Do people “personally experience” global warming, and if so how, and does it matter?

Abstract For most people, the direct and personally observable signals of climate change should be difficult to detect amid the variability of everyday weather. Yet, previous research has shown that some people believe they have personally experienced global warming. Through four related studies, our paper sheds light on what signals of global warming some people believe they are detecting, why, and whether or not it matters. These studies were conducted using population survey and climatic data from a single county in Michigan. Study 1 found that 27% of the county's adult residents felt that they had personally experienced global warming. Study 2 – based on content analysis of people's open-ended responses – found that the most frequently described personal experiences of global warming were changes in seasons (36%), weather (25%), lake levels (24%), animals and plants (20%), and snowfall (19%). Study 3 – based on NOAA climatic data – found that most, but not all, of these detected signals are borne out in the climatic record. Study 4 – using the survey data – found that personal experience of global warming matters in that it predicts perceptions of local risk of global warming, controlling for demographics, political affiliation, and cultural beliefs about national policy outcomes. We conclude that perceived personal experience of global warming appears to heighten people's perception of the risks, likely through some combination of direct experience, vicarious experience (e.g., news media stories), and social construction.

[1]  D. Easterling,et al.  A New Look at Lake-Effect Snowfall Trends in the Laurentian Great Lakes Using a Temporally Homogeneous Data Set , 2009 .

[2]  G. Breakwell,et al.  Identity Processes and Environmental Threat: the Effects of Nationalism and Local Identity upon Perception of Beach Pollution , 1996 .

[3]  Lisa Dilling,et al.  Communicating Climate Change: Closing the Science‐Action Gap , 2011 .

[4]  S. Chaiken,et al.  Dual-process theories in social psychology , 1999 .

[5]  Jennifer Phillips,et al.  Communication and Mental Processes: Experimental and Analytic Processing of Uncertain Climate Information , 2007 .

[6]  D. Kahneman.  Thinking, Fast and Slow , 2011 .

[7]  Cleotilde Gonzalez,et al.  Decisions from experience reduce misconceptions about climate change , 2012 .

[8]  Anthony Leiserowitz,et al.  Climate Change in the American Mind: Americans' Climate Change Beliefs, Attitudes, Policy Preferences, and Actions , 2009 .

[9]  Lawrence C. Hamilton,et al.  Regional variation in perceptions about climate change , 2009 .

[10]  Klaus Krippendorff,et al.  Answering the Call for a Standard Reliability Measure for Coding Data , 2007 .

[11]  Nicholas Frank Pidgeon,et al.  Perceptions of climate change and willingness to save energy related to flood experience , 2011 .

[12]  Hank C. Jenkins-Smith,et al.  Weather, Climate, and Worldviews: The Sources and Consequences of Public Perceptions of Changes in Local Weather Patterns* , 2012 .

[13]  Martijn Gough.  Climate change , 2009, Canadian Medical Association Journal.

[14]  M. Douglas,et al.  Risk and culture : an essay on the selection of technical and environmental dangers , 1983 .

[15]  B. Orlove,et al.  Testing Farmer's Perceptions of Climate Variability: A Case Study from the Sulphur Springs Valley, Arizona , 2003 .

[16]  S. Solomon.  The Physical Science Basis : Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change , 2007 .

[17]  Dan M. Kahan,et al.  Cultural Cognition as a Conception of the Cultural Theory of Risk , 2008 .

[18]  M. Kirby,et al.  Increasing Great Lake-Effect Snowfall during the Twentieth Century: A Regional Response to Global Warming?. , 2003 .

[19]  Clayton R. Critcher,et al.  Visceral fit: While in a visceral state, associated states of the world seem more likely. , 2011, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[20]  Adrian R. Camilleri,et al.  Description- and experience-based choice: does equivalent information equal equivalent choice? , 2011, Acta psychologica.

[21]  Robert Y. Shum.  Effects of economic recession and local weather on climate change attitudes , 2012 .

[22]  Paul Slovic,et al.  The Second National Risk and Culture Study: Making Sense of - and Making Progress In - The American Culture War of Fact , 2007 .

[23]  C. Rollero,et al.  Place attachment, identification and environment perception: An empirical study , 2010 .

[24]  Jon A. Krosnick,et al.  The Origins and Consequences of democratic citizens' Policy Agendas: A Study of Popular Concern about Global Warming , 2006 .

[25]  T. Karl,et al.  Global climate change impacts in the United States. , 2009 .

[26]  Christopher K. Hsee,et al.  Risk as Feelings , 2001, Psychological bulletin.

[27]  Miriam Billig,et al.  Is My Home My Castle? Place Attachment, Risk Perception, and Religious Faith , 2006 .

[28]  Paul Slovic,et al.  The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change , 2011 .

[29]  K. Stanovich,et al.  Heuristics and Biases: Individual Differences in Reasoning: Implications for the Rationality Debate? , 2002 .

[30]  C. Distefano,et al.  Understanding and Using Factor Scores: Considerations for the Applied Researcher , 2009 .

[31]  E. Weber.  Experience-Based and Description-Based Perceptions of Long-Term Risk: Why Global Warming does not Scare us (Yet) , 2006 .

[32]  J. Joireman,et al.  Effect of outdoor temperature, heat primes and anchoring on belief in global warming , 2010 .

[33]  Frank H. Quinn,et al.  Evaluation of Potential Impacts on Great Lakes Water Resources Based on Climate Scenarios of Two GCMs , 2002 .

[34]  S. Fiske,et al.  The Handbook of Social Psychology , 1935 .

[35]  E. Elliott.  Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers , 1983 .

[36]  Elke U. Weber,et al.  A Dirty Word or a Dirty World? , 2010, Psychological science.

[37]  G. Kyle,et al.  Effects of place attachment on users’ perceptions of social and environmental conditions in a natural setting , 2004 .

[38]  E. Weber.  What shapes perceptions of climate change? , 2010 .

[39]  R. Zajonc.  Feeling and thinking : Preferences need no inferences , 1980 .

[40]  Lisa R. Goldberg,et al.  Thinking, Fast and Slow, by D. Kahneman , 2013 .

[41]  Willett Kempton,et al.  Environmental Values in American Culture , 1995 .

[42]  S. Sloman.  The empirical case for two systems of reasoning. , 1996 .

[43]  Elke U. Weber,et al.  Perception and expectation of climate change: Precondition for economic and technological adaptation. , 1997 .

[44]  R. Hertwig,et al.  The description–experience gap in risky choice , 2009, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

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

[46]  Klaus Krippendorff,et al.  Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology , 1980 .

[47]  Eric J. Johnson,et al.  Local Warming , 2011, Psychological science.

[48]  R. Hertwig,et al.  Decisions from Experience and the Effect of Rare Events in Risky Choice , 2004, Psychological science.

[49]  Sabine M. Marx,et al.  The Role of Climate Perceptions, Expectations, and Forecasts in Farmer Decision Making: The Argentine Pampas and South Florida: Final Report of an IRI Seed Grant Project , 2004 .

[50]  C. Roncoli,et al.  Local perceptions and regional climate trends on the Central Plateau of Burkina Faso , 2008 .

[51]  S. Epstein.  Integration of the cognitive and the psychodynamic unconscious. , 1994, The American psychologist.

[52]  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.

[53]  D. Kahan,et al.  Cultural cognition of scientific consensus , 2011 .

[54]  Gene Rowe,et al.  Using Surveys in Public Participation Processes for Risk Decision Making: The Case of the 2003 British GM Nation? Public Debate , 2005, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[55]  E. Weber,et al.  Predicting Risk-Sensitivity in Humans and Lower Animals: Risk as Variance or Coefficient of Variation , 2004, Psychological review.

[56]  D. Schertzer,et al.  What Is Climate , 2013 .

[57]  Gerardo Chowell,et al.  Scales of perception: public awareness of regional and neighborhood climates , 2012, Climatic Change.

[58]  Lyle Scruggs,et al.  Declining public concern about climate change : Can we blame the great recession ? , 2012 .

[59]  S. Brody,et al.  Climate Change Vulnerability and Policy Support , 2006 .

[60]  Andrei Marin,et al.  Riders under storms: Contributions of nomadic herders’ observations to analysing climate change in Mongolia , 2010 .

[61]  A. McCright,et al.  The Politicization of Climate Change and Polarization in the American Public's Views of Global Warming, 2001–2010 , 2011 .

[62]  E. Weber,et al.  Public Understanding of Climate Change in the United States Scientific Understanding of Climate Change These Assess- Ments Support the following Conclusions with High Or , 2011 .