The article, “The effect of outdoor temperature, heat primes and anchoring on belief in global warming,” begins by stating although there is a general acknowledgement that global warming is occurring, there are wide variations on the estimates of future climate change. This causes an uncertainty amongst most people, and when asked about climate change, it is likely that their judgments may be affected by different variables.
Three studies evaluated this theory.
The first study supported the hypothesis that “belief in global warming would be positively correlated with outdoor temperature… The relationship between outdoor temperature and belief in global warming was only significant when the outdoor temperature was low.” Although those conducting the study found this to be interesting, they believed the results to be merely correlational.
In the second study, the participants were given a simple word search puzzle before completing a global warming scale. Half of the participants’ word puzzles contained a variety of words related to heat. This study revealed that participants would “be more likely to believe in global warming if they had first been primed with heat-related words than if they had not been primed with heat-related words.”
The third study revealed that “when people were given an initially high anchor for possible increases in the earth’s temperature, they were more likely to believe global warming is occurring now and were willing to pay to reduce global warming.”
To most people, the issue of global warming is complex and highly confusing. Sometimes the signs of global warming can be hard to recognize. As a result, there is a large degree of uncertainty amongst the public about the validity of global warming. People are likely to rely on culturally learned worldviews and other variables to make sense of their confusion.
All in all, the studies presented in this article demonstrated that belief in global warming and willingness to pay to reduce it can be influenced by heuristics. I would highly encourage students or employees in the public relations and marketing field and others who are working to improve the environment to read this article.
Reading your response immediately made me think of the cognitive aspect of persuasion. According to Doug Newsom and Jim Haynes, "people will think and reason about what they read, hear or see." In an actual campaign, for a desired response you must become the informant for your target public and give them information that will reinforce the desired response in a way that not only connects but is easy to retain until the desired action occurs. I will definitely pass this article along to my group.
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ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your article and found it very well written. It was clear and to the point. Like what you said about views of global warming, it made me realize that others may have different opinions as to why global warming is occurring. Informing people of the real essential reasons for global warming would definitely put a stop to all the confusions others may have concerning this issue. I am interested in reading more on this article and finding out ways to inform the students that my group will be working with.
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