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Culture versus cognition is a false dilemma

Nature Climate Change volume 7, page 457 (2017)Cite this article

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To the Editor

In service of the Earth's climate, there is an urgent need to evaluate theories about human behaviour, communication, and decision-making in the real world. We fully agree with the sentiment behind Kahan and Carpenter's recent Commentary in Nature Climate Change1 that more field work is needed to test the validity, feasibility, and practicality of climate change communication insights that originate in 'the lab'. Yet, Kahan and Carpenter advocate an overly narrow and inaccurate view of decision science research and mischaracterize the climate change communication literature.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3EB, UK

    Sander van der Linden

  2. Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University, Fairfax, 22030, Virginia, USA

    Edward Maibach & John Cook

  3. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, Yale University, New Haven, 06511, Connecticut, USA

    Anthony Leiserowitz

  4. Graduate School of Education and Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Michael Ranney

  5. School of Experimental Psychology and Cabot Institute, University of Bristol, BS8 1TH, Bristol, UK

    Stephan Lewandowsky

  6. University of Western Australia, Crawley, 6009, Western Australia, Australia

    Stephan Lewandowsky

  7. School of Natural Resources and Environment and the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 48109, Michigan, USA

    Joseph Árvai

  8. Department of Psychology, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, 08540, New Jersey, USA

    Elke U. Weber

Authors
  1. Sander van der Linden
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  2. Edward Maibach
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  3. John Cook
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  4. Anthony Leiserowitz
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  5. Michael Ranney
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  6. Stephan Lewandowsky
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  7. Joseph Árvai
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  8. Elke U. Weber
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Correspondence to Sander van der Linden.

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van der Linden, S., Maibach, E., Cook, J. et al. Culture versus cognition is a false dilemma. Nature Clim Change 7, 457 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3323

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