{"id":483582,"date":"2010-03-29T04:08:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-29T08:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1752027331714385066.post-1174013756713996386"},"modified":"2010-03-29T04:08:59","modified_gmt":"2010-03-29T08:08:59","slug":"neuroframing-global-warming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/483582","title":{"rendered":"‘Neuroframing’ Global Warming"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I find it marvelous to watch an academic gloss put on the art of successful propaganda.  <\/span>This spends time chasing the subject of global warming and what might be done better.  <\/span>He makes the seminal recommendation that it is time to stick to the facts and not rely on the perceived benefits of \u2018neuroframing\u2019<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n
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The difficulty with global warming of course is that the facts have been in revolt for fifteen years.  <\/span>At this point the only creditable strategy is to publish in completely opaque language in utterly obscure climate journals and wait for everyone to forget that the discipline made fools of them.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n
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After all lying about it all has not worked out so well.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n
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“Neuroframing” the global warming issue won’t win converts<\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/b><\/div>\n
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http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/blog\/post.cfm?id=neuroframing-the-global-warming-iss-2010-03-16&sc=DD_20100317<\/a><\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
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By John Horgan<\/span><\/a><\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
Mar 16, 2010<\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
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Last week the Garrison Institute, a retreat center just a few miles down the Hudson River<\/st1:place> from my home, hosted an impressive symposium on \u201cClimate, Mind and Behavior.\u201d<\/span><\/a> An organizer made the mistake of inviting me to the meeting\u2019s wrap-up session Friday.<\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
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As a brochure put it, the symposium brought together 75 \u201cthought leaders and practitioners from the fields of neuro, behavioral and evolutionary economics, psychology, policy, investing and social media to explore how to integrate emerging knowledge on the key drivers of behavior into solutions for solving the world\u2019s most pressing problem: climate change.\u201d<\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
Basically, this was a brainstorming session on how to market \u201csolutions\u201d<\/span><\/a> to global warming more effectively. The emphasis on packaging reminded me of the controversial proposal by journalist Chris Mooney and communication professor Matt Nisbet of American University<\/span><\/a> that scientists need to become more adept at \u201cframing\u201d issues such as global warming to win the debate. The Garrison meeting explored whether neuroscience and other fields that probe the physiological underpinnings of human belief and behavior can help environmentalists frame issues more persuasively. Let\u2019s call it \u201cneuroframing.\u201d<\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
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John Gowdy, an economist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, noted that \u201cneuroeconomics\u201d is challenging the conventional economics view of humans as \u201cutility maximizers\u201d who make choices based on self-interest and reason. MRI scans show that we assess risks and rewards with brain regions that underpin fear, suspicion, empathy and other emotions, Gowdy explained, and we make choices very differently depending on how they are framed.<\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
The psychiatrist Daniel Siegel of UCLA proposed that we all possess two innate, brain-based \u201cmaps\u201d for responding to the world. One is a \u201cme-map\u201d that underpins our obsession with our own interests, but we also have a \u201cwe-map\u201d corresponding to our concern for others.<\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
The implications of these presentations were spelled out over lunch for me and other journalists (including Scientific American\u2019s David Biello) by Jonathan Rose, founder of the Garrison Institute and the meeting\u2019s chief sponsor and organizer. Environmentalists must frame issues to appeal to peoples\u2019 \u201cwe-maps,\u201d asserted Rose, a green New York<\/st1:place><\/st1:state> real-estate mogul.<\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
I share the belief of Rose and others at the symposium that global warming is bad and we should do something about it. But I\u2019ve always disliked \u201cframing\u201d as a strategy for influencing the global-warming debate. Framing is just spinning, and neuroframing is spinning plus brain scans.<\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
First of all, we don\u2019t need MRI studies to tell us that we\u2019re emotional, complicated creatures. Moreover, many people already view environmentalists as self-righteous and manipulative. This is a framing problem that neuroframing may exacerbate. The message is that environmentalists will go to extraordinary lengths\u2014seeking guidance from cutting-edge brain science!–to help the dim-witted public see the world in the same enlightened way that environmentalists do.<\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
Not all global-warming skeptics are ignorant, irrational idiots. I teach at an engineering school, and about one third of my students identify themselves as global-warming skeptics. They tend to know more about global warming than students who accept it as a fact. Two sources at the Science Times section of the New York Times<\/span> have told me that a majority of the section’s editorial staff doubts  that human-induced global warming represents a serious threat to humanity.<\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
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As na\u00efve as this may sound, I believe environmentalists should try to influence public opinion by laying out the facts as clearly and honestly as possible and refraining from rhetorical trickery. Inconvenient Truth was a framing masterpiece, but Al Gore\u2019s linkage of global warming to Katrina, however qualified, has made it easier for wackos to claim that single weather events, like the big blizzards that struck Washington, D.C., this winter, contradict global warming. Climategate showed that some climatologists have become so obsessed with framing that they have harmed their credibility.<\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
Environmentalists should forget about neuroframing. And that\u2019s my we-map talking.<\/o:p><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
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I find it marvelous to watch an academic gloss put on the art of successful propaganda.  This spends time chasing the subject of global warming and what might be done better.  He makes the seminal recommendation that it is time to stick to the facts and not rely on the perceived benefits of \u2018neuroframing\u2019 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-483582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}