Texas
is unlike most of the world in many ways, but there is one way in which it
seems similar. On a warm spring day in
March, when the temperature climbs to near 90 degrees, global warming seems to
be the talk of the town. Of course, 6
weeks earlier when the temperatures in Texas
were an unseasonably cold 26 degrees, the typical reaction was to scoff at
global warming.
The problem, of course, is that global warming reflects a
rise in the average temperature across the globe over the span of years. The rate of change overall is very slow. But very few actual days sit on the average
temperature. Instead, there is a lot of
variability from day-to-day. During the
winter in Texas,
it is not uncommon to see temperatures rise or fall 40 degrees in a day.
These kinds of anecdotes are fun, but is there really any
truth to the idea that people’s belief in global warming is affected by the
temperature that day? This question was
explored in a paper by Ye Li, Eric Johnson, and Lisa Zaval in the April, 2011
issue of Psychological Science.
In one study, participants were people in the US and Australia (where it was summer in
the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern hemisphere). People rated the strength of their belief in
global warming. They also rated whether
they thought the temperature that day was warmer, colder, or about normal for
that time of year. When people felt the
day was warmer than usual, they also expressed a higher belief in global
warming than when they felt the day was cooler than usual. They also expressed
more concern for global warming when the day was warmer than usual rather than
cooler than usual. The order in which
people were asked about global warming and the day’s temperature did not affect
the ratings.
Does this really matter for people’s behavior?
In a second study, another group of people performed an
internet study for which they were going to be paid for their
participation. Along the way, they
answered the same questions about global warming and the day’s
temperature. At the end of the study,
participants were asked to donate as much of their payment for the study as
they desired to a charity that focuses on cleaner air and prevention of global
warming. The participants in this study
donated over four times as much money when the day was much warmer than usual
than when the day was much cooler than usual.
These data really highlight why it is so hard to create
policies to deal with long-term problems like global warming. At a conceptual level, it is easy to make
arguments about the importance of many problems like global warming, hunger,
and human rights. However, our behavior
is influenced most strongly by our local conditions. Unless these abstract world problems can be
turned into specific issues that affect our world right now, we are unlikely to
do much about them.
Unfortunately, for many problems like global warming, by the
time we really feel their effects, it will be too late to do anything about
them.
