Can Social Scientists Help You Combat Global Warming?

Can Social Scientists Help YouCombat Global Warming? Arthur Lupia University of Michigan Arthur Lupia, University of Michigan

Can Social Scientists Help YouCombat Global Warming? Necessary Conditions for Persuasion Arthur Lupia, University of Michigan

A Familiar Objective • Outcome: reduce emissions • Means: Persuade mass and elite audiences to change beliefs and actions. • Method: Educate the public and policy makers about climate change. www.umich.edu/~lupia

One view of “us” www.umich.edu/~lupia

One view of “them” Our target audience is ignorant lazy apathetic. www.umich.edu/~lupia

Proposition Failure is the norm. The consequence is tragic. The problem is not “them.” The problem is “us.” www.umich.edu/~lupia

Your Task • Get the audience from A to B. • A. The audience’s initial state of belief and action. • B. Get “them” to where we want them to be. www.umich.edu/~lupia

Necessary Conditions for Success • What do “they” want to know? • The science of attention • What will they think about? • The science of elaboration • Who & what will they believe? • The science of credibility www.umich.edu/~lupia

The Battle for Attention & Working Memory • WM has a very limited capacity (Baddeley: 72) • WM has a high decay rate (for most stimuli, <1ms). • Communications are parsed. To get attention an utterance must: • imply large  in pleasure or pain (urgency) • prevail over proximate others www.umich.edu/~lupia

What will you remember? ? www.umich.edu/~lupia

What will you remember? www.umich.edu/~lupia

What will you remember? • If we try very hard, we can reconstruct only tiny fragments of life events. • Even chunks that seem very important at the time or to others. • Implication: What a target audience remembers may not be what you want it to remember. www.umich.edu/~lupia

The Battle for Elaboration & LTM • WM provides an opportunity to leave a cognitive legacy. •  relevant activation potentials is not automatic. •  LTM requires elaboration. • Perceptions of urgency and efficacy fuel cognitive effort. • Chunks leave a legacy if perceived as unique and highly utility-relevant. • Necessary but not sufficient www.umich.edu/~lupia

Implications for Climate Science • To most citizens, • The benefits of reducing emissions are: distant / abstract / uncertain • The costs of lifestyle change are: immediate / concrete / certain www.umich.edu/~lupia

Social Solutions • Make it close. • Highlight local consequences of actions that also reduce emissions. • Make it real. • Highlight visible consequences of actions that also reduce emissions. • If TA cannot see how to be effective, they will not try. • Make it personal • Enlist speakers whose support for such activities counter stereotypes. www.umich.edu/~lupia

A Challenge... • “duck” www.umich.edu/~lupia

…in the Political Context • Politics entails conflicts not easily resolved. • It yields language indeterminacy with a nasty edge. • Words have multiple meanings. • Meanings are context-dependent. • Conflict brings incentives to manipulate context and meaning. • Result: “communication games” with unusual incentives. • People have to work harder to learn. • Persuasion requires CREDIBILITY www.umich.edu/~lupia

The front of the room is the center of attention. There are exams. Your most important choices are somewhat public. There is one teacher. Math Class vs. Politics www.umich.edu/~lupia

The front of the room is the center of attention. There are exams. Your parents, friends, and prospective employers may learn your grades. There is one authority figure. Relevant stimuli are in many places. No exams. Your most important choices are private. Competing views are expected. Math Class vs. Politics www.umich.edu/~lupia

Who is credible on topics of climate related policy? Environmentalists? Scientists? Politicians? Arthur Lupia, University of Michigan

Credible Foundations • For contested issues, high credibility is a must. • Credibility is domain-specific and is bestowed by the audience. • Credibility is a function of • Source attributes* • Message attributes • Contextual attributes* • Audience effects* www.umich.edu/~lupia

Familiar Conditions • In a signaling model, communicative dynamics depend on • The distance between sender and receiver ideal points • The presence of external costs & incentive structures • Belief change based on Bayesian updating www.umich.edu/~lupia

Implications of GT Model • Credibility is domain-specific and is bestowed by the audience. • Absent external forces, persuasion requires • perceived common interests and • perceived speaker knowledge. • External forces can substitute for speaker attributes. • When feedback is good and the choice space is limited, people tend to make effective decisions about whom to believe. www.umich.edu/~lupia

Lab Experiments • A subject is a voter or advisor. • The voter predicts coin tosses and earns $1/correct prediction. • Advisor: “heads” or “tails.” • Perceptions vary: hidden die rolls determine speaker interests & knowledge. • Institutions vary: penalties for lying, costly effort, verification present in selected trials. www.umich.edu/~lupia

First Trials • Complete information. • Incomplete information. • No advice. • Incomplete information. • Advisor is paid for your success. • Incomplete information. • Advisor is paid for your failure. www.umich.edu/~lupia

FromThe Democratic Dilemma. Chapter 7. With sufficient penalties or verification, we expect persuasion and reasoned choice. Otherwise, we do not. www.umich.edu/~lupia

From Arthur Lupia and Mathew D. McCubbins. Elements of Reason: Cognition, Choice and the Bounds of Rationality. Ch. 3.New York: Cambridge University Press. www.umich.edu/~lupia

CATI Experiment N=1464 • “... talk show host [SENDER] [POSITION] spending money to build more prisons. What do you think? Is spending money to build prisons a good idea or a bad idea?” • “How much would you say that [SENDER] knows about what will happen if this country spends money to build more prisons -- a lot, some, a little, or nothing?” • “On most political issues would you say that you and [SENDER] agree all of the time, most of the time, only some of the time, or never?” www.umich.edu/~lupia

Random Selection www.umich.edu/~lupia

From Arthur Lupia and Mathew D. McCubbins. The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know? Ch 8.New York: Cambridge University Press. • Metric: (%Yes|Heard Supports) - (%No|Heard Supports) • L to R: declining perceptions of trust and knowledge, we expect declining effects. www.umich.edu/~lupia

Just Ideology? • The effect of factors such as ideology depend on perceived agreement and knowledge. • The converse is not true. • Perceived knowledge & trust are the fundamental source effects. www.umich.edu/~lupia

Credibility in Strategic Contexts Credibility = Perceived Interest Proximity x Perceived Knowledge • Perceptions can be based on source attributes or external factors. • The effects are interactive. • Source effects are a consequence of these factors. The converse is not true. www.umich.edu/~lupia

Effective “The organization’s mission is seen as bringing about behavior change by meeting the target market’s needs and wants.” Ineffective “The organization’s mission is seen as inherently good.” Principle 1 (Andreasen 1995) www.umich.edu/~lupia

Effective “The assumption is made that customers have very good reasons for what they are doing.” The target has perceptions, needs, and wants. Ineffective Customers are the problem. They are seen as deficient in one of two ways. Ignorance. Lack of Motivation. Principle 2 We must learn and adapt. www.umich.edu/~lupia

Implications • Many “experts” and “advocates” overestimate their persuasive powers. • That change should occur does not mean that it will. • Information transmission is not competence transmission. • One is trivial, the other is not. • “They” have reasons for what they do. • “Real” knowledge of the science of learning beats “idealized” fictions about how citizens learn. www.umich.edu/~lupia

Can Social Scientists Help You Combat Global Warming?