TITLE:
Measuring the Effectiveness of Cognitive Biases on Climate-Oriented Decision Making: A Novel Consideration for Policy Ideation and Enforcement
AUTHORS:
Chenfeng Hao, Kimberly Rose Clark
KEYWORDS:
Climate Policy, Cognitive Biases, Decision Making, Priming, Pro-Climate, Con-sideration Set
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.14 No.10,
October
10,
2023
ABSTRACT:
Public policies are an imperative population
intervention to guide human decision-making towards the intended goal in order
to achieve both the public good and improvements in society. However, recent
years have witnessed increased noncompliance
to public policies and their general failures to influence target
population’s decision-making in dire areas of issues. One primary example is climate policy. While traditional methods
of policy framing are currently met with nonoptimal population
responses, incorporating common cognitive biasing strategies may provide a
solution. Thus, this research study aims to investigate the impact of cognitive
bias on responses towards climate policy. The
study compared the responses of two independent groups to a survey that
differed in the statement tone: one survey was neutral, while the other
incorporated various forms of cognitive bias related to climate policy. The
study recruited 149 participants who were randomly assigned to either the neutral or pro-climate conditioned survey.
Each question in the pro-climate conditioned
survey contains framing in the form of both pro-climate
language and specific cognitive biases such as base rates, temporal construal, emotional arousal, etc. The results, which are based on the difference
in participant responses between the neutral and pro-climate survey, showed
that the participants in the pro-climate condition had significantly different
responses towards climate policy compared to
those in the neutral condition. Namely, questions 16, 23, 26, and 37 showed
statistically significant differences between the two conditions. While questions
16 and 26 are general priming questions where the only difference between the
two conditions is the pro-climate language, questions 23 and 37 tested the
effect and cumulative priming influence of specific cognitive biases.
All four questions’ results’ implications are
then thoroughly discussed, along with a more general discussion of the overall
priming influence of the pro-climate survey. Overall, these findings
indicate that the inclusion of cognitive bias in survey questions can prime
individuals and influence their identification and implementation of
climate-based policy initiatives. These results highlight the importance of understanding how cognitive biases can affect
responses to surveys and, in turn, influence policy decisions. Along
with discussions of the qualitative implications of this study’s quantitative results, potential limitations associated with this study’s methods, and broader conclusions of
this study’s practical application are discussed.