LAUSR

Abstract A sizeable portion of populations around the world deny that humans are responsible for climate change despite scientific consensus to the contrary. Decades of psychological theory and research point to people's biased evaluation of information as an underlying mechanism that maintains or further polarizes beliefs. The current studies offer a novel cognitive approach to combat biased evaluation. Asking climate change skeptics to focus on how well a climate change argument explains how the main point leads to the proposed outcome mitigated biased evaluation of scientific climate change explanations (Experiment 1), climate policy arguments (Experiment 2), and proenvironmental behavior messages (Experiment 3). Focusing on a proenvironment argument's explanatory power also promoted proenvironmental behavioral intentions (Experiment 3). The current studies offer guidance to policy makers and climate change communicators: The content of climate change information should (1) consist of brief, mechanisti...