Do You Believe in a Just World?

edgray

edgray

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Last night I read this really interesting psychological study into the possible reason as to why even though the evidence for anthropogenic climate change is growing all the time, the level of skepticism towards this is also growing.

Why dire climate warnings boost skepticism

Undermining belief in a fair world may mean that climate warnings go unheeded.

The use of dire predictions to encourage action on climate change may be backfiring and increasing doubt that greenhouse gases from human activities are causing global warming.

Although scientific evidence that anthropogenic activities are behind global warming continues to mount, belief in the phenomenon has stagnated in recent years. "When I was a pollster, I was detecting that many dire messages seemed to be counterproductive, we really needed someone to determine why," says Ted Nordhaus at the Breakthrough Institute, a Californian think-tank for energy and climate issues.
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The study was designed to see how a just world belief system might affect denial or acceptance of the climate change issue.

The participants in the study were put into two groups, with one group was primed into a just world belief system by being asked to unscramble sentences like "somehow justice will always prevail" whilst the other was primed in the opposite direction with sentences like ""Often, justice will not prevail".

After this, the participants completed a survey which gauged their skepticism towards global warming.

They were then shown 2 videos made by the Environmental Defense Fund. After watching these, they then had their degree of skepticism over climate changed measured once again.

Feinberg and Willer found that participants primed to have a stronger belief in a just world reported levels of skepticism that were 29 percent higher, and a willingness to reduce their carbon footprint that was 21 percent lower, than those primed to see the world as an unjust place. Their findings are reported in Psychological Science.

"The idea that persuasion is most effective when it matches a person's belief systems is something we have known about for a while, but what is nice about this research is that it identifies the just-world belief system as a key matter for climate-change communicators to attend to," says psychologist Janet Swim at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.
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Full Article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-dire-climate-warnings-boost

Interesting. It seems that a belief in a just world hardens skepticism against things like anthropogenic global warming.

It's no surprise I guess that the loudest critics of the global warming phenomenon are the conservatives and the religious right.
 
Perhaps people would take global warming more seriously if its advocates would stop using scare tactics. I think it was over 10 years ago that Al Gore predicted sea levels would rise by 20 feet by 2100! In his 2006 documentary he still talked about what Florida and NYC will be like when sea levels have risen by 20 feet but he deftly left out any time frame. Sea levels have risen about 2 inches in the last 20 years. Why should anyone take this man seriously? And when a lot of people think global warming they think Al Gore.
 
BornReady said:
Perhaps people would take global warming more seriously if its advocates would stop using scare tactics. I think it was over 10 years ago that Al Gore predicted sea levels would rise by 20 feet by 2100! In his 2006 documentary he still talked about what Florida and NYC will be like when sea levels have risen by 20 feet but he deftly left out any time frame. Sea levels have risen about 2 inches in the last 20 years. Why should anyone take this man seriously? And when a lot of people think global warming they think Al Gore.
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This is true to an extent I believe.

But if you think about it, scare tactics have worked in the past. Remember the hole in the Ozone layer? Major scare tactics were given, and as a result, the damaging chemicals where removed from all aerosol products within a couple of years, as well as polystyrene etc etc. And what about the acid rain? Factories soon removed sulphur from their output stacks.

Both of these were serious issues, both were dealt with quickly.

Why is it so hard for those with a "just world" belief system to tackle climate change?
 
I thought people were just plain and simply doubting global warming. I can't count how many times people have told me "I don't believe in global warming rah rah rah" or telling it doesn't exist. I thought that might've been why there's reduced worry over the whole thing.
 
BornReady said:
Perhaps people would take global warming more seriously if its advocates would stop using scare tactics. I think it was over 10 years ago that Al Gore predicted sea levels would rise by 20 feet by 2100! In his 2006 documentary he still talked about what Florida and NYC will be like when sea levels have risen by 20 feet but he deftly left out any time frame. Sea levels have risen about 2 inches in the last 20 years. Why should anyone take this man seriously? And when a lot of people think global warming they think Al Gore.
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He damn right lied in his film to.

He might fool Madonna, but he doesn't fool me.
 
BornReady said:
The problem with scare tactics is if someone is always predicting gloom and doom but nothing ever happens then he loses credibility. On the other hand, if he makes reasonable predictions and they do happen then he builds credibility.
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true, but the problem with not telling the worst that's going to happen is we have no idea how close we are to the tipping point. Many scientists believe that we're teetering on the brink right now of setting off chain reactions that will alter life on this planet beyond all recognition.
 
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