Healthy Influence – Persuasion Blog

We’re in the midst of a continuing and serious international political disagreement over climate change.  Everyone is trying to argue with science over whether the problem even exists, how bad it is, and how to reverse it.  While at first take the problem does seem amenable to science and its methods, the problem also involves the principles of human information processing, belief and attitude formation, and following action.  In other words, this is a persuasion problem, not just a science problem.

Consider how people acquire, process, and respond to information.  Here’s a NYT story.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 2007 — the same year it shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore — that it was “very likely” that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 if current warming trends continued . . .

The panel, the United Nations’ scientific advisory body on climate change, ranks its conclusions using a probability scale in which “very likely” means there is greater than 90 percent chance that an event will occur . . .

But it now appears that the estimate about Himalayan glacial melt was based on a decade-old interview of one climate scientist in a science magazine, The New Scientist, and that hard scientific evidence to support that figure is lacking. The scientist, Dr. Syed Hasnain, a glacier specialist with the government of the Indian state of Sikkim and currently a fellow at the TERI research institute in Delhi, said in an e-mail message that he was “misquoted” about the 2035 estimate in The New Scientist article. He has more recently said that his research suggests that only small glaciers could disappear entirely.

Assuming this story is exactly correct and tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, we clearly see that on this point science was sleeping while persuasion was wide awake.  No one with anything remotely approaching scientific training would follow this path of thoughtless thinking and reach such a large, confident, and arrogant conclusion.  The IPCC declares itself committed to scientific principles, yet this passage demonstrates Biased Processing from dual process models of persuasion.  Consider it more carefully.

IPCC scientists using the scientific method read a popular press news magazine written by journalists aimed at the science beat.  They find a quote in a story attributed to a climate change scientist making assertions about his research and conclusions that flow from it.  They take this journalist quotation from a for-profit news magazine, consider it as if it appeared in a peer review scientific journal, then add it as scientific data to their scientific review of the scientific literature.

These scientists apparently did not contact the quoted scientist to ensure the accuracy of the quote (scientists argue about the smallest detail in their studies, but they think all journalism is always accurate?!?).  They did not obtain and read the published peer review work of the quoted scientist to find the primary source of knowledge.  They did not search for disconfirming information from any scientific or even journalistic source.

And note that these points only require a visit to the library or access to a computer with a subscription to a good science search engine.  They do not require any new testing from the IPCC scientists.  This is what’s known as secondary research – reading what’s in the literature – rather than primary research where you actually grind out the data in the field or in a lab, suffering for your science.  Of the two, secondary research is usually much easier and cheaper to conduct.

This is a commonplace, but beautiful illustration of Biased Processing.  In such instances, people are very High WATT and are fully engaged in Central Route thought and action.  This is a big deal and they bring all their cognitive resources to bear.  Except with Biased Processing the psychology pushes you to make the data fit your preexisting beliefs rather than follow the data to whatever belief the data support which is what an Objective Processor does.  Realize all the normal human failures that are evidenced here.  We understand those failures better through persuasion than climate science.

You do not have to be for, against, undecided, unconcerned, or just plain defiant about climate change to see that the lens of persuasion provides a better view of this issue than anything in the primary or secondary research.  There is a difference between science and scientists, and persuasion proves it.