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Climate Change Information and Colonoscopies

Accepted submission by hubie at 2014-03-13 21:15:40
Science

hubie [soylentnews.org] writes:

As Roosevelt said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself [gmu.edu]. Information Avoidance is the term applied to behavior where people avoid seeking out information on an issue because they are afraid of finding out something they don't want to hear. This is often seen in the medical field where, for instance, some people will decline to undergo screening tests out of fear that something will turn up. A couple of University of Florida psychologists looked into this [nytimes.com] and found that if people were approached in a manner where they first had to contemplate the pros and cons of undergoing a test, they were more inclined to agree to the test.

In the open access journal Earth's Future [wiley.com], Richard Somerville posits that a large number of people who reject to entertain the arguments behind climate change science are doing so as the result of information avoidance [wiley.com]. He suggests that perhaps the results of the University of Florida study can improve the way in which climate science is presented to the general public.

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