ArticleClimatic change2021
Effects of consensus messages and political ideology on climate change attitudes: inconsistent findings and the effect of a pretest.
Article in Climatic change, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Counteracting climate denial: A systematic review.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2024Pooled it
- Irreproducible research and a typology of replication efforts.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Review
- Gender and ideological orientation moderate the influence of climate misinformation on pro-environmental behavioural intentions.The British journal of social psychology · 2025Article
- Learning from and about scientists: Consensus messaging shapes perceptions of climate change and climate scientists.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- The differential impact of climate interventions along the political divide in 60 countries.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Public Conceptions of Scientific Consensus.Erkenntnis · 2022Article
- Secure human attachment can promote support for climate change mitigation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
There are inconsistent findings concerning the efficacy of consensus messages to persuade individuals to hold scientifically supported positions on climate change. In this experiment, we tested the impact of consensus messages on skeptics' climate beliefs and attitudes and investigated how the decision to pretest initial climate beliefs and attitudes prior to consensus message exposure may influence results. We found that although consensus messages led individuals to report higher scientific agreement estimates, total effects on key variables were likely an artifact of study design; consensus messages only affected climate attitudes and beliefs when they were measured both before and after message exposure. In the absence of a pretest, we did not observe significant total effects of consensus messages on climate outcomes. These results highlight the limitations of consensus messaging strategies at reducing political polarization and the importance of experimental designs that mimic real-world contexts. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10584-021-03200-2.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.