Flogging a dead norm? Newspaper coverage of anthropogenic climate change in the United States and United Kingdom from 2003 to 2006
This paper examines the impact of the journalistic norm of ‘balanced’ reporting on the portrayal of scientific consensus regarding human-induced climate change in the US and UK from 2003 to 2006. It…
Boomerang Effects in Science Communication: How Motivated Reasoning and Identity Cues Amplify Opinion Polarization About Climate Mitigation
This paper critiques the deficit model of science communication, which posits that increased dialogue about scientific issues will align public opinion with scientific consensus. Instead, it finds that communication about climate change…
Illusory correlation and the maintenance of stereotypic beliefs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
This paper investigates how cognitive processes contribute to the persistence of social stereotypes through three experiments involving 150 high school and undergraduate students. Participants were presented with sentences describing various occupational groups…
Empathy constrained: Prejudice predicts reduced mental simulation of actions during observation of outgroups.
This paper explores the concept of perception-action coupling, which involves the activation of neural systems associated with action when observing others’ actions and its relationship to empathy and group identity. The researchers…
Selective Use of Heunrstic and Systematic Processing Under Defense Motivation
This study examines how defense motivation influences the processing of heuristic cues using the heuristic-systematic model. College students evaluated a proposed mandatory essay-exam program with opinion poll results as heuristic cues, showing…
The case for motivated reasoning
The paper discusses how motivation influences reasoning by affecting the cognitive processes individuals use to access, construct, and evaluate beliefs. It posits that the desire for accuracy leads to the use of…
Climate change, cultural cognition, and media effects: Worldviews drive news selectivity, biased processing, and polarized attitudes.
This paper investigates the intersection of cultural cognition theory and news media’s influence on public attitudes toward climate change. It reveals that individuals align their opinions on politically charged issues with their…
Social and heuristic approaches to credibility evaluation online
This paper explores how individuals assess information and source credibility in the context of the vast online information landscape. By analyzing focus group data from 109 participants, the study challenges the assumption…
How attitude strength biases information processing and evaluation on the web
This study investigates how the strength of students’ attitudes affects their processing and evaluation of information online, focusing on the contentious topic of organic foods. The findings reveal that students with strong…
Should the moral core of climate issues be emphasized or downplayed in public discourse? Three ways to successfully manage the double-edged sword of moral communication
This paper examines the challenge communicators face when framing climate issues through moral appeals, which can both motivate action and trigger defensive responses that hinder problem-solving. It reviews social-psychological research showing that…
