Personality plays a role whether you believe in climate change, dalhousie studies

Personality plays a role whether people believe in climate change, found in a recent study – and this climate may be implications for efforts to deal with doubt.

Research from Dalhousie University in Halifax found that more doubtful people about climate change are more likely to rank more on the scales of intoxicating, mciavelinism and psychiatry–showing self-centered, manipulations, calls and a tendency to be socially unmarried.

Those who have less doubts about climate change are more likely to have a socio-social personality symptoms of openness, agreableness, honesty, humility and sentimentality.

Scott Professions are Associate Professors in Dalhousie University and The Political Science Department Head of studyPublished in March in Journal Climatic Change.

He says that the personality of climate doubt can help develop more effective strategies to encourage environmentally conscious behavior.

He said, “To develop a good policy or understand that people care about the issue, it is understanding who does not care, who doubts,” he said. “And so we are going to get creative and smart with messaging.”

How was studied

Researchers analyzed data from survey of 1,725 ​​Canadians held in 2020.

The respondents of the survey were told how much they agreed or disagreeed with the following statements:

• I am sure climate change is happening.
• It is claimed that human activities are changing climate.
• Floods and heat waves are not increasing; These days there is more reporting in the media.
• Climate change is the result of natural variation in climate.
• Climate change is a scam.
• The government should do more to address climate change.

Pruysers say that researchers have previously seen the roots of climate doubt, some of the studies that were tried to remove the dalhousie study.

While other studies have mainly rely on undergraduates as participants, their studies ensured that participants reflected the income, gender and age distribution of the Canadian population.

Participants were also asked questions whose purpose was to assess their personality. While previous studies have used 10 descriptors (for example, for example, reserved/calm, or disorganized/careless) to assess personality, the study of pruysers used more strong measures that included more than 160 descripts.

Scientific consent

Scientific consensus worldwide that the Earth’s climate is changing, and that human activity has made uneven changes due to climate change.

United Nations Inter -Government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Causing assessment,

The dalhousie study found that more than 20 percent of the participants believe that human activity is changing. 17 percent believe that climate -related events such as floods or heat waves are not growing, and more than 10 percent disagree that governments must do more to address climate change.

More recent figures The same levels of equality have also been found among Canadian people Worry about concern about climate change,

Different strategies may require

Demographic and political factors affect climate doubts. For example, the study found that men and people who are more right -wing are more doubtful, while people with higher education levels, income and political knowledge are less doubted.

While the left-rights of the participants were the self-catching factor on the scale of the ideology that predicted its level of climate doubt, openness was the second most future factor, such as age, education, income and political interest and knowledge. The higher levels of openness were associated with low doubts of climate change.

The study made the Prushers clear that the personality plays a role, so to convince the suspects to adopt the planetary practices, they say that various strategies may be required.

For example, Pruysers said, other researches have shown that those who score high in narrowness are more likely to buy environmentally friendly products if they can be seen and praised by others while doing so.

Pruysers insisted that the study is not taking climate as a narcissist or a psychopath.

“When people hear something like narrowness or psychopath, it is fine, it is nervous. We are not talking about the clinical levels of these things,” they say.

Rather, they say, symptoms are measured on a spectrum and most people will demonstrate elements of those symptoms.

It is difficult to use conclusions

Matthew HornC is a professor at the Business School at the University of Queensland in Australia, who research psychological motivations to reject scientific consensus, including climate change doubt.

He said that dalhousie studies are “one of the more official statements” around the role of personality and climate doubt and its functioning is more sophisticated than other studies on the subject.

While the data makes it clear that climate is a relationship between doubt and deep personality symptoms, and the pro -social science symptoms and acceptance of climate science, they are not particularly strong.

“Just because something is, it does not mean that it is a big, big impact,” Hornse said. “You will have a difficult time to predict the ideas of climate change of people from their personality.”

He said that it would be challenging to use the findings of the study.

“What do you do with this information? You cannot change the personality of the people, and therefore it is not easy to intervene around it.”

However, Hornse noted that the development of Artificial Intelligence has improved the ability to detect personality from media people and how they write on social media. That ability can be exploited to develop “micro-targeted” messages based on personality.

“But, you know, it’s a completely insects,” he said.