 Courtney St. John, I'm the Associate Director of Outreach at the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University's Earth Institute. At CRED, as we call it, we study how people make decisions under conditions of uncertainty, including climate change and other environmental issues. You published a book, A Guide on Psychology of Climate Communication. Why is such a book needed? Well, the first one was published in 2009 and our follow-up communication guide, Connecting on Climate, was published December 2014. And what we've really found is that with a variety of audiences where we're going out and communicating to them, they don't read scientific papers and we certainly can't expect them to. And oftentimes, even the concepts that are described and the ways that they're described in scientific papers are too complex for the public to understand. And we found that we were getting the same questions over and over again from groups, too. So in 2009, that really was the impetus for Sabina Marx and Debakashon, the co-authors of that first guide, to start bringing all of this research together, both that the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions was doing, and then sort of a past look at all of the research that had come out over the last 30 years that sort of brought this decision science component that CRED studies together. So it's certainly, the 2009 guide wasn't necessarily comprehensive in terms of referring to all of the research, but we sort of hit on what concepts we thought were the most important and translated them into a very digestible format for a variety of audiences. So I think the tagline on the, or the subtitle on the 2009 guide is for journalists, policymakers, business people, you know, all of these different groups, we really wanted it to be as accessible as possible. Social science can help explain why our brains understand climate change the way that they do at the most simple level. And with that, once we dig into it, we can really start to not only explain past behaviors and current behaviors for why people are addressing climate change in the ways that they are, but we can start to understand future solutions too. So through the research that CRED does on decision science, we start to think about how we can change people's behavior in ways that are not against what they would choose for themselves, but are pro-environmental and can sort of help nudge them along the right path. Some of the factors driving the low level of concern, I mean, the two foremost that I always talk about are that climate is both distant in space and time for most people in the world. So it's something that people perceive as happening far in the future, and it's something that people perceive as happening far from where they live. And that inherently, as humans, we have trouble with thinking about things that happen far away or in the future. That's why we're not so good at putting money into our retirement savings plans all the time. So those are kind of the two primary factors that I normally point to about why it's so difficult for people. And oftentimes I think kind of a third point is that it's challenging because of the way that it's presented to a lot of the public. A lot of the public sees it as a very scientific thing that doesn't affect them. So if we can show the public how it's affecting them now, today, where they live, and also that solutions are actually possible, that there are things that they can do that can contribute to viable solutions, then we can go a long way toward engaging them and I think getting them more concerned and supportive for action on climate change. I think we do need to close the psychological distance, and I think that it's very possible through some of the work that we do in our new communication guide we address that heavily, the psychological distance piece. So confirmation bias is the idea that we as humans seek out information that confirms what we already believe to be true. So in the context of climate change, one example might be that if I am a denier, I may only read Fox News and listen to Rush Limbaugh organizations in the U.S. that typically also deny climate change and the existence of it, because I'm more comfortable with finding information that I believe is already true. It's sort of inherent in, and it can certainly go the other way, for liberal folks who watch CNN or MSNBC and read more liberal newspapers, they will seek out information that only, you know, might confirm what they already believe to be true. One of the best tips I've heard from one of my former colleagues, he read the denier and skepticism blogs and newspapers and things like that very carefully even though he knew that climate change was happening because he felt it was very important to understand what other people were saying and to have a true, as in your website, a true skeptical approach to it doesn't mean denying it outright. One of the things that we say in our 2009 guide to combat confirmation bias is to make people aware of it. And we actually find that simply by making people aware of it, it can help them become more aware of it in their own daily actions. And then we can encourage people to seek out information from a variety of sources and to really question and say, am I believing this simply because I think it's true or because I've done some research and I looked at a variety of different sources and it's what a range of experts or the consensus believes is happening. So we encourage them to question themselves a little bit about facts that they think they're getting. You can't explain psychological processes and biases to people alone. You have to explain it in the context of climate change writ large and sort of weave it into the story that you're telling people. I think if you just slam them over the head with that information, you're apt to lose them. But as we know, you know, there's an element of making it relevant and once people, you can explain to people why these things are happening and what these phenomena are in understandable terms. It can really go a long way to increasing their understanding about climate change itself and why we understand it the ways that we do. With respect to framing, there are two main types that we talk about in our new communication guide from 2014 which are content frames and form frames. So content frames actually talk about the content that you're conveying to a person when you talk to them. And form frames talk about the way in which you actually structure what you're talking to them about. But framing an issue can help connect to your audience's values or the identities that they hold, who they are in their communities. If they're a mother, you can speak to them with a frame about their kids in the future and things like that, which is a very common one that's used. But if it's someone who cares about the air quality in his or her neighborhood, you might frame it in the context of public health benefits and things like that. So framing is a really, really useful tool to help talk to people about climate change in ways that matter to them. So the human brain processes information in two distinct ways. This was written about very heavily in the book Thinking Fast and Slow, which I'm sure many people are familiar with. So in that book they're described as system one and system two. But really we have two systems in our brain. One is sort of our analytical processing side and the other is our very emotional or affective processing side. So we as humans tend to predominantly use our emotional or affective side and that's not a bad thing. I mean throughout our evolution we were required to run from threats or seek food when we needed it and things like that. And that side of our brain has served us very well. Unfortunately climate change is often presented very analytically to the public and unless we are trained scientists it's very difficult for us to understand that type of information. And even if we do understand it and it's translated in a way that we can easily understand it for non-experts, oftentimes we don't make decisions based on what our analytical side of our brain is telling us. So one example I like to use frequently is that of buying a beach house on Long Island because I live in New York. So that's the example I use when I'm talking to people in New York. And I talk to them about, you know, let's say that you're interested in buying a beach house on Long Island. It's something that you've worked hard for your entire life. You're about to retire. You've saved up a lot of money and it's been your dream to retire in this home. You're, you know, aware that climate change is happening and that sea level rise is related to that. And so you're certainly concerned about buying a beach house and you may even go so far as to look at the flood maps and to see what the future projections of sea level rise are to look into the premiums for flood insurance on that home. But in the end what will likely make the decision for you is the fact that you envision having your grandkids come to visit, having cocktails on the porch and having, you know, waking up to a beautiful view every single morning. And that's the emotional side of our brain. So even if we consider all of the analytical information, we often don't make decisions based upon it. So when we think about communicating climate change, we can speak to the more emotional side of our brains and that can be something that's very effective to people. In addition to giving them the analytical and more technical information to sort of improve their understanding of what climate change is, we can also tap into that emotional side. You certainly don't want to make things overly emotional. It is a fine line and I think we're certainly, the goal shouldn't be to fear monger people or to really scare them or make them so upset that they get paralyzed, which is something we call emotional numbing. The goal is to just tap into it and recognize that we do make decisions often emotionally and, you know, in that sense we can present the information using both types of information. What are some of the words they use the most that they shouldn't be using? Scientists use all sorts of words that are confusing to the public. I think some of the most common ones are, you know, even the word models is confusing to many people. The general public, they don't really understand what that means so when then they hear in the media talking about climate models and things like that, you just completely lose them. I think the role of misinformation is something real and it's something to be concerned about as an American. I think we know for a fact that there are a lot of misinformation, concerted misinformation campaigns out there, unfortunately a lot funded by the oil and gas and fossil fuel industries, where they're purposefully putting misinformation out to confuse people or to state that, you know, there is no consensus about climate change and things like that, which really does serve to confuse people. I think it can be really challenging for the general public to sort through information when it's presented equally, you know, and unfortunately in mainstream journalism that's what we see a lot, that journalists feel like they need to present two sides to every story and with the amount of misinformation out there, it appears that there's equal evidence for or against climate change when in reality we know that's not true. We talk about sort of a few different steps for addressing misinformation. We think the communicator should really acknowledge it and probably acknowledge it upfront, you know, close to the beginning of the messages that they're giving because what that does is it sort of, it makes them, it doesn't make them seem like they're hiding anything, but also it clarifies things for the audience upfront. You know, the audience for the most part will be trusting the communicator to share with them relevant information and so if something isn't right, they should know about it, you know, at the very beginning. So my elevator pitch about what's happening with climate change, I would talk about how we're really changing geography at this point and how we can point to specific observations, we don't even need to look at the future, but we can look at what the planet is doing now and see that we're changing it and see that humans are most likely the main cause at this point in time. And that it's something that affects every single thing that we do. It affects our economics, it affects the price of our food, the price of our gas, how we function in our daily lives and so it's really an important issue to be concerned about for those reasons.