Documenting the Mechanisms of Belief and Attitude Change on Controversial Issues: The Case of Global Warming and Trust in Scientists

记录有争议问题的信念和态度改变的机制：全球变暖和对科学家的信任的案例

• 批准号: 1042938
• 负责人: Jon Krosnick
• 金额: $ 20万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-01 至 2012-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1042938&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Documenting; Mechanisms; Belief; Attitude; Change

Decades of research have suggested that Americans' opinions on political issues change very slowly over years. Sudden large shifts in the percent of people who hold a particular view occur only very rarely and only in response to dramatic events that capture the attention of the entire nation, such as the September 11 attacks. Recently, a challenge to this view has been posited in the domain of climate change. During a period of just two years, some observers have viewed national surveys as indicating that large proportions of Americans have changed their personal opinions about the existence of global warming. If true, this would represent a significant challenge to existing theories of public opinion change and would merit a revision of those theories so that they more accurately capture the processes that produce such change.This project is designed to investigate whether such theoretical amendments are required. To do so, two new surveys monitor short-term change in public opinion explore the causes of whatever opinion change has occurred in recent months. Furthermore, experiments test hypotheses about the impact of question wording changes on the appearance of over-time shifts in beliefs and preferences on this issue. Statistical analyses explore the possibility that local weather conditions at the time of the survey interviews and preceding those interviews have influenced the expressed beliefs of some respondents. To document the impact of recent events, some respondents (chosen randomly) in an Internet survey are exposed to news stories about the East Anglia emails and the questionable aspects of the IPCC reports, and other respondents do not see such stories. All respondents then report their personal opinions on a wide range of related issues. This approach documents the causal impact of such messages in the current information environment.This project will have value not just because it will help document and explain changes in politically relevant perceptions and preferences in a charged policy environment, but also because it will help to illuminate psychological processes of great policy relevance at the moment. Many policy-makers are said to be reacting strongly to the recent opinion polls on climate change, often by pulling back on their willingness to support legislation aimed at ameliorating climate change, because these legislators perceive the American public to be increasingly unwilling to support such efforts. A collateral benefit of the research proposed here is that it will help these legislators to interpret the widely-publicized poll results, to become increasingly sensitive to the impact of scientific methodology of survey findings, and to plan their legislative efforts based upon veridical rather than misleading claims about what the American public believes and what it wants its government to implement in this arena.

几十年的研究表明，美国人对政治问题的看法多年来变化非常缓慢。持有特定观点的人的百分比突然大幅变化很少发生，只有在引起全国关注的戏剧性事件中才会发生，例如9月11日袭击事件。最近，在气候变化领域对这一观点提出了挑战。在短短两年的时间里，一些观察家认为全国性的调查表明，大部分美国人已经改变了他们对全球变暖存在的个人看法。如果这是真的，这将是对现有舆论变化理论的重大挑战，需要对这些理论进行修订，以便更准确地捕捉产生这种变化的过程。本项目旨在研究是否需要对这些理论进行修订。为此，两项新的调查监测民意的短期变化，探讨近几个月来发生的任何民意变化的原因。此外，实验测试假设的影响，问题措辞的变化上出现的信念和偏好在这个问题上的时间推移。统计分析探讨的可能性，当地的天气条件时，调查采访和之前，这些采访影响了一些受访者所表达的信念。 为了记录最近事件的影响，一些受访者（随机选择）在互联网调查中接触到有关东安格利亚电子邮件的新闻报道和IPCC报告的可疑方面，其他受访者没有看到这样的故事。然后，所有答复者都报告他们对广泛的相关问题的个人意见。这一方法记录了这些信息在当前信息环境中的因果影响，这一项目的价值不仅在于它将有助于记录和解释在紧张的政策环境中与政治相关的看法和偏好的变化，而且还因为它将有助于阐明当前与政策相关的心理过程。据说，许多政策制定者对最近关于气候变化的民意调查反应强烈，他们往往撤回支持旨在改善气候变化的立法的意愿，因为这些立法者认为美国公众越来越不愿意支持这种努力。这里提出的研究的一个附带好处是，它将帮助这些立法者解释广泛宣传的民意调查结果，对调查结果的科学方法的影响变得越来越敏感，并根据美国公众的真实而不是误导性的说法来规划他们的立法努力，以及他们希望政府在这个竞技场中实施什么。