Study: Combating Climate Apathy Depends More On Stories That Stats

A very much NOT frozen Lake Champlain, pictured here
on February 14, 2024 in a very warm winter. Stories about
how climate change affects people, like a lack of ice
fishing, can move people toward caring about
climate change more than statistics can. 

 In order to affect political change and encourage leaders to take real steps to combat climate change, you need to have people sign on to the cause and pressure those leaders to do something. 

But if climate change isn't high up on the public's list of concerns, then that never happens. 

True, everybody has a lot of worries these days. The economy is worrying  There are bad, corrupt and inept governments. (We're looking at you, United States!)  to deal with. We have wars, strife, divisions, poverty, you name it. Things are challenging. 

But so is climate change. Which threatens to make all of the above problems worse. Not to mention add to our growing list of deadly and expensive weather disasters that seem to hit somewhere in the world every time we turn around. 

So how do you get people to focus on climate change?

Turns out stories, not stats, might be more effective, says a study conducted buy UCLA

According to UCLA Newsroom: 

"A new UCLA study finds that presenting the same continuous climate data, such as incremental changes in temperatures, in binary form - such as whether a lake did or did not freeze in the winter - significantly increases people's ability to see the impact of climate change."

In other words, give people the stats, but also let them know what the real-world consequences of those stats are. 

The stats don't resonate, mainly because they seem so gradual. 

"'For years, we assumed that if the climate worsened enough, people would act, but instead, we're seeing the 'boiling frog' effect, where humans continuously reset their perception of 'normal' every few years,' (UCLA communications professor and cognitive psychologist Rachit) Dubey said. 

'People are adjusting to worsening environmental conditions, like multiple fire seasons per year, disturbingly fast. My research examines how people are mentally adapting to the negative changes  in our environment.'"

STUDY DETAILS;

Researchers asked study participants about the climate in the fictional city "Townsville."  

The researchers asked a second group of participants about five real lakeside cities like Lake George, New York and Grand Traverse Bay, Michigan. 

Half the participants were show a graph of temperature increases from 1940 to 2020. The other half was show a graph showing whether it was cold enough to freeze each winter. 

Of course, as temperatures slowly climbed over the decades, the lakes stopped freezing as often. For the real towns, study participants were also told about a decline in activities like ice skating and ice fishing.

Here were the results: 

"When the researchers asked participants to rate from 1 to 10 how much climate change impacted the town, people who learned about a range of temperatures responded lower than people who learned whether the lake froze - on a average, 6.6, compared to 7.5 or 12 percent higher.

Making the emotional connection to local traditions, whether ice skating in the water or freedom from wildfires smoke in the summer, may also contribute to overcoming apathy, said lead author Grace Liu, a Ph.D student at Carnegie Mellon University."

This of course all makes sense. Humans are hard-wired to embrace stories. We like stories more than data, and they resonate so much more than us. Why do you think for thousands of years humans have so embraced music, plays, books, and more recently movies and some online videos.  They tell stories.

The idea of telling stories is no cure-all. After all, as I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of other competing worries in the lives of literally billions of people.  But it might be a start.

As UCLA Newsroom writes:

"Making the emotional connection to local traditions, whether ice skating in the winter or freedom from wildfire smoke in the summer, may also contribute to overcoming apathy, said Lead author Grace Liu, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University.

'Our study drives home the importance of discussing climate change not just in gradual temperature terms, but in concrete, either-or terms, showing how life has changed,' Liu said. 

'It's not just warmer winters; it's also a loss of ice hockey and white Christmases. It's not just hotter summers; it's the disappearance of a swimming hole due to drought or soccer practice being canceled because it's dangerously hot.'"