The role of numeracy in moderating the influence of statistics in climate change messages

In recent years, researchers have examined how numerical ability may moderate an individual’s response to different types of numeric information, but there is scant research examining how numerical ability may moderate responses to non-numeric vs. numeric information. The present study uses an experiment (complete data for 120 participants) to examine a moderated-mediation model that tests how numeracy may moderate the impact of numeric and non-numeric descriptions of climate change risks on worry and concern for victims, which may, in turn, impact willingness to donate to relevant organizations. The inclusion of numeric instead of non-numeric descriptors significantly increased both concern for victims and willingness to donate for low numerate individuals while there was no difference for highly numerate individuals.

[1]  S. Knouse.  THE LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION: SPECIFICITY AND FAVORABILITY OF INFORMATION , 1983 .

[2]  J. Bull,et al.  An Empirical Test of Bootstrapping as a Method for Assessing Confidence in Phylogenetic Analysis , 1993 .

[3]  B. Rimer,et al.  General Performance on a Numeracy Scale among Highly Educated Samples , 2001, Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making.

[4]  D. O’Keefe.  Potential Conflicts between Normatively-Responsible Advocacy and Successful Social Influence: Evidence from Persuasion Effects Research , 2007 .

[5]  Paul Slovic,et al.  “If I look at the mass I will never act”: Psychic numbing and genocide , 2007, Judgment and Decision Making.

[6]  R. Thaler,et al.  Libertarian Paternalism , 2019, Encyclopedia of Law and Economics.

[7]  P. Sol Hart,et al.  Boomerang Effects in Science Communication , 2012, Commun. Res..

[8]  P. Hart.  One or Many? The Influence of Episodic and Thematic Climate Change Frames on Policy Preferences and Individual Behavior Change , 2011 .

[9]  S. Frederick.  Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 19, Number 4—Fall 2005—Pages 25–42 Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making , 2022 .

[10]  William R. Swinyard.  Shopping mall customer values: the national mall shopper and the list of values , 1998 .

[11]  Charles J. Brainerd,et al.  The importance of mathematics in health and human judgment: Numeracy, risk communication, and medical decision making , 2007 .

[12]  J. Avorn,et al.  Communicating Drug Benefits and Risks Effectively: There Must Be a Better Way , 2009, Annals of Internal Medicine.

[13]  P. Slovic,et al.  The Use of Narrative Evidence and Explicit Likelihood by Decisionmakers Varying in Numeracy , 2009, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[14]  R. Dunlap,et al.  A Widening Gap: Republican and Democratic Views on Climate Change , 2008 .

[15]  Kristopher J Preacher,et al.  Asymptotic and resampling strategies for assessing and comparing indirect effects in multiple mediator models , 2008, Behavior research methods.

[16]  A. Leiserowitz,et al.  Global Warming's Six Americas 2009: An Audience Segmentation Analysis , 2009 .

[17]  D. O’Keefe.  Justification Explicitness and Persuasive Effect: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effects of Varying Support Articulation in Persuasive Messages. , 1998 .

[18]  A. McCright,et al.  Politics and Environment in America: Partisan and Ideological Cleavages in Public Support for Environmentalism , 2001 .

[19]  Terry L. Childers,et al.  Processing of Numerical and Verbal Product Information , 1996 .

[20]  Melissa L. Finucane,et al.  Rational actors or rational fools: implications of the affect heuristic for behavioral economics , 2002 .

[21]  Aaron M. McCright,et al.  Defeating Kyoto: The conservative movement's impact on U.S. climate change policy , 2003 .

[22]  Anthony Leiserowitz,et al.  Communication and marketing as climate change-intervention assets a public health perspective. , 2008, American journal of preventive medicine.

[23]  C. K. Mertz,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article Numeracy and Decision Making , 2022 .

[24]  V. Reyna,et al.  How numeracy influences risk comprehension and medical decision making. , 2009, Psychological bulletin.

[25]  P. Weingart,et al.  Risks of communication: discourses on climate change in science, politics, and the mass media , 2000 .

[26]  Lisa M. Schwartz,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST Helping Doctors and Patients Make Sense of Health Statistics , 2022 .

[27]  Kristopher J Preacher,et al.  Addressing Moderated Mediation Hypotheses: Theory, Methods, and Prescriptions , 2007, Multivariate behavioral research.

[28]  Matthew C. Nisbet,et al.  Communicating Climate Change: Why Frames Matter for Public Engagement , 2009 .

[29]  Deborah A. Small,et al.  Sympathy and callousness: The impact of deliberative thought on donations to identifiable and statistical victims. , 2007 .

[30]  Steven Woloshin,et al.  Using a Drug Facts Box to Communicate Drug Benefits and Harms Two Randomized Trials , 2009, Annals of Internal Medicine.

[31]  J. Shanahan,et al.  Telling Stories About Global Climate Change , 1999 .

[32]  M. Boykoff,et al.  Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press☆ , 2004 .

[33]  P. Shrout,et al.  Mediation in experimental and nonexperimental studies: new procedures and recommendations. , 2002, Psychological methods.

[34]  Anthony Leiserowitz,et al.  Finding the Teachable Moment: An Analysis of Information-Seeking Behavior on Global Warming Related Websites during the Release of The Day After Tomorrow , 2009 .

[35]  Melissa L. Finucane,et al.  Risk as Analysis and Risk as Feelings: Some Thoughts about Affect, Reason, Risk, and Rationality , 2004, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[36]  M. Boykoff,et al.  Climate change and journalistic norms: A case-study of US mass-media coverage , 2007 .

[37]  Lisa M. Schwartz,et al.  The Role of Numeracy in Understanding the Benefit of Screening Mammography , 1997, Annals of Internal Medicine.

[38]  Ivar Kristiansen,et al.  Different Ways to Describe the Benefits of Risk-Reducing Treatments , 2007, Annals of Internal Medicine.

[39]  Jon A. Krosnick,et al.  The impact of the fall 1997 debate about global warming on American public opinion , 2000 .

[40]  Ellen Peters,et al.  Development and Testing of an Abbreviated Numeracy Scale: A Rasch Analysis Approach: Rasch-Based Numeracy Scale , 2013 .

[41]  Anthony A Leiserowitz,et al.  American Risk Perceptions: Is Climate Change Dangerous? , 2005, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[42]  R F Nease,et al.  Perceptions of breast cancer risk and screening effectiveness in women younger than 50 years of age. , 1995, Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

[43]  H. Huntington.  Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change , 2007 .

[44]  R. Thaler,et al.  Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness , 2008 .

[45]  Craig W. Trumbo,et al.  Constructing climate change: claims and frames in US news coverage of an environmental issue , 1996 .

[46]  Aaron M. McCright,et al.  Challenging global warming as a social problem: An analysis of the conservative movement's counter-claims , 2000 .

[47]  P. Slovic,et al.  Numeracy skill and the communication, comprehension, and use of risk-benefit information. , 2007, Health affairs.

[48]  Rebecca Elmore-Yalch,et al.  The Effect of Numbers on the Route to Persuasion , 1984 .

[49]  Kristopher J Preacher,et al.  SPSS and SAS procedures for estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models , 2004, Behavior research methods, instruments, & computers : a journal of the Psychonomic Society, Inc.