Why Don't Americans Trust Scientists?

Between climate change denial, biotech paranoia, and whatever term you want to bestow upon adults that reject evolution, it's clear that science in the United States is hardly a settled realm.

In a new study, researchers at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs sought to unpack this uneasy relationship. They first asked respondents to rate a wide variety of professions along scales of warmth and competence and, second, conducted a review of existing research focused on levels of trust that exist between the public and the science community, particularly relating to climate change.

"The discouraging news is that scientists and the public are isolated from each other," authors Susan T Fiske and Cydney Dupree wrote in an open-access report released last week in the journal PNAS. "They inhabit distinct information environments; for instance, sheer attention to political news versus science and ecological news predicts disparate climate risk perceptions and policy support. Despite scientific consensus on climate change trends, the public is of two minds, with much nay saying and extreme skepticism, but at the same time being worried and having alarmist imagery."

According to the piles of research dug up by Fiske and Dupree, there are two primary factors at work behind this isolation. First, scientists think people are idiots, in short. Actually, the public tends to know more than scientists give them credit for. Divides may come instead from methods of understanding information rather than the information itself.

Second, it needs to be understood that "attitudes" toward scientific issues are in fact a combination of cognition (beliefs) and affect (emotion, feelings). If science communicators are coming from a different perspective, it basically means they're out of tune with their audience.

Looking deeper at the category of attitudes, we arrive at credibility and, then, actual trust. "The classic communicator credibility literature provides useful information regarding whom audiences choose to trust," the current study explains. "First, people trust similar others, that is, people they categorize as being in their own group. People assume 'people like us' share their goals and values, so they are motivated to support them."

The implication is clear: If science communicators and scientists are coming from liberal-minded universities (as a matter of perception of otherwise), then a right-wing audience is less likely to find this similarity and trust goes down.

In a sense, it's not quite fair to pin everything on that similarity-seeking audience. As the authors note in the current report, this is a behavior with deep and profound roots. Belonging and relationship stability, as concepts tracing through human evolution, often mean (or meant) survival. It's old human programming, and an ironic one at that: in an age of science and evidence-based action, the behavior pushes anti-science individuals toward counter-survival attitudes.

"Second, audiences also trust the sincerity of persistent minorities," Fiske and Dupree continue, "which may help explain the impact of vocal but minority viewpoints—such as extreme climate change deniers—but that is a topic for another article."

Finally, we arrive at the new surveys mapping out people's feelings on the relative warmth and competence of various professions. The results are above, and you can see they tend to fall into four general clusters. The point might seem a bit vague or sketchy at face value, but asking about these particular views is an effective way of coaxing out a population's stereotypes without actually asking for them.

At the bottom-left, you'll find a cluster indicative of "disgust," while at the upper-right are professions that link to "pride." The upper-left would indicate "pity" if it were occupied, and the authors suggest that's where "unemployed" might fall. The last corner, the high-competence and low-warmth cluster, gets classified as "envied."

The whole thing is a bit strange, and you're more than welcome to go deep on the cognitive science behind these quadrants, perhaps starting with this study from the University of Colorado. The notion that stereotypes (as manifested via the stereotype content model) reduce to warmth and competency seems to be a reasonably well-accepted (if still kinda weird) principle.

So scientists are "envied." What does that even mean?

"They earn respect but not trust," the current study explains. "Being seen as competent but cold might not seem problematic until one recalls that communicator credibility requires not just status and expertise (competence) but also trustworthiness (warmth). People report envy and jealousy toward groups in this space. These are mixed emotions that include both admiration and resentment."

So a wide sample of respondents tend to think (if indirectly, or amorphously) of scientists in terms of resentment. Which is bad.

Finally, the researchers looked at a case study: climate scientists. In yet another survey, they asked respondents to rank different sorts of scientists along a scale of trustworthiness. Out of 5 possible points, climate scientists averaged 2.16, which is not so great. Part of the problem, according to the current paper, is that climate scientists are often perceived as partial or biased. "Although scientific communicators may stress persuasion, deliberation would be better," the authors conclude.

"People's attitudes' combine cognition and affect, that is, beliefs and values," Fiske and Dupree write. "Hence, communicator credibility needs to address both expertise and trustworthiness." Clearly, we need more Neil DeGrasse Tysons, and fast.