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How and why people spread rumors is key to understanding how false information travels and takes root

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theconversation.com – Kate Starbird, Professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington – 2024-10-30 07:15:00

Spreading rumors is problematic but understandable.
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Kate Starbird, University of Washington and Stephen Prochaska, University of Washington

On Sept. 20, 2024, a newspaper in Montana reported an issue with ballots provided to overseas voters registered in the state: Kamala Harris was not on the ballot. Election officials were able to quickly remedy the problem but not before accusations began to spread online, primarily among Democrats, that the Republican secretary of state had purposefully left Harris off the ballot.

This false rumor emerged from a common pattern: Some people view evidence such as good-faith errors in election administration through a mindset of elections being untrustworthy or “rigged,” leading them to misinterpret that evidence.

As the U.S. approaches another high-stakes and contentious election, concerns about the pervasive spread of falsehoods about election integrity are again front of mind. Some election experts worry that false claims may be mobilized – as they were in 2020 – into efforts to contest the election through tactics such as lawsuits, protests, disruptions to vote-counting and pressure on election officials to not certify the election.

Our team at the University of Washington has studied online rumors and misinformation for more than a decade. Since 2020, we have focused on rapid analysis of falsehoods about U.S. election administration, from sincere confusion about when and where to vote to intentional efforts to sow distrust in the process. Our motivations are to help quickly identify emerging rumors about election administration and analyze the dynamics of how these rumors take shape and spread online.

Through the course of this research we have learned that despite all the discussion about misinformation being a problem of bad facts, most misleading election rumors stem not from false or manipulated evidence but from misinterpretations and mischaracterizations. In other words, the problem is not just about bad facts but also faulty frames, or the mental structures people rely on to interpret those facts.

Misinformation may not be the best label for addressing the problem – it’s more an issue of how people make sense of the world, how that sensemaking process is shaped by social, political and informational dynamics, and how it begets rumors that can lead people to a false understanding of events.

Rumors – not misinformation

There is a long history of research on rumors going back to World War II and earlier. From this perspective, rumors are unverified stories, spreading through informal channels that serve informational, psychological and social purposes. We are applying this knowledge to the study of online falsehoods.

Though many rumors are false, some turn out to be true or partially true. Even when false, rumors can contain useful indications of real confusions or fears within a community.

Rumors can be seen as a natural byproduct of collective sensemaking – that is, efforts by groups of well-meaning people to make sense of uncertain and ambiguous information during dynamic events. But rumors can also emerge from propaganda and disinformation campaigns that lead people to misinterpret or mischaracterize their own and others’ experiences.

University of Washington’s Kate Starbird explains rumors as collective sensemaking.

Evidence, frames and (mis)interpretations

Prior research describes collective sensemaking as a process of interactions between evidence and frames. Evidence includes the things people see, read and hear in the world. Frames are mental schema that shape how people interpret that evidence.

The relationship between evidence and frames flows in two directions. When people encounter novel events or new evidence, they try to select the best frame from their mental filing cabinets. The selected frame then determines what evidence they focus on and what evidence they exclude in their interpretations. This evidence-frame view of collective sensemaking can help researchers understand rumors and disinformation.

Everyone has their own ways of interpreting events based on their unique experiences. But your frames are not yours alone. Frames are shaped, sometimes intentionally, by information from media, political leaders, communities, colleagues, friends, neighbors and family. Framing – the process of using, building, reinforcing, adapting, challenging and updating frames – can be a deliberate strategy of political communication.

Frames play a role in generating rumors, shaping how people interpret emerging events and novel evidence. False rumors occur when sensemaking goes awry, often due to people focusing on the wrong piece of evidence or applying the wrong frame. And disinformation, from this perspective, is the intentional manipulation of the sensemaking process, either by introducing false evidence or distorting the frames through which people interpret that evidence.

In 2020, we saw these dynamics at work in a rumor about Sharpie pens in Arizona. In the lead-up to the election, President Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly alleged that the election would be rigged – setting a powerful frame for his followers. When voters noted that the Sharpie pens provided by election officials were bleeding through their ballots, many interpreted their experiences through the frame of a “rigged election” and became concerned that their ballots would not be counted.

a woman holds a stack of large paper forms at a table in a large room
A Maricopa County, Arizona, election worker counts ballots in the 2020 election as false rumors that Sharpie pens were ruining ballots spread online.
AP Photo/Matt York

Some people shared those experiences online, where they were soon amplified and given meaning by others, including online influencers. Concerns and suspicions grew. Soon, members of Trump’s family were repeating false claims that the bleed-through was systematically disenfranchising Republican voters. The effect was circular and mutually reinforcing. The strategic frame inspired misinterpretations of evidence – real bleed-through falsely seen as affecting ballot counting – that were shared and amplified, strengthening the frame.

Social media sensemaking

Collective sensemaking is increasingly taking place online, where it is profoundly shaped by social media platforms, from features such as repost and like buttons to algorithmic recommendations to the connections between accounts.

Not so long ago, many people hoped that the internet would democratize information flows by removing the historical gatekeepers of information and disrupting their ability to set the agenda – and the frames – of conversation. But the gatekeepers have not been erased; they have been replaced. A group of newsbrokering influencers have taken their place, in part by gaming the ways online systems manipulate attention.

Many of these influencers work by systematically seeking out and amplifying content that aligns with prevailing political frames set by elites in politics and media. This gives creators the incentive to produce content that resonates with those frames, because that content tends to be rewarded with attention, the primary commodity of social media.

These dynamics were at work in February 2024, when an aspiring creator produced a man-on-the-street video interviewing migrants to the U.S. that was selectively edited and captioned to falsely claim to show undocumented migrants planning to vote illegally in U.S. elections. This resonated with two prominent frames: the same rigged-election frame from 2020 and another that framed immigration as harmful to the U.S.

The video was shared across multiple platforms and exploded in views after being amplified by a series of accounts with large followings on X, formerly Twitter. X CEO Elon Musk commented with an exclamation point on one post with the embedded video. The creator soon found himself on Fox News. He currently has hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and Instagram and continues to produce similar content.

Interactions between influencers and online audiences result in content that fits strategic frames. Emerging events provide new evidence that people can twist to fit prevailing frames, both intentionally and unintentionally. Rumors are the byproducts of this process, and online attention dynamics fuel their spread.

Collective sensemaking and election 2024

Heading into the 2024 election, false and misleading claims about election integrity remain widespread. Our team has tracked more than 100 distinct rumors since the beginning of September. The machinery for quickly converting perceived evidence from elections into widely shared rumors and conspiracy theories is increasingly well oiled.

Experts discuss election integrity and efforts to undermine voter confidence.

One concerning development is an increase in so-called election integrity organizations that seek to recruit volunteers who share the rigged-election frame. The groups aim to provide volunteers with tools to streamline the collection and amplification of evidence to support the rigged-election frame.

One worry is that these volunteers may misinterpret what they see and hear on Election Day, generating additional rumors and false claims about election integrity that reinforce that increasingly distorted frame. Another is that these false claims will feed lawsuits and other attempts to contest election results.

However, we hope that by shedding light on some of these dynamics, we can help researchers, journalists, election officials and other decision-makers better diagnose and respond to rumors about election integrity in this cycle. Most importantly, we believe that this collective sensemaking lens can help us all to both empathize with well-meaning people who get caught up in sharing false rumors and see how propagandists manipulate these processes for their gain.The Conversation

Kate Starbird, Professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington and Stephen Prochaska, Graduate Research Assistant, Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington

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The Conversation

Attitudes toward Christian nationalism don’t just boil down to views on race, religion and history − research suggests ‘moral foundations’ play a critical role

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theconversation.com – Kerby Goff, Associate Director of Research at the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance, Rice University – 2025-01-22 07:43:00

Christian nationalism is the belief that the United States was founded to be a Christian nation.
Douglas Sacha/moment via Getty Images

Kerby Goff, Rice University; Eric Silver, Penn State, and John Iceland, Penn State

The concept of Christian nationalism has taken center stage in many Americans’ minds as either the greatest threat to democracy or its only savior.

Political scientist Eric McDaniel defines Christian nationalism as the belief that the United States was founded to be a Christian nation. “In this view,” according to McDaniel, “America can be governed only by Christians, and the country’s mission is directed by a divine hand.” Why does the idea resonate with some but alarm others?

Scholars often portray Christian nationalism as rooted in a deep-seated desire to exclude non-Christians and people of color from American society. Historians point to a persistent link between racism and Christian nationalism among white Americans throughout U.S. history.

White Christians, however, are not the only ones sympathetic to Christian nationalist ideas. Nearly 40% of Black Protestants and 55% of Hispanic Protestants agree with statements such as “being Christian is an important part of being truly American.” Interestingly, over one-third of Muslims agree that the U.S. government should promote Christian moral values but not make it the official religion.

Many who reject Christian nationalism do so because it seems to privilege those white Christian Americans who would like to make conservative Christianity the United States’ official religion. Conversely, supporters argue that the future of the U.S. depends upon loyalty to God and to staying true to the country’s Christian past. They contend that since the nation’s founding, a Christian influence in government and societal institutions such as education and health care has been and remains essential to sustaining religious, political and economic stability.

While racial, religious and political tribalism appear to influence who supports and who rejects Christian nationalism, our own research suggests there are other factors at play, specifically moral differences. We set out to understand the role that different moral values play in shaping support for and opposition to Christian nationalism.

Our study drew on the most influential social science approach to understanding moral values: moral foundations theory.

Moral differences

Moral foundations theory states that humans evolved to possess six primary moral intuitions that shape moral judgments – care for the vulnerable, fairness in how people are treated, loyalty to in-groups, respect for authority, reverence for the sacred, and the safeguarding of individual liberty.

A vast amount of research finds that liberals endorse the first two foundations, care and fairness, but score lower on the rest.

Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to score equally on all six foundations. This suggests their moral judgments often involve balancing a desire to be compassionate with a desire to safeguard the stability of the social order.

Moral foundations theory has been used extensively by social scientists to study hot-button issues such as crime control, policing, vaccine resistance, immigration, same-sex marriage, abortion and more.

For example, research finds that prioritizing care for the vulnerable, which is most pronounced among liberals, is linked to reduced acceptance of police use of force. Conservatives, who also value respect for authority, often favor “law and order” even when it involves use of force.

What our research found

A human hand inserting the Bible into a locked ballot box, placed in front of the American flag.
Researchers found that support for Christian nationalism was strongly associated with the moral foundations of loyalty, sanctity and liberty.
selimaksan/E+ via Getty images.

With moral foundations theory as our guide, we analyzed Christian nationalism using a 2021 national survey of 1,125 U.S. adults conducted by YouGov, a global opinion research organization. We measured respondents’ moral foundations with the moral foundations questionnaire, which has been used extensively by researchers across numerous academic disciplines.

To measure Christian nationalism, we asked respondents whether they agreed with six questions, such as whether the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation, advocate Christian values, allow prayer in public schools and allow religious symbols in public spaces, to list a few.

What we found surprised us.

Support for Christian nationalism was most strongly linked to the moral foundations of loyalty, sanctity and liberty, but not to the authority foundation. We expected Christian nationalism to appeal to individuals who are enamored of authority, providing a rationale to their support for authoritarian leaders. But in our study, respect for authority did not distinguish those who supported Christian nationalism from those who opposed it.

We also found that support for Christian nationalism was linked to having a weaker fairness foundation. But it was not related to the strength of one’s care foundation.

We conclude that differences over Christian nationalism emerge not because some people care about the harm Christian nationalism could bring to non-Christian Americans, while others don’t. Rather, our findings suggest that those who support Christian nationalism do so because they are more sensitive to violations of loyalty, sanctity and liberty, and less sensitive to violations of fairness.

Our findings also revealed that support for Christian nationalism isn’t merely about racism or being ultrareligious, as critics often suggest. We accounted for endorsements of anti-Black stereotypes and religiosity. Yet, moral foundations remained the best predictors of Christian nationalist beliefs, even after taking into account these critical variables.

2 moral approaches to Christianity in the US

The Christian nationalism scale we and others have used combines several different beliefs about Christianity’s role in society. So we also examined how each of the six items in our Christian nationalism scale related to each of the six moral foundations. We found two important patterns.

A large campaign poster that says, 'Vote The Bible! Take a Stand for Morality.
Researchers found different moral values playing a role in shaping support or opposition for Christian nationalism.
Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

First, we found that the Christian nationalist desire to bring church and state closer together was most prominent among those with strong loyalty and sanctity foundations and a weak fairness foundation. This means that people who advocate for a Christian state largely do so out of loyalty – specifically, loyalty to God – and out of a desire to adhere to God’s requirements for society, as they understand them.

In line with this, support is also linked to a desire to protect the sanctity of the nation’s Christian heritage. Those who oppose bringing church and state closer together do so out of a sense that such a union would be unfair.

Second, we found that the desire to allow prayer in schools and religious symbols in public spaces was strongest among those with pronounced liberty and sanctity moral foundations. This likely means that people who favor public religious expression, but not a union of church and state, do so because they see individual religious expression as a sacred national ideal.

All in all, our study shows that support for or opposition to Christian nationalism is not merely due to religious, political or racial identities and prejudices, as many believe, but is rather due to entrenched moral differences between the two camps.

Building solidarity through diverse moral concerns

Moral divides are not necessarily impassable. It’s possible that understanding these diverging moral concerns may help build bridges between those who are sympathetic to and those who are skeptical toward Christian nationalism.

America’s founders conceived of fairness and liberty as central to a democratic society. And these values have fueled loyalty to a robust national identity ever since.

Our research suggests that the controversy surrounding Christian nationalism is driven not by a lack of moral concern by sympathizers or critics but by their different moral priorities. We believe that understanding such differences as morally rooted can open the door for mutual understanding and productive debate.The Conversation

Kerby Goff, Associate Director of Research at the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance, Rice University; Eric Silver, Professor of Sociology & Criminology, Penn State, and John Iceland, Professor of Sociology and Demography, Penn State

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Feeling political distress? Here are coping strategies a psychologist shares with his clients

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theconversation.com – Jeremy P. Shapiro, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University – 2025-01-22 07:40:00

The polarized political climate is reflected in what drives some people to therapy.
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Jeremy P. Shapiro, Case Western Reserve University

I began practicing psychotherapy during the Reagan administration. Thirty years went by before distress about politics became a clinical issue for any of my clients.

I remember the moment it first happened: There was a long voicemail from a distraught woman requesting therapy for anxiety and depression in reaction to the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump. I listened twice to make sure I hadn’t missed something. I hadn’t. There were no other issues. This woman wanted therapy for political distress.

That was a new one for me and every therapist I knew. But now I see no sign of this clinical challenge abating.

Political polarization in the U.S. is at the highest level ever measured. Growing majorities of both Republicans and Democrats say they consider members of the other party to be unintelligent, dishonest and immoral.

What I’m calling political distress is a bipartisan mental health problem. It is based on a belief that, because the country is in the hands of bad leaders, awful things might happen. Many people experience intense fear about what the other side might do. Both Republicans and Democrats have experienced this anguish, but it peaks at different times for the two parties, depending on who won the last election.

We psychotherapists like to base our interventions on research-based strategies that have been vetted in clinical trials or, if not that, at least strategies grounded in the clinical expertise of master therapists who wrote classic books. There’s none of that for how to deal with political distress.

But therapists cannot tell a client in distress that future research is needed before we can help. Instead, we pull from what is known about how best to handle related issues. Here’s the advice I’m sharing with my clients who are upset about the way the world is going.

Taking a longer view

Information about American history is relevant to political distress because, psychologically, people evaluate their situations by comparing them with anchors or norms. You compare current dangers and threats with what you’ve faced and survived in the past.

A Democrat comparing today’s United States with the country a decade ago may feel gloomy. But broader comparisons can produce a more grounded, calming perspective.

black and white picture of dozens of men in suits and hats lined up on a city street corner
The Great Depression in the 1930s came with massive unemployment; here, thousands of people in New York line up in hopes of a job.
UPI/Bettmann Archive via Getty Images

The U.S. has faced major trials and tribulations over the course of its history. The country has proven itself to be a resilient democracy. Basic information about the Civil War, the Great Depression and World War II yields a sense that the present political moment is not the only perilous time our republic has ever faced.

Wisdom of the Serenity Prayer

God, 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.

bronze-colored token with serenity prayer engraved on it
Change what you can, recognize what you can’t.
Jerry ‘Woody’/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

The Serenity Prayer is an effective summary of research on coping. As I discuss in my book “Finding Goldilocks,” the well-known invocation identifies two basic strategies and tells you when to use which one. People need the strength to change what can be changed and the serenity to accept what cannot. Political distress, like many stressors, calls for a combination of both tactics.

Doing what you can means funneling political anxiety into political actions, including voting, volunteering, donating money and serving as a poll worker. Can one person’s actions make a difference? They can make one person’s worth of difference. You can’t do everything, but you can do something.

In addition, taking action about a problem, even if it does not produce a solution, often reduces distress, especially if it brings you together with like-minded people.

Once you’ve done what you can, it’s important to acknowledge how much is beyond your control: The whole world doesn’t rest on your shoulders alone. Then you can in good conscience turn your attention to the good things in your own personal life.

It helps to limit your consumption of political news; past a certain point, you’re not learning anything new and just fueling your agitation.

man with head in hands with a big scribble over his head
Imagining the worst can be a first step toward moving past anxiety.
rob dobi/Moment via Getty Images

The best things in life aren’t political

One basic tool of cognitive therapy for anxiety is asking the question, “What is the worst thing that could plausibly happen?” The purpose of this question is not to get anxious people thinking about worst-case scenarios – they’re doing that already – but to move their thought process forward to a picture of how they could survive their worst fear. This is a strangely effective form of reassurance.

Democrats believe Donald Trump’s second administration will hurt people. But with important exceptions – such as undocumented immigrants who could be deported – when many people try to picture exactly how their lives will be damaged in specific, concrete, serious ways, they usually do not come up with much.

This does not mean nothing bad will happen. It does mean you likely can cope with whatever does. While Trump’s policies might be unfortunate and even infuriating for those on the other side of the aisle, they are unlikely to be disastrous on an immediate, day-to-day level for large groups of people.

A very broad perspective will remind you that democracy is a rarity in world history. For most of civilization, people have lived in monarchies or tyrannies of some sort, and most of them managed to be OK.

I’m not suggesting that people disengage from the political world. I believe it’s important to stand up for what you believe is right. My advice is not to put on your rose-colored glasses and withdraw into your own safe space, the rest of the world be damned.

But the main sources of human well-being are family, friends, meaningful work, hobbies, the arts, nature, spirituality and acts of kindness. None of these depend on political systems. We can cope with political distress by falling back on the best things in life.The Conversation

Jeremy P. Shapiro, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University

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How the oil industry and growing political divides turned climate change into a partisan issue

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theconversation.com – Joe Árvai, Director of the Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability | Professor of Psychology, Biological Sciences, and Environmental Studies, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences – 2025-01-22 07:44:00

Donald Trump’s pro-fossil fuel positions stand in sharp contrast with efforts to protect the climate.
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Joe Árvai, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

After four years of U.S. progress on efforts to deal with climate change under Joe Biden, Donald Trump’s return to the White House is swiftly swinging the pendulum in the opposite direction.

On his first day back, Trump declared a national energy emergency, directing agencies to use any emergency powers available to boost oil and gas production, despite U.S. oil and gas production already being near record highs and leading the world. He revoked Biden’s orders that had withdrawn large areas of the Arctic and the U.S. coasts from oil and natural gas leasing. Among several other executive orders targeting Biden’s pro-climate policies, Trump also began the process of pulling the U.S. out of the international Paris climate agreement – a repeat of a move he made in 2017, which Biden reversed.

None of Trump’s moves to sideline climate change as an important domestic and foreign policy issue should come as a surprise.

During his first term as president, 2017-2021, Trump repealed the Obama-era Clean Power Plan for reducing power plant emissions, falsely claimed that wind turbines cause cancer, and promised to “end the war on coal” and boost the highly polluting energy source. He once declared that climate change was a hoax perpetuated by China.

Since being elected again in November, Trump has again chosen Cabinet members who support the fossil fuel industry.

But it’s important to remember that while Donald Trump is singing from the Republican Party songbook when it comes to climate change, the music was written long before he came along.

Money, lies and lobbying

In 1979, the scientific consensus that climate change posed a significant threat to the environment, the economy and society as we had come to appreciate them began to emerge.

The Ad Hoc Study Group on Carbon Dioxide and Climate, commissioned by the U.S. National Research Council’s climate research board, concluded then that if carbon dioxide continued to accumulate in the atmosphere, there was “no reason to doubt that climate changes will result.” Since then, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by about 25%, and temperatures have risen with it.

The report also concluded that land use changes and the burning of fossil fuels, both of which could be subject to regulation, were behind climate change and that a “wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late.”

But none of this came as a surprise to the oil industry. Working behind the scenes since the 1950s, researchers working for companies such as Exxon, Shell and Chevron had made their leaders well aware that the widespread use of their product was already causing climate change. And coinciding with the Ad Hoc Study Group’s work in the late 1970s, oil companies started making large donations to national and state-level candidates and politicians they viewed as friendly to the interests of the industry.

A figure from an internal Exxon report in 1982 predicted how much carbon dioxide would build up from fossil fuel use, and how much global warming it would cause through the 21st century, unless action was taken. Those projections were remarkably accurate
A summary of all global warming projections reported by ExxonMobil scientists in internal documents and peer-reviewed publications, 1977 to 2003, superimposed on observed temperature change (red). Solid gray lines indicate global warming projections modeled by ExxonMobil scientists; dashed gray lines are projections shared by ExxonMobil scientists from other sources. Shades of gray reflect start dates: earliest (1977) is lightest; latest (2003) is darkest.
Geoffrey Supran

The oil industry also implemented a disinformation campaign designed to cast doubt about climate science and, in many cases, about their own internal research. The strategy, ripped from the pages of the tobacco industry playbook, involved “emphasizing uncertainty” to cast doubt on the science and calling for “balanced” science to sow confusion.

This strategy was helped by the creation and financial backing of lobbying organizations such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Global Climate Coalition, both of which played central roles in spreading falsehoods and casting doubt on the scientific consensus about climate change.

By 1997, when 84 countries signed the Kyoto Protocol to curb global greenhouse gas emissions, the oil industry had built an effective apparatus for actively discrediting climate science and opposing policies and actions that could help slow climate change. So even though President Bill Clinton signed the treaty in 1998, the United States Congress refused to ratify it.

Partisan politics and the psychology of belonging

The Kyoto Protocol experience demonstrated that the lobbying and disinformation tactics used by oil companies to discredit climate science could, on their own, be highly effective. But they alone didn’t shift climate change from a scientific question to an issue of partisan politics. Two additional ingredients for completing the transition were still absent.

The first of these came during the election campaign of 2000. At the time, the coverage of the major news networks converged on dividing the country into red states, which lean right, and blue states, which lean left.

This shift, though seemingly innocuous at the time, made politics even less about individual issues and more like a team sport.

Rather than asking people to construct their voting preferences based on a wide range of issues – from abortion and gun rights to immigration and climate change – votes could be earned by reminding and reinforcing for voters which team they should be cheering for: Republicans or Democrats.

This shift also made it easier for the fossil fuel industry to keep climate change off state and federal policy agendas. Oil companies could focus their money, lobbying and disinformation on Republican-controlled states and swing states where it would make the biggest difference. It shouldn’t surprise anyone, for example, that it was a red state senator, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who brought a snowball to the Senate floor in February 2015 to “prove” that the planet was not warming.

Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma brings a snowball to the Senate in February 2015. Every year since then has been warmer than 2014, with 2024 the warmest on record.

The final ingredient had everything to do with human nature. Building on the analogy of a rivalry in sports, the red vs. blue state dynamic tapped into the psychological and social forces that shape our sense of belonging and identity.

Subtle but powerful social pressures within groups can make it harder for people to accept ideas, evidence and arguments from those outside the group. Likewise, these within-group pressures lead to preferential treatment for members who are in alignment with the group’s perspectives, up to and including placing greater trust in those who appear to represent the group’s collective interests.

Within-group pressures also create stronger feelings of belonging among those who conform to the group’s internal norms, such as which political positions to support. In turn, stronger feelings of belonging serve to further reinforce the norms.

Where to from here?

Opposing or supporting action on climate change has become part of millions of Americans’ cultural identity.

However, doubling down on climate policies that are in lockstep with our own political leanings will serve only to strengthen the divide.

A more effective solution would be to set aside political differences and invest in building coalitions across the political spectrum. That starts by focusing on shared values, such as keeping children healthy and communities safe. In the wake of devastating fires in my own city, Los Angeles, these shared values have risen to the top of the local political agenda regardless of who my neighbors and I voted for. It’s clear to all of us that the consequences of climate change are very much in the here and now.

Natural disasters across the U.S. have also brought the risks of climate change home for many people across the country. This, in turn, has led to bipartisan action on climate change at the local and regional levels, and between government and the private sector.

The U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of 24 governors from both parties who are working to advance efforts to slow climate change, is one such example. Another example is the many U.S. companies with ties to government that participate in the First Movers Coalition, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industries that have proven difficult to decarbonize, such as steel, transportation and shipping.

But, unfortunately for climate action, examples like these are still an exception rather than the norm. And this is a problem because the current climate challenge is much bigger than a single city, state or even country. The past year, 2024, was the hottest on record. Many parts of the world experienced extreme heat waves and storms.

However, every movement has to start somewhere. Continuing to chip away at the partisan barriers that separate Americans on climate change will require even more coalition building that sets an example by being ambitious, productive and visible.

With the new Trump administration poised to target the recent progress made on climate change while preparing executive actions that will increase greenhouse gas emissions, there’s no better time for this work than the present.The Conversation

Joe Árvai, Director of the Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability | Professor of Psychology, Biological Sciences, and Environmental Studies, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

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