Article by Eric Worrell
“A single repetition is enough to prompt recipients to accept the repeated claims, even if their attitudes are consistent with climate science”
Australian-led research finds that repeating climate change denial claims makes them appear more credible
Even those worried about the climate crisis are influenced by false claims, showing how 'insidious' repetition can be, researchers say
Petra Shares Thursday 8 August 2024 04:00 AEST
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“The findings demonstrate how powerful and insidious repetition can be, and how it affects people's assessment of the truth,” said the study's lead author, Mary Jiang of the Australian National University.
The study, published in the academic journal Plos One, said people are more likely to judge a statement to be true if they have encountered it before, something behavioral psychologists call the “illusory truth effect.” .
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“A single repetition is enough to induce recipients to accept the repeated claim, even if their attitudes are consistent with climate science, and they can correctly identify the claim as a counter-attitudinal claim,” the paper states.
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An example of a science-based claim is “Climate change models can make accurate predictions,” Jiang said. Skeptical claims could challenge the accuracy of climate science or hint at a conspiracy.
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“The media is critical in all of this because the science has settled… we know what the problem is, we know what the response needs to be, and we know the timeline,” she said.
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The paper concludes: “Don’t repeat false information. Instead, repeat what is true and increase its familiarity.
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Find out more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/08/repeating-climate-denial-claims-makes-them-seem-more-credible-australian-led-study- finds
Research summary. The researchers used a sample size of 100 volunteers, which was reduced to 52 after post-processing, so it's clearly solid science.
Repetition increases confidence in climate skepticism, even for supporters of climate science
abstract
Even among supporters of climate science, does repeated exposure to climate skeptic claims affect their acceptance of those claims? Research on common sense claims shows that repeated exposure to a claim increases its perceived truthfulness when the claim is encountered again. However, research on motivated cognition shows that people primarily endorse things they already believe. In both experiments, climate science supporters were more likely to believe claims that were consistent with their prior beliefs, but repeated exposure increased perceptions of the truth of climate science and climate skeptic claims to a similar extent. Even counter-attitudinal claims benefit from prior exposure, highlighting the insidious effects of repetition.
Learn more: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0307294
You naughty disbelievers, if you would stop repeating the claims that climate models are garbage, that many scientists don’t consider Michael Mann a climate hero, and that Biden’s energy policies don’t work, more people would believe it.
The study's authors stopped short of calling for outright censorship, but “The media is critical in all of this because the science has established… we know… what needs to be done to deal with it and we know the timeline”.
Maybe believers should organize morning Gaia worship services where everyone spends 10 minutes a day chanting “climate models are accurate and all climate claims are correct” to counter the influence of all these insidious climate skeptic messages.
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