Decision scientists have identified various plausible sources of ideological polarization over climate change, gun violence, national security, and like issues that turn on empirical evidence. This paper describes a study of three of them: the predominance of heuristic-driven information...

The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public understanding: Limited popular knowledge of science, the inability of ordinary citizens to assess technical information, and the resulting widespread use of unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess...

Why do white men fear various risks less than women and minorities? Known as the white male effect, this pattern is well documented but poorly understood. This paper proposes a new explanation: identity-protective cognition. Putting work on the cultural theory of risk together with work on...

Recent work in cognitive and social psychology makes it clear that emotion plays a critical role in public perceptions of risk, but doesn't make clear exactly what that role is or why it matters. This paper examines two competing theories of risk perception, which generate two corresponding...

This commentary describes existing research on nanotechnology risk perceptions, including a meta-analysis published in the same issue of Nature Nanotechnology, and proposes directions for future research, for which experimental studies are most appropriate

Scientists and science communicators have appropriately turned to the science of science communication for guidance in overcoming public conflict over climate change. The value of the knowledge that this science can impart, however, depends on it being used scientifically. It is a mistake to...

Seeming public apathy over climate change is often attributed to a deficit in comprehension. The public knows too little science, it is claimed, to understand the evidence or avoid being misled. Widespread limits on technical reasoning aggravate the problem by forcing citizens to use unreliable...

Science curious people -- those who enjoy consuming science-related information -- are less likely to hold polarized views about contentious science. Consequently, science curiosity is of great interest to scholars across the social sciences. However, measuring science curiosity via the science...

This paper analyzes data collected but not reported in the study featured in van der Linden, Leiserowitz, Feinberg, and Maibach [2015]. VLFM report finding that a “scientific consensus” message “increased” experiment subjects' “key beliefs about climate change” and “in turn”...

This comment uses the dynamic of identity-protective cognition to pose a friendly challenge to Jussim (2012). The friendly part consists of an examination of how this form of information processing, like many of the ones Jussim describes, has been mischaracterized in the decision science...