| 英文摘要: | Of the climate science papers that take a position on the issue, 97% agree that climate change is caused by humans1, but less than half of the US population shares this belief2. This misalignment between scientific and public views has been attributed to a range of factors, including political attitudes, socio-economic status, moral values, levels of scientific understanding, and failure of scientific communication. The public is divided between climate change 'believers' (whose views align with those of the scientific community) and 'sceptics' (whose views are in disagreement with those of the scientific community). We propose that this division is best explained as a socio-political conflict between these opposing groups. Here we demonstrate that US believers and sceptics have distinct social identities, beliefs and emotional reactions that systematically predict their support for action to advance their respective positions. The key implication is that the divisions between sceptics and believers are unlikely to be overcome solely through communication and education strategies, and that interventions that increase angry opposition to action on climate change are especially problematic. Thus, strategies for building support for mitigation policies should go beyond attempts to improve the public’s understanding of science, to include approaches that transform intergroup relations. Although there is a growing belief in the general public that climate change is real (with over 80% agreement in some US states3, 4), there is a sharp division in beliefs about its causes. Yet, if there is to be effective and timely action on climate change, widespread public agreement that human activity causes climate change is crucial for building political will. The roots of the public divide on climate change (and in particular the persistence of sceptic beliefs) have been explained in terms of individual factors such as socio-economic aspects5, moral values6, socio-political orientations and ideologies7, 8, level of knowledge9 and scientific understanding of the public10, and personal experiences of climate change11, 12. Going beyond individual factors, support for sceptic beliefs has also been attributed to the use of lobby groups by vested economic and political factions13, 14 to discredit the scientific consensus on climate change15, 16, and to a failure of communication from the scientific community to the broader public17. Although all these factors are important in understanding the persistence of climate change scepticism, previous research has not fully considered the possibility that the climate change divide is itself an intergroup conflict. We propose that the climate change debate can be understood as an intergroup conflict that exists primarily between two groups with conflicting views—that is, climate change believers and sceptics (rather than between scientists and sections of the public). As such, the public division in opinions about climate change can be understood in similar terms to other social conflicts, such as that over abortion, the campaign for equality of the sexes, the US civil rights movement, and campaigns for marriage equality. Although positions in these conflicts are related to, and can emerge from, membership of political parties, gender and religion they are not reducible to any of these categories. In relation to abortion, for example, a Republican, male Catholic is more likely to be pro-Life than pro-Choice, but the conflict between pro-Life and pro-Choice supporters is not a conflict between Republicans and Democrats, men and women, or between Catholics and persons with other religious beliefs. Rather, the key defining feature of the pro-Life (or pro-Choice) position is a shared opinion, and such opinions provide the psychological basis for the intergroup conflict. Although it is very plausible that the climate change divide reflects and draws on partisan and ideological conflicts8, 14, we consider the possibility that it is a conflict that can be understood in opinion-based terms. Although US believers may tend to be Democrats and sceptics may tend to be Republicans, we ask: can believers and sceptics be treated as real groups with distinct identities? Although there are multiple shades of opinion about climate change18, we argue that there is value in seeing climate change believers and sceptics as conflicting opinion-based groups. Opinion-based groups are psychological groups formed around contrasting views about what needs to be done about an issue, in this case, climate change19. We propose that the contrasting opinions of believers and sceptics about the causes of climate change provide the basis of social identities that inform what they, and other people, should do about climate change. In particular, these identities drive the forms of social and political action that believers and sceptics should take to ensure that their views are supported by policy makers. Therefore, we argue that people come to see climate change beliefs and scepticism not just as an opinion on an issue, but as an aspect of self that defines who they are, what they stand for, and who they stand with (and against). In doing so, opinion-based identities provide a basis for collective action as a coordinated, collective attempt to bring about, or thwart social change19. Contemporary models of collective action that integrate psychological (subjective) and social (structural) perspectives20, 21 agree that collective action flows from a specific set of predictors. Foremost among these are social identification with (or commitment to) a relevant group, a sense of grievance or perceived injustice that is expressed as anger at opponents, and beliefs that the group can achieve its goals (group efficacy beliefs). There is correlational and experimental evidence that group identification predicts environmental behaviour and that heightened group-based emotions and perceptions of group efficacy lead to an increase in such behaviour22, 23, 24, but our interest here is in the role of these variables in motivating support for action to advance competing policy positions. Given that there are different causal orders proposed by existing models 20, 21 we conceptualize the antecedents of action as an integrated cluster of variables that represent a distinct group consciousness24 for believers and for sceptics, each of which predicts commitment to action to support the cause they each support. In other words, if identification with activists, anger directed at the target of activism, and efficacy of action are measured, a factor capturing all these aspects is likely to be a good predictor of collective action participation. To capture group consciousness we constructed a latent variable with three indicators: social identification, anger at the opposing group and group efficacy beliefs. Group consciousness as a sceptic or a believer could be expected to have different political and moral foundations such that US believers would tend to have political preferences for the Democratic Party and endorse liberal moral values (acting with fairness and avoiding harm) and US sceptics would tend to have Republican political preferences and endorse conservative moral values of purity, ingroup loyalty and respect for authority25. Specific moral foundations have been shown to underpin individuals’ positions towards a range of issues, including immigration, abortion and same-sex marriage26, as well as religious orientations27. In the present study we measured social identification as a sceptic or believer as self-investment (that is, positive feelings for and bonds with other group members), group efficacy beliefs, anger at the opposing group, party identification (with Republicans versus Democrats), moral values (avoiding harm, achieving fairness, loyalty to the ingroup, respecting authority and ensuring purity/sanctity), intentions to participate in socio-political action in support of the group’s cause, and actual behaviour in support of the cause (a donation to an aligned action group as opposed to a neutral charity). Using Amazon Mechanical Turk we collected volunteer samples of US citizens who were self-declared believers and sceptics. The first step was to determine the validity of categorizing our participants into believers and sceptics by examining the socio-demographic and psychological characteristics of the two groups. The descriptive statistics show that the two samples were similar in age, education, employment and income (see Table 1). To characterize our sample in terms of climate change ideology we used the Six Americas audience segmentation instrument18. Not surprisingly, members of the two groups occupy different segments. Specifically, believers were alarmed, concerned and cautious about climate change, whereas sceptics were cautious, doubtful and dismissive (tellingly, there were no disengaged participants in our samples). Consistent with previous research7, 14 believers and sceptics had different political views, with believers more likely to be Democrats or uncommitted Republicans, and sceptics more likely to be Republicans or uncommitted Democrats. Believers were also more likely to commit to environmental behaviours and to express more fear and guilt and less hope about the future of the planet, whereas sceptics tended to have higher levels of national identification, lower levels of identification with all of humanity, and to endorse moral values that were more typical of conservative positions.
- Cook, J. et al. Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 1–7 (2013).
- Middle East Publics Less Concerned about Climate Change than those in Other Nations (Pew Research Centre, 2013); http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/11/11/u-s-middle-east-less-concerned-about-climate-change-than-those-in-other-nations/
- Survey Analysis Contradicts Common Climate Perception (Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, 2013); https://woods.stanford.edu/news-events/news/survey-analysis-contradicts-common-climate-perceptions
- Contestabile, M. Americans’ views. Nature Clim. Change 4, 86 (2014).
- Whitmarsh, L. Scepticism and uncertainty about climate change: Dimensions, determinants and change overtime. Glob. Environ. Change 21, 690–700 (2011).
- Feinberg, M. & Willer, R. The moral roots of environmental attitudes. Psychol. Sci. 24, 56–62 (2013).
- McCright, A. M. & Dunlap, R. E. The politicization of climate change: Political polarization in the American public’s views of global warming. Sociol. Q. 52, 155–194 (2011).
- Hoffman, A. J. The growing climate divide. Nature Clim. Change 1, 195–196 (2011).
- Malka, A., Krosnick, J. A. & Langer, G. The association of knowledge with concern about global warming: Trusted information sources shape public thinking. Risk Anal. 29, 633–647 (2009).
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