Do climate change deniers bend the facts to avoid having to modify their environmentally harmful behavior? IZA Research Director Florian Zimmermann and Lasse Stötzer ran an online experiment involving 4,000 US adults. Surprisingly, they found no evidence to support this idea. Whether this is good or bad news for the fight against global warming remains to be seen. The study was published today in Nature Climate Change.
Many people still downplay the impact of climate change or deny that it is primarily a product of human activity. But why? One hypothesis is that these misconceptions are rooted in a specific form of self-deception, namely that people simply find it easier to live with their own climate failings if they do not believe that things will actually get all that bad. This “motivated reasoning” helps us justify our behavior
For instance, people who fly off on holiday several times a year can give themselves the excuse that the plane would still be taking off without them, or that just one flight will not make any difference, or—more to the point—that nobody has proven the existence of human-made climate change anyway. All these patterns of argument are examples of motivated reasoning. Bending the facts until it allows us to maintain a positive image of ourselves while maintaining our harmful behavior.
Self-deception to preserve a positive self-image
The study by Zimmermann and Stötzer is the first to examine the role that this form of self-deception plays in how people think about climate change. At the center of the online experiments was a donation worth $20. Participants were randomly allocated to one of two groups. The members of the first group were able to split the $20 between two organizations, both of which were committed to combating climate change.
By contrast, those in the second group could decide to keep the $20 for themselves instead of giving it away and would then actually receive the money at the end. Anyone keeping hold of the donation needs to justify it to themselves. One way to do that is to deny the existence of climate change.
As it happened, nearly half of those in the second group decided to hold on to the money. The researchers now wanted to know whether these individuals would justify their decision retrospectively by repudiating climate change. Without “motivated reasoning,” the randomly selected groups should essentially share a similar attitude to human-made global warming. If those who kept the money for themselves justified their actions through self-deception, however, then their group should exhibit greater doubt over climate change. Yet, the study revealed no sign of that effect.
Climate change denial: a hallmark of one’s identity?
This finding was also borne out in two further experiments. On the face of it, this is good news for policymakers, because the results could mean that it is indeed possible to correct climate change misconceptions, simply by providing comprehensive information. If people are bending reality, by contrast, then this approach is very much a non-starter.
However, the study does reveal some indication of a variant of motivated reasoning, specifically that denying the existence of human-made global heating forms part of the political identity of certain groups of people. Put another way, some people may to an extent define themselves by the very fact that they do not believe in climate change. As far as they are concerned, this way of thinking is an important trait that sets them apart from other political groups, and thus they are likely to simply not care what researchers have to say on the topic.