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102 Cornell L. Rev. 1431 (2016-2017)
How People Update Beliefs about Climate Change: Good News and Bad News

handle is hein.journals/clqv102 and id is 1479 raw text is: HOW PEOPLE UPDATE BELIEFS ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE: GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS Cass R. Sunstein,f Sebastian Bobadilla-Suarez, Stephanie C. Lazzaro & Tall Sharottt People are frequently exposed to competing evidence about climate change. We examined how new information alters people's beliefs. We find that people who are not sure that man-made climate change is occurring, and who do not favor an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, show a form of asymmetrical updating: They change their beliefs in response to unexpected good news (suggesting that average temperature rise is likely to be less than previously thought) and fail to change their beliefs in response to unexpected bad news (suggesting that average temperature rise is likely to be greater than previously thought). By contrast, people who strongly believe that man- made climate change is occurring, and who favor an interna- tional agreement, show the opposite asymmetry: They change their beliefs far more in response to unexpected bad news (suggesting that average temperature rise is likely to be greater than previously thought) than in response to unex- pected good news (suggesting that average temperature rise is likely to be smaller than previously thought). The results sug- gest that exposure to varied scientific evidence about climate change may increase polarization within a population due to asymmetrical updating. We explore the implications of our findings for how people will update their beliefs upon receiving new evidence about climate change, and also for other beliefs relevant to politics and law. I. THE STUDY ...................................... 1434 A. Participants ................................. 1434 B . Tasks ....................................... 1435 t Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University. tt Affective Brain Lab, Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London. We are grateful to Dan Kahan, Martha Minow, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eric Posner, and Adrian Vermeule for valuable comments on a previous draft. Thanks also to participants in workshops at Cornell University and Harvard Law School. The Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School provided valuable support. T. Sharot is supported by the Wellcome Trust. 1431

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