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Abstract Pluralistic ignorance—a shared misperception of how others think or behave—poses a challenge to collective action on problems like climate change. Using a representative sample of Americans (N = 6119), we examine whether Americans accurately perceive national concern about climate change and support for mitigating policies. We find a form of pluralistic ignorance that we describe as afalse social reality: a near universal perception of public opinion that is the opposite of true public sentiment. Specifically, 80–90% of Americans underestimate the prevalence of support for major climate change mitigation policies and climate concern. While 66–80% Americans support these policies, Americans estimate the prevalence to only be between 37–43% on average. Thus, supporters of climate policies outnumber opponents two to one, while Americans falsely perceive nearly the opposite to be true. Further, Americans in every state and every assessed demographic underestimate support across all polices tested. Preliminary evidence suggests three sources of these misperceptions: (i) consistent with a false consensus effect, respondents who support these policies less (conservatives) underestimate support by a greater degree; controlling for one’s own personal politics, (ii) exposure to more conservative local norms and (iii) consuming conservative news correspond to greater misperceptions.
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This content will become publicly available on September 1, 2026
Culture Mediates Climate Opinion Change: A System Dynamics Model of Risk Perception, Polarization, and Policy Effectiveness
Despite the growing impacts of climate change worldwide, achieving consensus on climate action remains a challenge partly because of heterogeneity in perceptions of climate risks within and across countries. Lack of consensus has hindered global collective action. We use a system dynamics approach to examine how interactions among cultural, socio-political, psychological, and institutional factors shape public support or opposition for climate mitigation policy. We investigate the conditions under which the dominant public opinion about climate policy can shift within a 20-year time frame. We observed opinion shifts in 20% of simulations, primarily in individualistic cultural contexts with high perceived climate risk. Changing the dominant opinion was especially difficult to achieve in collectivistic cultures, as we observed no shifts in dominant opinion within the parameter ranges examined. Our study underscores the importance of understanding how cultural context mediates the approaches needed to effectively mobilize collective climate action.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2436120
- PAR ID:
- 10638474
- Publisher / Repository:
- MDPI
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Climate
- Volume:
- 13
- Issue:
- 9
- ISSN:
- 2225-1154
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 194
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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