PLOS Science Wednesday: We’re Kaitlin Raimi, Paul Stern, and Alex Maki,
we research how to talk about climate change, Ask Us Anything!
Abstract
Hi Reddit, My name is Kaitlin Raimi and I am an Assistant Professor at
the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. My
research focuses on how people think and act when it comes to climate
change, including how social motivations can promote or prevent
sustainable solutions. I’m particularly interested in how people compare
their own beliefs and behaviors to those of other people, how the desire
to make a good impression can influence people to mitigate climate
change, and how one adopting one sustainable behavior affects later
environmental decisions. I also have ongoing work on how framing climate
change in different ways affects people’s understanding of climate
change and support for climate policies. Together with my colleagues
Paul Stern and Alex Maki, I recently published a paper titled “The
Promise and Limitations of Using Analogies to Improve Decision-Relevant
Understanding of Climate Change” in the journal PLOS ONE. My name is
Alex Maki and I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Vanderbilt
Institute for Energy and Environment and the Vanderbilt Climate Change
Research Network. My research uses theory-based behavior change
interventions to understand and influence environmental (e.g., energy
use), health (e.g., eating choices), and prosocial (e.g., volunteerism)
behaviors. Specifically, I am interested in how interventions can help
people initiate and maintain changes to multiple, related behaviors over
time (e.g., both conserve energy and water at home). I also examine the
social dynamics surrounding environmental behaviors, including who
chooses to talk to other people (e.g., friends or family) about
environmental issues, and how we can help people have more constructive
conversations about important environmental issues, including climate
change. My name is Paul Stern. For over two decades I was staff director
of the Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change at the U.S.
National Research Council. At the same time, I have been conducting
research with colleagues outside the Council on topics that have
included household energy consumption, the effectiveness of policies to
reduce greenhouse has emissions by changing consumer behavior, and
people’s understanding of various kinds of environmental risks.
Understanding the risks of climate change is a real challenge because of
its long-term nature and the difficulty of making confident predictions
of what risks particular communities will face. This paper is part of an
effort to find ways to help people think through the risks without
having to understand all the scientific details. We wanted to know
whether using analogies helps people understand key factors that are
important for climate change decisions, including uncertainties about
when and where serious damage may occur, its unprecedented and
progressive nature, and trade-offs in limiting climate change.
Specifically, across two studies, we looked at whether comparing climate
change to medical decision-making, disaster preparedness, or courtroom
trials helped people to understand these issues. We found that disaster
preparedness and a courtroom trial analogy weren’t very helpful, and
that none of the analogies helped people understand the basic science of
climate change. However, we did find that comparing climate change to a
medical decision helped people–especially political conservatives–to
to better recognize several decision-relevant attributes of climate
change. Follow Kaitlin on Twitter @KaitlinRaimi We will be back at 1 pm
ET to answer your questions, ask us anything!