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The COVID-19 pandemic and global climate change crisis remind us that widespread trust in the products of the scientific enterprise is vital to the health and safety of the global community. Insofar as appropriate responses to these (and other) crises require us to trust that enterprise, cultivating a healthier trust relationship between science and the public may be considered as a collective public good. While it might appear that scientists can contribute to this good by taking more initiative to communicate their work to public audiences, we raise a concern about unintended consequences of an individualistic approach to such communication.
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Numeric social-media posts engage people with climate science
Abstract Innumeracy (lack of math skills) among nonscientists often leads climate scientists and others to avoid communicating numbers due to concerns that the public will not understand them and may disengage. However, people often report preferring to receive numbers; providing them also can improve decisions. Here, we demonstrated that the presence vs. absence of at least one Arabic integer in climate-related social-media posts increased sharing up to 31.7% but, counter to hypothesis, decreased liking of messages 5.2% in two preregistered observational studies (climate scientists on Twitter, N > 8 million Tweets; climate subreddit, N > 17,000 posts and comments). We speculated that the decreased liking was due, not to reduced engagement, but to more negative feelings towards climate-related content described with numeric precision. A preregistered within-participant experiment (N = 212) then varied whether climate consequences were described using Arabic integers (e.g. “90%”) or another format (e.g. verbal terms, “almost all”). The presence of Arabic integers about consequences led to more sharing, wanting to find out more, and greater trust and perceptions of an expert messenger; perceived trust and expertise appeared to mediate effects on sharing and wanting to find out more. Arabic integers about consequences again led to more negative feelings about the Tweets as if numbers clarified the dismaying magnitude of climate threats. Our results indicate that harnessing the power of numbers could increase public trust and concern regarding this defining issue of our time. Communicators, however, should also consider counteracting associated negative feelings—that could halt action—by providing feasible solutions to increase people's self-efficacy.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2017651
- PAR ID:
- 10561186
- Editor(s):
- Rand, David
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford Academic
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- PNAS Nexus
- Volume:
- 3
- Issue:
- 7
- ISSN:
- 2752-6542
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae250
