A new study out of Duke University found that many people treat their politics like some folks treat their health: If they don't like the likely solution, they just ignore the problem.

This, the study posits, is why far more Republicans deny climate change than Democrats. It's not necessarily that they don't trust the science, it's that they don't like the idea of new government regulations to address the issue.

The study calls this "solution aversion." Researchers performed an experiment described in a press release that went out today summarizing some of the study:

Participants in the experiment, including both self-identified Republicans and Democrats, read a statement asserting that global temperatures will rise 3.2 degrees in the 21st century. They were then asked to evaluate a proposed policy solution to address the warming.

When the policy solution emphasized a tax on carbon emissions or some other form of government regulation, which is generally opposed by Republican ideology, only 22 percent of Republicans said they believed the temperatures would rise at least as much as indicated by the scientific statement they read.But when the proposed policy solution emphasized the free market, such as with innovative green technology, 55 percent of Republicans agreed with the scientific statement.For Democrats, the same experiment recorded no difference in their belief, regardless of the proposed solution to climate change.As study authors Troy Campbell and Aaron Kay wrote in the introduction to their paper about this study, this shows "not necessarily an aversion to the problem, per se, but an aversion to the solutions associated with the problem."The study put liberals through a similar excercise. Again, from the news release:"The researchers found liberal-leaning individuals exhibited a similar aversion to solutions they viewed as politically undesirable in an experiment involving violent home break-ins. When the proposed solution called for looser versus tighter gun-control laws, those with more liberal gun-control ideologies were more likely to downplay the frequency of violent home break-ins."Now, as with any psychological study, the question is, How can I use this to manipulate people? The answer, perhaps, lies in this comment, from Kay."We should not just view some people or group as anti-science, anti-fact or hyper-scared of any problems," Kay said. "Instead, we should understand that certain problems have particular solutions that threaten some people and groups more than others. When we realize this, we understand those who deny the problem more and we improve our ability to better communicate with them."The brief sections of the full study that I read made interesting reading, partly due to phrases such as"motivated biases in cognition" and "dichotomous measure of (dis)agreement."You can get the full thing here, assuming you're a member of the American Psychological Association. Or drop me an email and I'll send it your way.

Read the rest here:
Duke study: Solution aversion, not science denial on climate change