all climate scientists are convinced of this basic fact according to surveys of experts and reviews of the peer-reviewed literature. Yet, among the American public, there is widespread misunderstanding of this scientific consensus. In this paper, we report results from two experiments, conducted with national samples of American adults, that tested messages designed to convey the high level of agreement in the climate science community about human-caused climate change. The first experiment tested hypotheses about providing numeric versus non-numeric assertions concerning the level of scientific agreement. We found that numeric statements resulted in higher estimates of the scientific agreement. The second experiment tested the effect of eliciting respondents' estimates of scientific agreement prior to presenting them with a statement about the level of scientific agreement. Participants who estimated the level of agreement prior to being shown the corrective statement gave higher estimates of the scientific consensus than respondents who were not asked to estimate in advance, indicating that incorporating an "estimation and reveal" technique into public communication about scientific consensus may be effective. The interaction of messages with political ideology was also tested, and demonstrated that messages were approximately equally effective among liberals and conservatives. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
人为引起的气候变化正在发生；根据专家调查和同行评审文献综述，几乎所有气候科学家都确信这一基本事实。然而，在美国公众中，对这一科学共识存在广泛误解。在本文中，我们报告了两项对美国成年人全国样本进行的实验结果，这些实验测试了旨在传达气候科学界对人为引起的气候变化高度共识的信息。第一个实验测试了关于提供科学共识水平的数字与非数字断言的假设。我们发现，数字陈述导致对科学共识的估计更高。第二个实验测试了在向受访者呈现关于科学共识水平的陈述之前，引出他们对科学共识估计的效果。在看到纠正性陈述之前估计共识水平的参与者，比未被要求提前估计的受访者对科学共识的估计更高，这表明在关于科学共识的公众传播中纳入“估计与揭示”技术可能是有效的。还测试了信息与政治意识形态的相互作用，结果表明信息在自由主义者和保守主义者中大致同样有效。文中讨论了对理论和实践的启示。
