Problems with communication

It was what Luntz heard from the American people that scared him. They were contentious and argumentative. They didn't listen to each other as they once had. They weren't interested in hearing other points of view. They were divided one against the other, black vs. white, men vs. women, young vs. old, rich vs. poor. "They want to impose their opinions rather than express them," is the way he describes what he saw.


From "The Agony of Frank Luntz" by Molly Ball on "The Atlantic"

The climate debate: what we have been doing wrong and how to do better

 

(image source)

The frog that jumped out blog went on line less than one year ago. With the new year, I thought a little rant of mine could be in order. I started it listing all what I thought we have been doing wrong in communication the climate problem but, as I went on, I found that there were also more positive things that I could say. So, the final result is a something that tries to suggest some positive strategy for communication on the basis of network theory and some other observations. Probably, this text wants to say too many things in too little space but, now that I wrote it, maybe you'll find a moment to give a look to it and tell me what you think of it.



Perhaps you had one of those nightmares where you are chased by a monster. You desperately try to run away, but you find that your feet are glued to the ground. With climate change, it is something like that. You almost feel the breath of the climate monster on the back of your neck, but you can't move. Nothing is moving. Whatever we do to try to convince people of the danger ahead is just like the proverbial water off the duck's back. It doesn't stick.

But why are we in this situation? After all, we have a strong case: look, we have data, we have models, we have the scientific community compact behind the idea of human caused climate change and about what's to be done to stop it. So, we stated our case, we tried to do our best to explain how things stand. Then, we expected someone to do something. But no. Nothing has happened, nothing happens.

We redoubled our efforts. We read the book titled "Don't be such a scientist." We set up blogs, we wrote on facebook and on twitter, we gave interviews. We tried to be clear, pleaising, entertaining, we tried to bring solutions, not problems. We followed the advice that says "more than all, never scare anyone!" But it didn't work and, by now, it is clear that it won't work. We are reduced to wait for the next environmental disaster that we hope will finally wake up people from their torpor. But we have had already enough environmental disasters and people are not taking notice. So, are we bound to to lose this battle? There follows some thoughts of mine on this matter.


1. So, what have we been doing wrong?

We piped unto you, and ye did not dance; we wailed, and ye did not mourn. Matthew 11:17

This blog, "The frog that jumped out," has been useful for me to focus on the issue of communicating climate science. So, I think I have some ideas on what exactly we did wrong and the answer can probably be found in a mix of human psychology and the field of science called "Network Theory." It has to do with the human tendency of forming tribes, structures that in network theory are called "small worlds". You can see the structure of a small world network in the figure - it is structured as clusters of nodes strongly linked with each other within the cluster, but weakly linked on the outside (image from "researchtoaction")

That the web is structured in this way has been proven. That this is a property of not just the Web, it is clear for everyone to see. The social world around us is a network of small worlds/tribes - some are political, some are religious, some are cultural, some are dedicated to sports, some are just made of friends, and there are many more. It works this way; after all, we are a tribal species: everyone of us is embedded in at least one small world network. You may also belong to different ones on different "planes" of your cultural existence; say, one for your professional network, one for your political activity, one for your hobbies and more. Then, if society is built like a network of small worlds, it means that most of the ongoing communication occurs inside small worlds. Not that there are no contacts between small worlds, but they are less numerous and weaker.

The point is that the unit of information processing and dissemination in the social sphere is the tribe, not the individual. these small words/tribes are tremendously resilient. They are not formally exclusive, you don't need a badge and an ID to belong to your social network tribe. It is nevertheless clear whether you belong or you don't. If you belong, you have to know the background, the formally and informally accepted ideas, you have to know the jargon and use it properly. This set of commonly accepted ideas makes the group resistant to change.

This is an oversimplification, perhaps, but I have been interacting with some especially weird tribes, such as the "chemtrails" tribe; that is those who believe that the world's governments are engaged in an evil plot to poison us by spreading poisons in the sky and doing that in the form of white trails ("chemtrails") left by planes. Now, how can anyone possibly believe in that? And yet, the tribal identification of believers is so strong that they form a close knit community which react aggressively to every attempt to make the members reason on the absurdity of their beliefs (you don't believe me? Try yourself and then you'll tell me). You see that identification mechanism at work in the comments of the blogs promoting the chemtrails idea - it is a sort of "chorus." The whole as a primeval flavor; something that reminds the behavior of creatures running in packs and howling at the full moon.

The chemtrails example is extreme, but illustrates the mechanism. You see the same phenomenon, for instance, in the comments of the anti-science blog "What's Up with That?" kept by Anthony Watts. You see how members of Watt's tribe reinforce each other's beliefs by using similar language and themes. To be a member you have to repeat the commonly held memes ("there has been no warming during the past 15 years") and attack climate scientists ("Micheal Mann is an enemy of mankind"). The resistance of tribes to new information and is truly amazing.

The problem is that there is almost no way to crack the belief system of a small tribe from outside. Targeting individuals doesn't work: that person will simply compare your statements to those of his/her tribe and conclude that yours have no weight. You may say, "but this is what science says" and the likely answer will be "so what?" If you insist, the reaction may be aggressive ("scientists have been cheating the public in order to get fat research grants"). Not even major climate linked disasters, from Katrina to Hayan, can budge the tribe from its beloved feelings.

Of course, the structure of the Web is nuanced and complex and only a minority of small worlds are actively hostile to science. Most are simply indifferent and won't, in themselves, generate a strong counter-reaction to the climate change meme. Repeating the basic climate concepts over and over would probably create a foothold in these neutral worlds. The problem is that the effort is countered by the equal and opposite activity of hostile tribes. They have been effective in positioning themselves as a legitimate opinion. They have done so by being highly active and visible on the Web. One of their weapons that of aggressively trolling in the comments of scientific sites. A few anti-science trolls can completely hijack any scientific discussion and transform it into a brawl. The big, big problem is that it has been found that the opinion of initially neutral people can be strongly influenced by negative anti-scientific comments.

It is here that we have been doing our crucial mistake as promoters of the idea that we should do something to stop climate change. We tend to deal with anti-science trolls as if they were people who honestly want to know about science. They may disguise themselves in that way, initially, but their purpose is a different one: they just want to hijack the debate and turn it into a fight. They know very well that this is a very effective tactic to affect the opinion of neutral people and we have been falling into the trap over and over - picking up useless fights that served only to give visibility to people who didn't deserve it. The final result is the stalemate we are observing. We are not succeeding in affecting the majority of people and, as a result, nothing is being done about climate. We piped unto you, and ye did not dance; we wailed, and ye did not mourn.


2. The way to do better. 

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. (Sun Tzu)

If we look at past debates, we see that there is a winning strategy for science. It is to isolate the anti-science tribes and make it clear that they are minority social areas whose opinions are held by people who have no scientific credentials. Think of the battle on the health effects of smoking, or of the battle about seat belts in cars or about drunk driving. These concepts had opponents, but the battles were won by isolating them and making clear that their non-mainstream opinions (e.g. that there is no danger with driving while drunk or without seat belts) are dangerous fringe opinions which have no scientific basis and should have no equal space in the debate about driving safety.  Only in this way, it was possible to obtain effective seat belt laws and to stop drunk driving. Many people were not especially happy about that, but they accepted the mainstream opinion. 

So, our objective in the climate debate is clear: we have to isolate the anti-science tribes and make it clear that their positions on climate, for instance that there is no danger from global warming, are fringe opinions with no scientific basis. Furthermore, these opinions are dangerous and should have no "equal space" in the debate about how to keep the Earth's climate safe for humans. If we can achieve that, then we can gradually penetrate the neutral small worlds and attain something. It is the strategy to get something done. 

Then, strategy needs tactics to be put into practice. And the basic tactics in communication is always the same: know your target. You must understand whom you are speaking to and tailor your message to them. Otherwise, it is lost time - actually it is worse than that: you achieve the opposite than what you want to achieve. So, we need to consider that, in the vast universe of the Web, we are talking to three kinds of people, each embedded in their small worlds: sympathetic, neutral, and hostile. The ways to deal with them are different.

- Speaking to people who are already sympathetic to science poses no problems. We are talking the same language - we understand each other. We are a small world, after all, although we are a scientific small world. 

- Speaking to neutral people is where you can use the advice that you can read, for instance, in books like "Don't be such a scientist." You have to be competent, you have to be clear, you have to be honest. If you do that, you don't have to follow particular rules in your job of informing people. For instance, you may have heard that you shouldn't scare people. It is true, but it doesn't mean you should sugar the pill so much that you turn yourself into a Ronald McDonald of climate. The best way, I think, is to be honest about what you are talking about and if you see serious danger ahead, you should say that. Most people, out there, are decent people who can appreciate honest talk. It takes time, you have to keep at that, but eventually it works.

- Speaking to people who belong to hostile tribes, well, it is simple: you don't! Our objective is to isolate them, denying them visibility, and we are learning how to do that. For instance Gavin Schmidt - climate scientists - recently refused to have a TV debate with a hostile opponent saying "Television is performance art, not scientific debate. We shouldn't confuse the two." Well said! That, of course, generated loud accusations against him of being a "coward". Sure, sure.... they can howl at the moon as much as they like - but they know very well that they were beaten. Schmidt perfectly understood that it would have been a mistake to give to his opponent the chance of appearing as if he were on an equal scientific footing and to have a wide exposure with that. And, recently, the Reddit's science forum banned climate deniers. You see? We are learning to know our enemy! And if we know our enemy (and ourselves) we can win this battle.

3. Conclusion

And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. Paul, Corinthians 13:2

The battle on climate is turning out to be the ultimate battle for humankind - if we lose it, we lose everything. You don't have to be a scientist or an expert to fight it, but if you have the right frame of mind it is your duty to fight. It is a tremendously difficult battle, but not an unwinnable one. But don't forget also another thing: science is not everything. The reason you fight is not just because you know that you are scientifically correct. A medical doctor is a good doctor not just because she knows the science of medicine, she is a good doctor because she cares about her patients. The same is for you. You are fighting the climate battle not just because you know the science of climate. It is because you care about the life of your friends, your family, your children, all of humankind and everything which is alive on this planet. This is the only way to win. 

This said, sorry for this rather long rant of mine. But, if you arrived all the way to here, I hope you might have found some useful suggestions in it.

Climate change communication: why do we keep making the same mistakes?

We should know, by now, that what we have been doing in climate communication just doesn't work; we aren't getting anywhere. We need to think of something new, more effective.

Here, Joe Brewer, research director for Culture2 Inc., does just that, presenting some ideas based on the concept of "meme". The task we face is not going to be easy, but if don't try new methods, we are not going to succeed.

The most boring climate video in history

I found it on "upworthy.com" with the caption "If this scares you as much as it scares me, share this far and wide." Scared? After 2 minutes, I was already asleep.





(do not misunderstand me, I appreciate the effort and the aims of this video, but we should be able to do something much better if we want to get the message through)

Three kinds of denial

Peter Sandman discusses here the three main types of denial. For a specific discussion by Sandman on climate change denial see “Climate Change Risk Communication.  image from "resilience.org"

by Peter Sandman

The word “denial” has lots of uses and lots of definitions in different fields. Even within risk communication, the word gets used with widely varying meanings that are usually more implicit than carefully defined. I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else. Without pretending to have come up with a definitive typology, let me try to tease apart three kinds of denial I think are important in risk communication.

All three matter mostly in precaution advocacy. And all three are in contrast to the usual core problems in precaution advocacy, ignorance and apathy. When you’re trying to rouse people to action about a risk, the principal barrier is generally that they don’t know enough or don’t care enough (or both) to take the risk seriously. Denial masquerades as apathy. Maybe some denial can even be seen as a kind of apathy. But it’s different from ordinary apathy in important ways.

 

Denial type one: It hurts to think about it

In my 2003 article on “Beyond Panic Prevention,” I wrote about denial as an antidote to panic: People so frightened they’re at risk of panicking go into denial instead. “Like apathetic people,” the article notes, “people in denial are reluctant to pay attention to the issue; if pushed to talk about it, they do so without emotion.” The key difference is how they respond to alarming information. “Apathetic people don’t have much initial interest in your warnings, but once you get through to them they become more concerned. But people in denial have a very different response: The scarier your message, the deeper into denial it pushes them.”

In this article and elsewhere, I have written about a number of ways to reduce and prevent this type of denial. Here are seven:

• Legitimate the fear, so it can be acknowledged and accepted.
• Provide action opportunities. People are less in need of denial if they have things to do.
• Provide action choices. People are less in need of denial if they have things to decide.
• Focus on victims who need to be helped and potential victims who need to be protected. Love is a bulwark against denial.
• If appropriate, focus also on malefactors who need to be caught and punished. Unless it escalates into out-of-control rage, or is itself denied, anger is also a bulwark against denial.
• Model tolerating fear, not being fearless. You’re finding it scary too, but you’re bearing your fear and addressing the situation – so maybe I can too.
• Stress determination but not necessarily optimism, rather like Winston Churchill in the dark days of early World War II: “We will fight them on the beaches….”

I went into a lot more detail in my 2009 website column on “Climate Change Risk Communication: The Problem of Psychological Denial.” This column discusses at length two key sources of climate change denial: cognitive dissonance and intolerable emotion (The discussion of climate change “psychological denial” in this article has nothing to do with the “strategic denial” of people with a stake in convincing others that global warming isn’t real or the “intellectual denial” of people who are genuinely skeptical about the majority’s evidence.)

This 2009 column implies a much broader definition of denial than I was using in 2003. Now it’s not just fear that can make you “go into denial.” So can guilt, sadness, anger, and other emotions. And so can the uncomfortable feeling (cognitive dissonance) that arises when we can’t make attitudinal sense of our own actions or lifestyles.

The “Climate Change Risk Communication” column also lists some subtypes of what I am now calling “denial type one,” other than simply claiming the risk isn’t so.

• Isolation of affect – acknowledging the risk without feeling its emotional punch.
• Intellectualization – acknowledging the risk but finding ways to deny its importance or urgency.
• Displacement – over-reacting to some other risk in order to avoid focusing on this one.
• Humor – turning the risk into an object of ridicule in order to avoid having to take it to heart.

“The core of denial is motivated inattention,” the column states. “I direct my attention away from information that threatens to upset my worldview or my emotional stability.”

Denial type one is mostly unconscious. People don’t usually say to each other, or even to themselves, “I’m feeling too much cognitive dissonance to think about this” or “I’m too emotionally distraught” to think about this. They’re likelier to see themselves as simply apathetic about the risk … or to see you as simply wrong that it’s serious. You have to diagnose the denial in order to address it effectively.

 

Denial type two: I don’t need any more worries to think about

I wrote about denial type two very recently, in my July 2, 2013 Guestbook response.
In a nutshell: People often shrug off a risk in order to minimize their distress. When very high distress trips an emotional circuit breaker, that’s denial type one. But even if I’m not especially distressed about an issue, I may well prefer to avoid becoming distressed about it. It’s not as if I were feeling some kind of stress deprivation. I have enough stress in my life already. So I blow off your warnings.

That’s denial type two.

In my July 2 Guestbook response I called denial type two “willed apathy.” Like denial type one, it’s a kind of motivated inattention. But the motivation is a lot less powerful and a lot more conscious than it is in denial type one. It’s not that I can’t bear to think about the new problem. I’d just rather not have to. Once you get me distressed enough about it to overcome my resistance, I’ll add the new problem to my worry agenda … and delete or diminish some older problem(s) to make room.

 

Denial type three: It’s futile to think about

This is the kind of denial you’re calling my attention to. It usually goes under the label “learned helplessness.”

Psychologist Martin Seligman and colleagues developed the “theory of learned helplessness” in the 1960s and 1970s as an explanation for depression. In a key 1967 experiment by Seligman and Maier, dogs that were shocked when there was no way to escape learned to bear the shocks stoically without trying to escape. Later when an escape route was available, they tended not to find it. Having learned that there was nothing to be done to stop the torture, the dogs became less able to learn newly available solutions.

At least in humans, the effect of learned helplessness isn’t just cognitive. The motivation to try new coping responses is reduced. And according to Seligman, an emotional state that resembles depression is inculcated; people who learn that they’re unable to control their own lives become passive and depressed.

As a risk communication concept, learned helplessness (denial type three) is issue-specific rather than global. Learning that we can’t do much about a specific problem makes us passive about that problem, disinclined to take action about it or even to find out more about it.
Denial type three can be conscious or unconscious. Some people – like you – announce that it’s futile to fight. Others just give up.

The boundaries between denial type three and the other two types are fuzzy. If someone’s learned helplessness gets so pervasive that it leads to depression, it starts to look a lot like denial type one: I can’t bear to think about it. The fuzziness works in the other direction too: People who can’t bear the emotional burden of addressing a problem – such as climate change – may defend themselves from that burden by insisting that the problem is hopeless. As for the border between denial types two and three: If you’ve already got too many problems on your worry agenda, it makes sense to focus on the ones that are likelier to prove solvable.

What can we do to fight learned helplessness – your own or someone else’s? I wrote about this at length in a 2012 Guestbook entry entitled “Why are people so politically inactive? Is it denial? Are they sheeple? What can be done?” In that response I tried to distinguish denial (“I can’t bear what I’m feeling”) from hopelessness/helplessness (“I believe there’s no point in trying”). Now I’m calling them denial type one and denial type three respectively.

The “obvious answer” to learned helplessness, I wrote then, “is to try to bolster your audience’s sense of self-efficacy. But I think that may be – in part, anyway – the wrong answer.” I continued:

According to the literature, the best way to increase people’s self-efficacy is to arrange for them to have mastery experiences; success breeds confidence. But there are other ways, most notably modeling (“if she can do it so can I”) and social support (“if he says I can do it, maybe I can”).
I don’t question any of that – but I think it’s probably close-to-irrelevant when someone’s low self-efficacy is mostly a rational response to reality….
Instead of cheerleading for efficacy, my hunch is that it will help more to get on the other side of the risk communication seesaw:

• “This feels almost futile, doesn’t it?”
• “At most we can only help a little – and maybe not even that!”
• “Even if we win a battle or two, we’re probably not going to change the world.”

The myth of Sisyphus – the Greek king compelled to roll a boulder uphill forever – is powerful precisely because so much effort really is Sisyphean. It can’t be good risk communication strategy to try to convince people that it isn’t … or, worse, that they should feel like it isn’t whether it is or not.
And yet things do change….
I think it is good strategy to acknowledge and even proclaim that change and unchangeability are both characteristics of life; that it’s hard to tell which of our efforts might make a (probably small) difference and which efforts are doomed from the outset; and above all that it’s more fun (“fun” in the most serious sense) to take your best shot than to stand around watching.

This time around I want to add three more observations.

First, it’s worth noting that tasks often feel Sisyphean when they’re not. To pick one example out of many: I can only guess how discouraging the battle for gay rights must have felt until just the past few years. Governments and companies do everything they can to make their critics’ goals look unachievable. It’s often wise to ignore the impression of futility and pursue the goal.

Second, community organizers are professionals at overcoming people’s false sense of helplessness. Regardless of your political leanings, you’ll find much of value in books like Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Among other tips, Alinsky writes about the huge importance of early victories, even manufactured victories achieved by aggressively demanding something that was about to happen anyway.

And third sometimes we really are helpless. Sometime it simply makes sense to give up, and save our efforts for a more achievable goal.

The justly famous “Serenity Prayer” written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous asks God to “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I certainly don’t claim to possess the wisdom to know the difference.

Another attempt at communicating the urgency of the problem

Another attempt at communicating the problem: using music to describe the temperature increase during the past century. Is it effective? Difficult to say, but surely these attempts are multiplying.

Communicating the climate problem: the Aristotelic approach

This 2007 video by Greg Craven has been viewed by more than five million people. Touted as the "rational response to the climate change debate" (see also Craven's book), it has been seen as an important milestone on diffusing the right climate message. So much that it gained a dedicated post in the denialist blog "WUWT"

In some respects, there is no doubt that Craven's argument is effective. Show the alternatives, discuss them, then come to a conclusion on purely rational grounds. It is the Aristotelic approach; it is speaking in syllogisms.

But there are problems with this video. For one thing, in the Youtube page where it appears, about one third of viewers pressed the "don't like" button. And, if you look at the more than 40 thousand comments, you'll notice that many, perhaps the majority, are rabidly denying the human role on climate change, or even its existence.

So, it seems that the video preaches to the believer but that it doesn't budge the unbeliever.  That doesn't meant that the clip is not well done, nor that it has had no impact. But, six years after its first appearance, we can see that the debate is way too complex, harsh, difficult, and emotional to be winnable by a "rational response".

It is a debate that cuts through our very essence as human beings. Syllogisms may affect our brain cortex, but are not enough to change the way our deep brain works. We need much more than syllogisms to win this battle.

Or so I see it. What do you think?

A meme-infected mind

Image from photobucket.com


"Skeptical Science" reports a rather extraordinary statement by the British Secretary of State for the Environment, Owen Paterson. Here it is:


"Well I'm sitting like a rose between two thorns here and I have to take practical decisions - erm - the climate's always been changing - er - Peter mentioned the Arctic and I think in the Holocene the Arctic melted completely and you can see there were beaches there - when Greenland was occupied, you know, people growing crops - we then had a little ice age, we had a middle age warming - the climate's been going up and down - but the real question which I think everyone's trying to address is - is this influenced by manmade activity in recent years and James [Delingpole] is actually correct - the climate has not changed - the temperature has not changed in the last seventeen years and what I think we've got to be careful of is that there is almost certainly - bound to be - some influence by manmade activity but I think we've just got to be rational (audience laughter)  - rational people - and make sure the measures that we take to counter it don't actually cause more damage - and I think we're about to get -" 

(See here for a detailed debunking of these statements)


Doesn't this statement give you the impression of an infected mind? Something like a Petri dish full of bacteria festering on their nutrient solution.

Minds, however, are not so often infected by real bacteria or virus but are easily prey to their virtual equivalent: "memes." Originally proposed by Richard Dawkins in the 1970s, the concept of meme sees ideas as able to reproduce and spread hopping from one mind to another; it is the origin of the idea of "viral communication".

As we see from the statement from Secretary Paterson, sometimes a human mind seems to be more a battleground for infectious memes than the rational computing device that we imagine it to be.

But what is really maddening, here, is how well "negative" memes (intended as contrary to reality) spread. There exist perfectly good memes that describe how climate change is happening; for instance "the Arctic is melting" is a meme that describes reality. But, no; these memes don't spread, don't stick. So, Mr. Paterson doesn't mention that "the Arctic is melting"(true) but that "in the Holocene the Arctic melted completely" (not true).

That is confirmed by a study by Lazlo Karafiath and Joe Brewer, co-founders of DarwinSF. They found that memes that describe the reality of climate change simply don't stick. Why is that? Perhaps we didn't find the right memes; or is it that the human mind is structured in such a way to reject reality when given a chance to do so?


Hard to say; in any case we can't hope to diffuse the urgency of doing something about climate change if we don't take into account the concept of meme. For a start, you may give a look to this video - also by the founders of DarwinSF
 

Books on climate change communication

For a while I have been under the impression that printed books had become useless. Not really. When you need to learn something on a new subject, books are a good way to go into full-immersion, avoiding the infinite distractions you face when you are on line.

The picture shows just some of the books I have been reading (or re-reading) during the past few months about communication on climate change, about communication in general, and about the psychology of the human mind when facing bad news. If I were to pile up all the books I have collected on this subject, the stack would be about twice higher than this one.

So, what did I learn from these books? In short, I learned a lot. And I am still learning: it is a completely new world. I thought that as a scientists all what I had to learn about was science; well, it is not so. There is much more. It is not enough to be scientists; we must learn how to communicate science.

And so, back to the pile of books..........