Text 3Climate of conspiracy: A meta-analysis of th

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Climate of conspiracy: A meta-analysis of the consequences of belief in conspiracy theories about climate change

By Mikey Biddlestone, Flavio Azevedo, Sander van der Linden

1 Despite widespread scientific consensus on climate change, conspiracy theories about its causes and consequences are flourishing. In response, psychological research has started to investigate the consequences of espousing conspiracy beliefs about climate change. Although some scholars maintain that the evidence for a causal link between belief in conspiracy theories and behavior remains elusive, others have argued that climate

5 change conspiracy theories undermine pro-climate action. Overall, we find clear evidence that climate conspiracy beliefs have moderate-to-large negative correlations with not only acceptance of (climate) science, trust, and pro-environmental concern, but also with behavioural intentions and policy support. Most of these effects were not moderated by design (experimental vs. correlational), political ideology, or prior conspiracy beliefs. After a meta-analysis we find clear evidence that climate change conspiracy beliefs correlate with a host of concerning

10 societal outcomes, including lower acceptance of (climate) science, distrust, lower concern for the environment, and also lower intentions to take action and support pro-environmental policies. An important open question concerns the direction of causality. Although it is possible—and perhaps likely—that people who are skeptical of climate change are more likely to endorse conspiracy theories about global warming, we can also expect that people who are exposed to climate change conspiracy theories become more skeptical and are less likely to

15 take pro-environmental action. In one of the included experiments, people were less likely to sign a petition to counter climate change following exposure to a conspiracy theory about global warming. At the same time, we note that the number of experiments included in the analysis was unbalanced and relatively low compared to the number of correlational designs, which is likely a reflection of the larger literature: most studies do not provide an experimental test of whether exposure to conspiracy theories causes people to disengage from science and

20 politics. Interestingly, our moderation analyses generally did not find that the observed effect sizes were impacted by study design, with the exception of pro-environmental policy-support. Moreover, although publication bias was present in many cases—which is somewhat expected considering our exclusion of the grey literature—the bias-corrected meta-analytic effect sizes were similar to those obtained in the main analyses. Nonetheless, given the fact that only a few experimental studies were available for each outcome variable, we feel that it

25 is premature to make any firm conclusions about the overall absence of moderation effects based on study design. In fact, it is interesting that in the case of policy support, data from the only experimental study did not corrobate the correlational evidence. In all likelihood, both causal pathways are possible and potentially mutually reinforcing so that people with skeptical prior attitudes might seek out conspiracy theories about climate change, whilst those exposed to conspiracy theories also become more skeptical about the issue. Consistent with long

30 standing political polarization on the issue of climate change at both elite and mass publics levels—at least in the United States—a large body of work has supported an asymmetrical relationship, such that the endorsement of climate change conspiracy theories appears stronger on the political right. Although conservative ideology itself had a strong positive meta-analytic correlation with belief in climate conspiracies (r = 0.45), it is interesting to note that the effect sizes were not reliably moderated by political orientation for any of the outcome measures.

35 Similarly, we do not find evidence of reliable moderation effects for prior conspiracy beliefs. In addition, contrary to evidence which suggests that climate denial is uniquely prevalent in the United States, the effect-sizes were not moderated by country in our meta-analysis. However, we note that the overwhelming majority of studies (86%) and participants (96%) were US-based. Although some interventions—such as highlighting scientific consensus and psychological inoculation —have

40 shown promise in combatting conspiracy beliefs, considering that in many countries almost a third of the population endorses the belief that climate change is hoax, future research should urgently evaluate how to counter public belief in climate change conspiracy theories. We note, in many cases, the need to gather more data (from non-WEIRD samples), and the presence of publication bias and effect size heterogeneity.

Adapted from: Climate of conspiracy: A meta-analysis of the consequences of belief in conspiracy theories about climate change in: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X22001099 [Accessed on March 10th, 2023].

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