Thread by @BiddlePsych

🚨New paper with @Flavio_Azevedo_ & @Sander_vdLinden!🚨
Climate of conspiracy: A meta-analysis of the consequences of belief in conspiracy theories about climate change in Current Opinion in Psychology. doi.org/10.1016/j.cops…
🧵1/11

We analyse the meta-analytic associations between climate change #conspiracy beliefs and a number of attitudes, perceptions, behavioural intentions and policy support from 22 independent samples. 2/11
doi.org/10.1016/j.cops…

With regards to attitudes and perceptions, medium-to-large associations were found between climate change conspiracy beliefs and lower acceptance of both climate and general science, pro-environmental concern, and a small-to-medium association for lower trust. 3/11

With regards to behavioural intentions and policy support, climate change conspiracy beliefs had a small-to-medium association with lower pro-environmental intentions, and a medium-to-large relationship with lower pro-environmental policy support. 4/11

Takehome message: If your mate is “just asking questions #bro!” …time to quickly replace their red pill with an even redder one before it’s too late for us all! 5/11
doi.org/10.1016/j.cops…

Extreme effect size heterogeneity and evidence of publication bias was noted throughout the meta-analysis, suggesting a primary need to collect more data in order to clarify these effects further. 6/11
doi.org/10.1016/j.cops…

Moderation analyses were largely inconclusive due to a small number of studies, with the exception of preliminary evidence that only correlational effect sizes for pro-environmental policy support were significant, but not for experimental designs. 7/11

In contrast to the asymmetry account, political orientation did not reliably moderate any of the relationships, despite a strong correlation between conservative ideology and climate change conspiracy beliefs. The same can be said for prior conspiracy beliefs. 8/11

We conclude that climate change conspiracy beliefs harm scientific discourse and pro-environmental policy support. Methodologically, we recommend data collection from non-WEIRD samples, and more frequent implementation of experimental designs. 9/11

Really excited about this first publication with my colleagues from the @CSDMLab at @Cambridge_Uni! Looking forward to our future work helping to understand and counter #misinformation. 10/11
doi.org/10.1016/j.cops…

Sidenote: We are also working on a follow-up meta-analysis looking into how political ideology (and possibly other variables) relate to #climatechange conspiracy beliefs. See preliminary results here! 👇 11/11
doi.org/10.1016/j.cops…