Talking Global Warming

1. Talking Global Warming “The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do.” Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, 1921

2. Strategic Frame Analysis • Pays attention to the public’s deeply held worldviews and widely held assumptions. • Studies those assumptions to determine their impact on policy preferences. • Taps into decades of scholarly research on how people think and communicate. • Suggests ways to help people reconsider issues by changing the way issues are framed.

3. What Is A Frame? “The way a story is told – its selective use of particular symbols, metaphors, and messengers – which, in turn, triggers the shared and durable cultural models that people use to make sense of their world.” (Bales and Gilliam)

4. Questions We Pursue • How does the public think about an issue? • Are there dominant frames that appear almost automatic? • How do these dominant frames affect policy choices? • How are these dominant frames reinforced? • How can the issue be reframed to invigorate less accessible frames that evoke a different way of thinking and alternative policy choices?

5. Rethinking Communications • People are not blank slates • Communications is interactive • The currency of communications is frames • Communications resonates with people’s deeply held values and worldviews • When communications is inadequate, people default to the “pictures in their heads” • These default frames are heavily influenced by news media • When communications is effective, people can see an issue from a different perspective

6. The Cognitive Perspective Are you satisfied with current child care arrangements? 83% say yes Issue Visible Attitude Hidden Reasoning What are they thinking?

7. Implication 4 Model B Implication 5 Implication 6 Implication 7 Model C Implication 8 Implication 9 Visible Attitude Issue Implication 1 Model A Implication 2 Implication 3

8. Elements of the Frame • Context • Numbers • Messengers • Tone • Visuals • Metaphors and Models • Stories • Values

9. Levels of Thinking • Level One: Big ideas, like justice, prevention, family, equality and opportunity • Level Two: Issue-types, like women’s rights, the environment, children’s issues, work • Level Three: Specific issues, like treatment of women by the Taliban, rainforests, daycare, minimum wage

10. What Is the Message We Are Delivering?Vote (Democratic)Conserve water Safety? Safety? ? Lifestyle? Economy? Recreation/Environment? Seas rising, fish dying, global warming, pollution, 4Ps = BIG PROBLEM

11. Framing and Reframing Global Warming A Summary of the FrameWorks Research

12. FrameWorks Research Completed • A review of recent survey research • Cognitive elicitations with the public • Content analysis of TV news and print media • Cognitive analysis of environmental websites, materials, op-eds and news • Focus groups • A new national priming survey • Talkback testing of simplifying models • A Post 911 survey on tone

13. Scary Weather Natural not man-made Consequences not solutions Triggers adaptation Outside human control Economy Necessary evil; no other solution Triggers asceticism 3 of 4 becomes pragmatic compromise What is Global Warming About?

14. Why Doesn’t Extreme Weather Work? • If it’s weather, is the problem natural or man-made? • If it’s weather, is it political? • If it’s weather, who is responsible? • If it’s weather, can it be prevented? • What’s the best way to prepare for bad weather?

15. Acts of God Protection Self-Interest 1 Weather Environment Energy Economy 2 Global Warming Global Warming Global Warming 3

16. Situation Analysis --- Americans: • Believe global warming is real. • Understand negative consequences. • Are not yet sufficiently motivated to adopt preventive, policy solutions. • Do not understand man-made causes and solutions, only impacts. • Are turned off by partisan tone of debate.

17. Summary of Recommendations • The message needs to attach to responsibility and planning. • Bring global warming down to earth; make it manageable. • Give the public a simplifying model of global warming. • Use reasonable, not rhetorical, tone to engage listening. • Use frame elements strategically, especially tone and numbers. • Give solutions high priority. • Be strategic in the order of presentation.

18. Responsibility Stewardship Acts of God Self-Interest 1 Solutions Technology Weather Energy 2 CO2 Problem Global Warming Fossil Fuels 3

19. The message needs to attach to responsibility and planning. • Manager – minimize risk, demonstrate stability and competence orientation • Pioneer/visionary – innovation and emphasis on long-term planning • Steward - religious and future generations orientation

20. What is the responsible thing to do? Responsibility Submessages • Prudence is minimizing risk. Is it prudent to wait for more evidence while the problem grows? • Isn’t it better to be safe than sorry? • Reliance is vulnerability. Is it responsible to rely on one energy source? • Is it responsible to only plan for the short-term? • Are our leaders being prudent managers?

21. Responsible Manager in our Heads “I would love some guy like Ross Perot to…put up charts and go, ‘Here is our problem…Here are the potential solutions.’ There doesn’t seem to be a national movement led by the administration to take us in a certain direction and make sure we are environmentally safe and sound.” Focus group participant

22. Visionary Meets American Can Do “The Manhattan Project. the Apollo Program. The silicon chip. The Internet. Time and again, America has proven that putting together the best minds and the right resources can result in technological breakthroughs that change the course of human history.” UCS Common Sense on Climate Change

23. Steward “New England is a special place. But we need to act soon to prevent global warming from transforming the character of our region. We all have a responsibility for the stewardship of our environment. A healthy planet and a stable climate is a legacy we can be proud to leave our children.” Clean Air Cool Planet

24. Bring global warming down to earth; make it manageable. • Shift scientists from proving global warming to explaining global warming. • Explain causes as man-made, stress agency. • Explain causes before consequences. • Relate causes and consequences in systems thinking. • Put humans in the center of the system – ecosystems include humans. • Reduce the timeline – 20 years not 2000.

25. Use A Simplifying Model forGlobal Warming Axel Aubrun, Ph.D. Joseph Grady, Ph.D.

26. The Debate Trap • Scientists are comfortable debating • Debate is the wrong model • It’s unnecessary – the public is convinced • Debate is a “turn-off” • Hedges are disengaging

27. The Knowledge Vacuum • Very few people understand the mechanism. • Understanding  Motivation • D'Andrade (1992), Schemas and Motivation, Human Motives and Cultural Models • Shore (1996), Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture and the Problem of Meaning • Scientists as trusted messengers

28. The “Adaptationist” Response

29. The Expert Model

30. “Simplifying Model” A simple concrete analogy that conveys the essence of an expert understanding

31. Analogies in Science – “First Rung Theories”

32. Analogies in Science – “First Rung Theories” “the heart is a pump” “the eye is a camera” “the cell is a factory” “the kidney is a waste filter” “photosynthesis is like baking bread” “an electric circuit is like a water conduit” “the brain is a computer” • Thagard (1997), Medical Analogies: Why and How, Proceedings of the 19th Annual Conf. of the Cog. Sci. Soc. • Biela (1991). Analogy in science • Gentner & Gentner (1983), Flowing waters or teeming crowds: Mental models of electricity, Mental Models • Gregory (1981), Mind in Science: A History of Explanations in Psychology and Physics • Hesse (1963), Models and analogies in science

33. Constraints on Public Communication In order to spread through the population, a model of global warming should: • Be learnable through very brief exposures • Be easily conveyed to others once learned • Be easy to present to the public in multiple ways, including both verbal and visual.

34. Knowledge that Spreads “In an oral tradition, all cultural representations are easily remembered ones; hard to remember representations are forgotten, or transformed into more easily remembered ones, before reaching a cultural level of distribution” Sperber (1985: 86), • Sperber (1996), ExplainingCulture: A Naturalistic Approach • Strauss & Quinn (1997), A cognitive theory of cultural meaning • D’Andrade (1981), The cultural part of cognition, Cog.Sci. • Dennett (1995), Darwin’s Dangerous Idea

35. The Hole in the RoofScenario

36. Existing models • Global Warming/Climate Change • A process, not a “thing” • Not clearly a problem • No mechanism • Greenhouse Effect • A nice analogy in principle • Misleading • Not very contagious

37. (A) Burning Fossil Fuels(B) CO2 Buildup(C) CO2 Traps Heat(D) Temperature Rise(E) Negative Consequences The Causal Chain of Global Warming

38. TalkBack Testing • 400 subjects • 25 “Primes” – comparison of impacts vs. mechanism • Qualitative and quantitative quiz

39. Example “Prime” Nearly all experts agree that the average global temperature is rising, and that humans are causing this change. Experts sometimes refer to the problem of global warming as "CO2 Heat Lock." Normally, the atmosphere allows excess heat to rise away from the Earth. By doubling the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air we are blocking heat from escaping into space, and locking it into our own atmosphere. Heat just isn’t getting out. It's as though there were a CO2 Lock keeping the heat in. This trapped heat is raising temperatures and causing problems all over the world.

40. TalkBack Results • Result: Remarkable learning • Further confirmation in survey research: • Greenberg & Boorstin, May 2002: “[U]sing simple explanatory models to explain global warming has a strong, positive impact on driving up levels of concern about the issue. […] Rarely, in fact, does research provide such clear directions.”

41. Recommended simplifying model Carbon Dioxide Blanket • A “physical” object • Focuses on main cognitive hurdle • Not too metaphorical • Displaces Ozone Layer

42. Recommended supporting language Heat Trapping • Essence of the mechanism • Easily understood • Easily remembered and repeated • Commonly used by journalists • Clarifies and reinforces “Carbon Dioxide Blanket”

43. Using a Simplifying Model • “When we burn fossil fuels like coal and gas, we pump more and more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and this build-up creates a blanket effect, trapping in heat around the world.” • Use early • Repeat often, in different variants

44. Example of Simplifying Model 20th Century with Mike Wallace, "The Sizzling Planet", 1999. History Channel/CBS News: The big worry: that man's tampering finally has brought the dreaded greenhouse effect. That the hot temperatures may be due to a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, caused by the burning of fossil fuel, and by the shrinking of the world's forests. Result: a blanket over the planet that keeps in the heat. (Susan Spencer, CBS News)

45. Teaching the Mechanism • Scattered info  clear picture • Opens the door to new information • Lasting knowledge Vs. transient arousal • Causally connects humans to the problem. • No “end runs” (e.g. “3 out of 4”)

46. Teaching the Mechanism (continued) • Evokes Americans' self-image as responsible managers and problem-solvers. • Practical problem Vs. Just for environmentalists • Emphasizes prevention – Vs. adaptation and survival

47. A Winning Combination Simplifying Model • Triggers Level 1 ideas like Practicality, Responsibility, Can-do, Know-how etc. “Responsible Manager” “Solutions Available”

48. Summary of Recommendations • The message needs to attach to responsibility and planning. • Bring global warming down to earth; make it manageable. • Give the public a simplifying model of global warming. • Use reasonable, not rhetorical, tone to engage listening. • Use frame elements strategically, especially tone and numbers. • Give solutions high priority. • Be strategic in the order of presentation.

49. What We Know About Tone • Rhetorical tone polarizes people • Reasonable tone engages people in problem-solving • Extreme statements and partisan attacks turn people off, conjure the “just politics” frame • Environmentalists lose credibility and identity when attacking

50. Impact of Tone on Policy Support