Nature has pub­lished a short inter­view with psy­chol­o­gist Robert Gif­ford look­ing at the “inter­face between psy­chol­ogy and cli­mate change”.

Not­ing the prob­lem of pubic dis­trust of sci­en­tific mes­sages that are deliv­ered with uncer­tainty, Gif­ford pro­poses five ele­ments of effec­tive mes­sages*:

  1. It has to have some urgency.
  2. It has to have as much cer­tainty as can be mus­tered with integrity.
  3. There can’t be just one mes­sage: there must be mes­sages tar­geted to dif­fer­ent groups.
  4. Mes­sages should be framed in pos­i­tive terms. (Evi­dence from a recent the­sis […] shows that peo­ple are less will­ing to change their behav­iour if you tell them they have to make sac­ri­fices. If you tell them they can be in the van­guard, be a hero, be the one that helps — that works.)
  5. You have to give peo­ple the sense that their vote counts and that their effort won’t be in vain.

This doesn’t apply just to mes­sages on cli­mate change, of course.

via Mind Hacks

*The orig­i­nal arti­cle has, since post­ing this, gone behind a paywall.