Identity-protective thinking

Proposed and experimental methods

Methods that are proposed, under trial, approved in some places, or tried and then failed. Each shows a stage label and an evidence rating. A stage label shows how far a method has progressed, not whether it works. The stage labels are explained on the cultural factor page.

• Communicating scientific consensus (Large trial, B). This tells people the share of experts who agree, for example on climate change. A preregistered meta-analysis of 43 experiments on climate change, genetically modified food, and vaccination found that one exposure raised perceived consensus (g = 0.55) and belief in the scientific facts (g = 0.12), with too few vaccination studies to draw conclusions (van Stekelenburg et al., 2022). In 60 countries (51,224 people), emphasizing scientific consensus increased climate action among people identifying as liberal, and no intervention tested increased action among those identifying as conservative (Berkebile-Weinberg et al., 2024).
• Climate messages tested in a global intervention tournament (Large trial, B). Eleven expert-crowdsourced messages were tested on 59,440 people in 63 countries. Effects were small and largely limited to people who were not climate skeptics. The best interventions raised belief by 2.3% (reducing psychological distance), policy support by 2.6% (writing a letter to a future-generation member), and information sharing by 12.1% (negative emotion), no intervention increased an effortful tree-planting task, and several reduced it (Vlasceanu et al., 2024).
• Moral reframing (Early trial, C). Arguments are recast in terms of the moral values of the audience, for example presenting an environmental policy as protecting purity or loyalty to conservatives. Across six studies on issues including same-sex marriage and military spending, reframed arguments were typically more persuasive than arguments based on the speaker's own values (Feinberg and Willer, 2015). In a preregistered field experiment, 52 canvassers for a reproductive health organization tailored appeals to the values of 1,034 voters, producing large effects on interest in taking action and some evidence of changes in policy attitudes (Kalla et al., 2022). Most evidence comes from online U.S. samples.
• Not shown to help: self-affirmation before political information (Failed or reversed, D). People first write about a value important to them, which is meant to reduce the threat that unwelcome evidence poses to identity. Early studies found that affirmation made judgments of a report on U.S. foreign policy less dependent on political views and increased concessions in a negotiation over abortion, but only when identity was made salient (Cohen et al., 2007). Pooling 11 experiments by eight independent teams, a later study found no main effects and near-zero reductions in partisan bias on attitudes, factual beliefs, conspiracy beliefs, and polarization (Lyons et al., 2022). A school version also failed to replicate (see "Fixed beliefs about ability" in the psychological factors).
• Not shown to help: correcting vaccine myths for hesitant parents (Failed or reversed, contested, C). In a randomized survey experiment with 1,759 U.S. parents, none of four messages, including refuting the MMR and autism claim, increased intent to vaccinate a future child, and the refutation reduced intent among parents with the least favorable attitudes (Nyhan et al., 2014). Five later experiments on 52 polarized issues with more than 10,100 people found no backfire for any issue, so corrections usually move factual beliefs even if they do not change behavior (Wood and Porter, 2019). Prebunking and fact-checking are covered in "Cognitive dissonance and motivated reasoning" in the psychological factors.

Sources cited on this page

1. Kahan, D. M., et al. (2012). The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks. Nature Climate Change, 2, 732-735. Nature C Limited
2. Berkebile-Weinberg, M., Goldwert, D., Doell, K. C., Van Bavel, J. J., & Vlasceanu, M. (2024). The differential impact of climate interventions along the political divide in 60 countries. Nature Communications, 15(1), 3885. link B Moderate
3. Cohen, G. L., Sherman, D. K., Bastardi, A., Hsu, L., McGoey, M., & Ross, L. (2007). Bridging the partisan divide: Self-affirmation reduces ideological closed-mindedness and inflexibility in negotiation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(3), 415-430. link D Contested
4. Feinberg, M., & Willer, R. (2015). From gulf to bridge: When do moral arguments facilitate political influence? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(12), 1665-1681. link C Limited
5. Kalla, J. L., Levine, A. S., & Broockman, D. E. (2022). Personalizing moral reframing in interpersonal conversation: A field experiment. Journal of Politics, 84(2), 1239-1243. link C Limited
6. Lyons, B. A., Farhart, C. E., Hall, M. P., Kotcher, J., Levendusky, M., Miller, J. M., et al. (2022). Self-affirmation and identity-driven political behavior. Journal of Experimental Political Science, 9(2), 225-240. link B Moderate
7. Nyhan, B., Reifler, J., Richey, S., & Freed, G. L. (2014). Effective messages in vaccine promotion: A randomized trial. Pediatrics, 133(4), e835-e842. link B Moderate
8. van Stekelenburg, A., Schaap, G., Veling, H., van 't Riet, J., & Buijzen, M. (2022). Scientific-consensus communication about contested science: A preregistered meta-analysis. Psychological Science, 33(12), 1989-2008. link B Moderate
9. Vlasceanu, M., Doell, K. C., Bak-Coleman, J. B., Todorova, B., Berkebile-Weinberg, M. M., Grayson, S. J., et al. (2024). Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries. Science Advances, 10(6), eadj5778. link B Moderate
10. Wood, T., & Porter, E. (2019). The elusive backfire effect: Mass attitudes' steadfast factual adherence. Political Behavior, 41(1), 135-163. link A Strong

Every source for this factor is listed on the cultural factor page.