A representative survey experiment of motivated climate change denial

Abstract

Climate change is arguably one of the greatest challenges today. Although the scientific consensus is that human activities caused climate change, a substantial part of the population downplays or denies human responsibility. In this registered report, we present causal evidence on a potential explanation for this discrepancy: motivated reasoning. We conducted a tailored survey experiment on a broadly representative sample of 4,000 US adults to provide causal evidence on how motivated cognition shapes beliefs about climate change and influences the demand for slanted information. We further explore the role of motives on environmentally harmful behaviour. Contrary to our hypotheses, we find no evidence that motivated cognition can help to explain widespread climate change denial and environmentally harmful behaviour. protocol registration The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 10 May 2023. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.24523357.v1.