Now, the field is also being wielded to discredit “climate change deniers.”[1] By pathologizing the thinking processes of these stubbornly mistaken subjects, the views of said subjects can be safely dismissed. After all, the theory of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) is obviously true, or so says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the planetary authority on the matter. Likewise, those who doubt or deny ACC must be crazy. The point of psychological studies is to discover just what’s wrong with these people and how, if possible, to change their minds.
Since past research has found values and sociodemographic factors to be intractable, the researchers in this study sought to identify factors that presumably can be changed and that should likewise prove useful for study. They deemed “locus of control,” “information processing style,” and “anti-reflexivity” to be mental factors worthy of examination.
“Locus of control” (LoC) is a psychological concept that refers to whether and to what degree a subject considers events to be externally or internally controlled. That is, does the subject believe that he or she has control over events, or that “powerful others” do? The authors hypothesized that those who are prone to believing that they have control of events are less likely to be climate change deniers and vice versa.
“Previous studies have shown that having an internal LoC in regard to the environment increases environmental concern as well as pro-environmental intentions and behavior.”
“Information processing style” refers to the degree to which subjects display “rational-analytical” or “experiential-intuitive” mental processing. The former is conscious, deliberate, and analytical thinking based on established rules. It’s considered superior to the latter, which is preconscious, intuitive, automatic, and rapid.
“Research demonstrates that analytical processing is negatively associated with unfounded beliefs above and beyond variables such as cognitive ability and sociodemographics,” the study reads.
“Research also shows that intentionally eliciting analytical thinking through experimental manipulations is effective in reducing conspiracy beliefs.”
That is, rational-analytical thinkers are less likely to hold unfounded beliefs, while experiential-intuitive thinkers are more likely to hold unfounded beliefs and are more likely to be “conspiracy theorists.”
Anti-reflexivity theory (ART) is a recent “paradigm” developed specifically to explain climate change skepticism. This theory is based on “the concept of reflexive modernization, which refers to the process by which an individual acknowledges and challenges the problems associated with our modern industrial capitalist system.”
Previous literature has shown that “public trust in groups representing the industrial capitalist system [anti-reflexive groups] increased the likelihood of skepticism regarding the actuality and cause of climate change. Conversely, increased trust in environmental groups and the scientific community [reflexive groups] decreased the likelihood of skepticism.”
The presumption here is that reflexive thinkers “acknowledge” that something is undeniably wrong with “our modern industrial capitalist system” and that “anti-reflexivity,” or supporting that system, is based on a lack of acknowledgment of this system’s obvious flaws.
Since most ART research has been conducted in the United States, where the highest levels of climate change skepticism persist, studying this factor in the Australian context is supposed to be of value.
The researchers aimed to study the impact of these factors on four kinds of climate change denialism: 1) denying the reality of climate change, 2) denying the human cause of climate change, 3) denying the consequences of climate change, and 4) denying the types of responses necessary to mitigate climate change.
I won’t detail all the results but rather generally characterize the findings, some of which the researchers expected and some of which they found surprising, even disappointing.
Contradicting their hypothesis that locus of control would be a significant variable for most of the kinds of climate change denialism, the researchers found no meaningful connection between climate change skepticism and the LoC variable.
“Accordingly, individuals who perceived ‘powerful others’ as having little control over events in their life were more likely to be skeptical about the impacts of climate change.” One interpretation of this finding is that the climate change deniers studied by the authors weren’t particularly prone to conspiracy theorizing. But the authors failed to come to that conclusion.
The most surprising result (for the researchers) was that climate change skepticism was positively associated with high levels of analytical thinking.
“Contradicting Hypothesis 2 and the propositions of the CEST [cognitive-experiential self-theory, which measures processing styles along this axis], individuals high in analytical processing were found to be more likely to be skeptical about the human causality of climate change.” This finding surely throws a major wrench into the works and makes discrediting climate change deniers more difficult.
However, the authors rationalize the finding by suggesting that “individuals with an increased cognitive ability were more likely to misinterpret information that was inconsistent with their political views.” We’re told that analytical thinkers are more capable of complex reasoning, which enables them “to generate alternative interpretations of the data” ad hoc.
In terms of anti-reflexivity, the findings were mixed, with ART predicting some types of climate change skepticism while failing to predict others. Generally, the study found that ART predicted low trust in reflexivity forces such as environmentalist groups, and higher trust in anti-reflexive groups such as those in support of industrial capitalism.
In other words, in terms of the authors’ four hypotheses, ART merely affirmed the definition of the feature being examined. The study of this feature is itself circular and reflexive.
This maneuver virtually turns one of the main features under study, analytical ability, which the researchers had figured as a positive attribute, into a liability.
The researchers assumed that the climate change skeptics they studied would be less analytical than they found them to be. But never do they consider the possibility that their subjects may have put their high analytical capabilities to good use or that they may be right. Instead, their subjects’ use of analytical thinking is deemed “mental gymnastics.” Their intelligence merely enabled these analytical thinkers “to reject consensus science and generate other explanations.”
Never mind also that this “research” is merely environmental activism dressed up in pseudoscientific jargon and make-believe methodologies. It ends precisely where it begins—assuming that climate change skeptics must be cranks and crackpots, no matter how analytical they are, and even because of it.
Finally, while heaping scorn on climate change skeptics, it’s the researchers themselves who exhibit the “mental gymnastics” that they ascribe to their subjects. They will get away with such tactics in academia, because academia is an echo chamber where questioning climate change orthodoxy is verboten. But those who know that skepticism is a necessary virtue for undertaking scientific inquiry will call them out for the charlatans they are.
[1] As Jeff Deist noted in a talk for the Federalist Society in Pittsburgh, the term “deniers” is used to associate climate change skeptics with Holocaust deniers (Sept. 22, 2022).
