Environmental Studies and Forestry

Changing minds about climate change: a pervasive role for domain-general metacognition

S. D. Beukelaer, N. Vehar, et al.

Understanding how we update our beliefs about climate change could be the key to driving real behavioral change! This research by Sophie De Beukelaer, Neza Vehar, Max Rollwage, Stephen M. Fleming, and Manos Tsakiris reveals how metacognition plays a crucial role in belief polarization and skepticism about climate change. Dive into the findings to discover what helps or hinders our ability to revise our beliefs in the face of new information.

00:00

Playback language: English

Index

Abstract

Updating beliefs about climate change is crucial for behavioral change. Metacognition—insight into the accuracy of one's beliefs—influences belief polarization. This study investigated the role of domain-general and domain-specific metacognition in updating climate change beliefs across varying levels of skepticism, considering textual and visuo-textual communication. Two large US samples (Study 1: n=364; Study 2: n=335) completed a perceptual decision-making task (assessing domain-general metacognition) and a belief-updating task (exposed to good/bad news about climate change). Results showed that climate change skepticism correlates with differences in domain-general and domain-specific metacognitive abilities. Lower domain-general metacognition decreased belief updating, especially with negative evidence. The study highlights the role of metacognitive failures in maintaining erroneous climate change beliefs.

Publisher

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Published On

Feb 04, 2023

Authors

Sophie De Beukelaer, Neza Vehar, Max Rollwage, Stephen M. Fleming, Manos Tsakiris

Related Publications

Explore these studies to deepen your understanding of the subject.

Health and Fitness

A physiological approach for assessing human survivability and liveability to heat in a changing climate

J. Vanos, G. Guzman-echavarria, et al.

Food Science and Technology

Developing a novel optimisation approach for keeping heterogeneous diets healthy and within planetary boundaries for climate change

P. E. Colombo, L. S. Elinder, et al.

Earth Sciences

The season for large fires in Southern California is projected to lengthen in a changing climate

C. Dong, A. P. Williams, et al.

Education

Improvement of attitudes and skills using a MOOC about the basic science of climate change

E. Ferrari, A. Ballegeer, et al.

Listen, Learn & Level Up

Over 10,000 hours of research content in 25+ fields, available in 12+ languages.

No more digging through PDFs, just hit play and absorb the world's latest research in your language, on your time.

listen to research audio papers with researchbunny