Jonathon P. Schuldt

Does Green Mean Healthy? Nutrition Label Color Affects Perceptions of Healthfulness

The food industry has recently implemented numerous front-of-package nutrition labels to readily convey key aspects a food products nutritional profile to consumers (e.g., calories and fat content). Although seemingly well-intentioned, such labels might lead consumers to perceive relatively poor nutrition foods in a healthier light. The present research explores whether one underresearched aspect of nutrition labels—namely, their color—might influence perceptions of a products healthfulness. In Study 1, participants perceived a candy bar as healthier when it bore a green rather than a red calorie label, despite the fact that the labels conveyed the same calorie content. Study 2 examined the perceived healthfulness of a candy bar bearing a green versus white calorie label and assessed individual differences in the importance of healthy eating. Overall, results suggest that green labels increase perceived healthfulness, especially among consumers who place high importance on healthy eating. Discussion focuses on implications for health-related judgment and nutrition labeling.

The ''Fair Trade'' Effect: Health Halos From Social Ethics Claims

The authors provide evidence that social ethics claims on food packaging (e.g., fair trade) can promote the misperception that foods are lower-calorie and therefore appropriate for greater consumption. In Study 1, participants evaluating chocolate provided lower calorie judgments when it was described as fair trade—a claim silent on calorie content but signifying that trading partners received just compensation for their work. Further establishing this effect, Study 2 revealed that chocolate was perceived as lower-calorie when a company was simply described as treating its workers ethically (e.g., providing excellent wages and health care) as opposed to unethically (e.g., providing poor wages and no health care) among perceivers with strong ethical food values, consistent with halo logic. Moreover, calorie judgments mediated the same interaction pattern on recommendations of consumption frequency, suggesting that amid the ongoing obesity crisis, social ethics claims might nudge some perceivers to overindulge. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.

Questionnaire Design Effects in Climate Change Surveys: Implications for the Partisan Divide

Despite strong agreement among scientists, public opinion surveys reveal wide partisan disagreement on climate issues in the United States. We suggest that this divide may be exaggerated by questionnaire design variables. Following a brief literature review, we report on a national survey experiment involving U.S. Democrats and Republicans (n = 2,041) (fielded August 25–September 5, 2012) that examined the effects of question wording and order on the belief that climate change exists, perceptions of scientific consensus, and support for limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Wording a questionnaire in terms of “global warming” (versus “climate change”) reduced Republicans’ (but not Democrats’) existence beliefs and weakened perceptions of the scientific consensus for both groups. Moreover, “global warming” reduced Republicans’ support for limiting greenhouse gases when this question immediately followed personal existence beliefs but not when the scientific consensus question intervened. We highlight the importance of attending to questionnaire design in the analysis of partisan differences.

Disfluent fonts don't help people solve math problems

Prior research suggests that reducing font clarity can cause people to consider printed information more carefully. The most famous demonstration showed that participants were more likely to solve counterintuitive math problems when they were printed in hard-to-read font. However, after pooling data from that experiment with 16 attempts to replicate it, we find no effect on solution rates. We examine potential moderating variables, including cognitive ability, presentation format, and experimental setting, but we find no evidence of a disfluent font benefit under any conditions. More generally, though disfluent fonts slightly increase response times, we find little evidence that they activate analytic reasoning.

Social Climate Science A New Vista for Psychological Science

The recent Paris Agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions, adopted by 195 nations at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, signaled unprecedented commitment by world leaders to address the human social aspects of climate change. Indeed, climate change increasingly is recognized by scientists and policymakers as a social issue requiring social solutions. However, whereas psychological research on intrapersonal and some group-level processes (e.g., political polarization of climate beliefs) has flourished, research into other social processes—such as an understanding of how nonpartisan social identities, cultural ideologies, and group hierarchies shape public engagement on climate change—has received substantially less attention. In this article, we take stock of current psychological approaches to the study of climate change to explore what is “social” about climate change from the perspective of psychology. Drawing from current interdisciplinary perspectives and emerging empirical findings within psychology, we identify four distinct features of climate change and three sets of psychological processes evoked by these features that are fundamentally social and shape both individual and group responses to climate change. Finally, we consider how a more nuanced understanding of the social underpinnings of climate change can stimulate new questions and advance theory within psychology.

Exploring the role of incidental emotions in support for climate change policy

What role, if any, do incidental emotions play in people’s beliefs about climate change and support for climate mitigation policies? This question has received surprisingly little attention, despite a growing recognition that reactions to climate change information are shaped by various contextual factors beyond the information itself. Drawing on recent perspectives in psychology and communication, we conducted an experiment (N = 719) in which participants were randomly assigned to one of two emotion-induction treatments (guilt or anger) or to a no-emotion (neutral) control condition immediately before reading a news story about negative climate impacts and reporting on related policy preferences (e.g., support for taxing carbon polluters). Results revealed a number of significant effects, some of which emerged for the sample overall (e.g., guilt increased support for particular climate mitigation policies) and some that depended on personal and message factors suggested by prior research (e.g., political affiliation and social distance). Overall, these findings suggest that emotions may play an important role in guiding how the public processes and reacts to information about climate change.

Communicating about ocean health: theoretical and practical considerations

As anthropogenic stressors threaten the health of marine ecosystems, there is a need to better understand how the public processes and responds to information about ocean health. Recent studies of public perceptions about ocean issues report high concern but limited knowledge, prompting calls for information campaigns to mobilize public support for ocean restoration policy. Drawing on the literature from communication, psychology and related social science disciplines, we consider a set of social-cognitive challenges that researchers and advocates are likely to encounter when communicating with the public about ocean health and emerging marine diseases—namely, the psychological distance at which ocean issues are construed, the unfamiliarity of aquatic systems to many members of the public and the potential for marine health issues to be interpreted through politicized schemas that encourage motivated reasoning over the dispassionate consideration of scientific evidence. We offer theory-based strategies to help public outreach efforts address these challenges and present data from a recent experiment exploring the role of message framing (emphasizing the public health or environmental consequences of marine disease) in shaping public support for environmental policy.

Bridging Climate Communication Divides: Beyond the Partisan Gap

Social divides on climate change are often attributed to political factors, but new psychological research points to a wide range of group influences beyond politics that shape public opinion on climate change. We highlight two commonly overlooked sources of influence that represent key underutilized leverage points for public outreach: (1) the roles of racial, ethnic, and cultural identities and (2) the power of social perceptions (i.e., meta-beliefs) in mobilizing public action. This research points to an urgent need to broaden how scientists, policymakers, and the media think about public engagement and consensus building in the domain of climate change.

Brief exposure to Pope Francis heightens moral beliefs about climate change

In his recent encyclical letter Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis issued a moral appeal to the global community for swift action on climate change. However, social science research suggests a complex relationship between religious concepts and environmental attitudes, raising the question of what influence the pope’s position may have on public opinion regarding this polarizing issue. In a national probability survey experiment of U.S. adults (n = 1212), we find that brief exposure to Pope Francis influenced the climate-related beliefs of broad segments of the public: it increased perceptions of climate change as a moral issue for the overall sample (and among Republicans in particular) and increased felt personal responsibility for contributing to climate change and its mitigation (among Democrats). Moreover, prior awareness of the pope’s views on climate change mattered, such that those who indicated greater awareness of the pope’s position showed stronger treatment effects, consistent with a priming account of these effects. Results complement recent correlational findings and offer further evidence of the Vatican’s influence on climate change public opinion.

Understanding the 2016 US Presidential Polls: The Importance of Hidden Trump Supporters

Abstract Following Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in the 2016 US presidential election, the American Association for Public Opinion Research announced that “the polls clearly got it wrong” and noted that talk of a “crisis in polling” was already emerging. Although the national polls ended up being accurate, surveys just weeks before the election substantially over-stated Clinton’s lead and state polls showed systematic bias in favor of Clinton. Different explanations have been offered for these results, including non-response bias and late deciders. We argue, however, that these explanations cannot fully account for Trump’s underperformance in October surveys. Utilizing data from two national polls that we conducted in October of 2016 (n>2100 total) as well as 14 state-level polls from October, we find consistent evidence for the existence of “hidden” Trump supporters who were included in the surveys but did not openly express their intention to vote for Trump. Most notably, when we account for these hidden Trump supporters in our October survey data, both national and state-level analyses foreshadow Trump’s Election Day support. These results suggest that late-breaking campaign events may have had less influence than previously thought and the findings hold important implications for how scholars, media, and campaigns analyze future election surveys.