Climate Change 'Deniers' Use Motivated Reasoning To Justify Behavior, Study Says

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A recent study said that those who deny climate change and its impacts have utilized motivated reasoning to justify their belief and behavior.

Experts pointed out that climate change has been arguably one of the greatest challenges at present times.

Although the scientific consensus is that human activities caused climate change, a substantial part of the population downplays or denies human responsibility on its adverse effects.

In the registered study, researchers present causal pieces of evidence on the potential explanation for this discrepancy: motivated reasoning.

Motivated Cognition

The experts had conducted a tailored survey experiment on a broadly representative sample of 4,000 US adults to provide causal evidence on how motivated cognition shapes beliefs about climate change and influences the demand for slanted information.

They further explored the role of motives on environmentally harmful behavior.

Contrary to their hypotheses, they find no evidence that motivated cognition can help to explain widespread climate change denial and environmentally harmful behavior.

It was explained that human activities caused the recent warming of the Earth. However, despite the near-unanimous scientific consensus on this matter, a substantial part of the population denies or downplays the contribution of humans to climate change.

In a 2019 Pew study, 30% of US adults said humans play only a partial role on climate change and 20% said there is none or there is only a minor role of humans when it comes to climate change.

The 2022 report Climate Change in the American Mind also found similar results: a third of the respondents said that climate change is due to natural changes and is not caused mostly by human activities.

In the recent study, experts focused on the potential explanation that climate change denial stems from motivated reasoning patterns.

The literature of motivated beliefs posits that the belief formation process is often guided by the desire to maintain certain convictions or to hold a positive self-view, rather than by a desire for belief accuracy.

People's Beliefs

They said that when it comes to the context of climate change, the people's beliefs might be shaped by the need to justify their emitting behaviors, such as, driving a big car, enjoying transcontinental flights, and eating a meat-rich diet or being invested in CO2-intensive industries.

Scientists explained that intuitively, actions that harm the climate are easier to live with when one downplays the severity of climate change or the role humans play in it.

However, causal evidence for the connection of motivated cognition and climate change denial is scarce, and the determinants of climate change denial remain poorly understood.

In the context of climate change, there exists an abundance of slanted and biased information sources. The study had delivered insights into whether people actively choose biased information for motivated reasons. This relates to recent literature that looks at information demand in the context of political news.

It was explained that people often distort their beliefs in the direction of thinking that many scientists doubt human-made climate change to rationalize selfish and environmentally harmful behavior.

In contrast to the hypothesis, the experts did not find evidence that self-interest shapes beliefs about the scientific consensus on climate change.