UBC-DIBS Behavioural Insights Seminar
Friday, Apr. 12, 1-2pm PT
Register to attend on Zoom at https://bit.ly/DIBSseminars
Using Self-Affirmation to Increase Open-Minded Processing of Information About Climate Change in Climate Change Skeptics:
A Sisyphean Task
Dale Griffin
University of British Columbia
I discuss two studies examining whether interventions encouraging self-affirmation (consideration of personal values, personal strengths, or enduring relationships) lead climate change skeptics to more carefully process, consider, and remember media information describing the climate change emergency. Self-affirmation has advantages as an ethically neutral intervention, as it calls upon participants’ own core values to increase open-mindedness. However, results indicate that self-affirmation manipulations had small and inconsistent effects on process measures, attitudes, beliefs, and behavioural intentions, whereas individual difference measures of self-affirmation had stronger and more consistent associations with these outcomes. Puzzles and challenges remain.
The UBC-DIBS Behavioural Insights Seminar series features researchers and practitioners sharing their field and lab projects using the behavioural and decision sciences to “nudge for good”. Recordings of past seminars are available on the BI wiki here. To subscribe or unsubscribe, email dibs@sauder.ubc.ca.