When Brock University psychology researchers were thinking of a title for their recent research on the politics of climate change, they were inspired by a popular watermelon metaphor.<\/p>\n
Their paper, titled Green on the outside, red on the inside<\/a><\/em>, \u201cis a reflection of US political rhetoric,\u201d the paper\u2019s lead author, PhD student Mark Hoffarth, explains.<\/p>\n \u201cThe watermelon metaphor comes from a view that is sometimes put forth in right-wing political discussions: environmentalists say they are \u2018green\u2019 and care about the environment, but some on the right insist that environmentalists are actually promoting Red Communist or socialist policies,\u201d he says. \u201cIn other words, \u2018green\u2019 on the outside, but \u2018red\u2019 (Communist\/socialist) on the inside.\u201d<\/p>\n Hoffarth and Professor of Psychology Gordon Hodson set out to examine how \u2014 and why \u2014 political beliefs affect perceptions of climate change.<\/p>\n Past research has shown those on the political right tend to deny the existence of climate change or downplay the impacts that human activity have on the Earth\u2019s changing temperatures.<\/p>\n It has also been shown that conservatives more than liberals focus on how measures to address climate change will harm economic growth and development, and may bring about what are perceived to be unacceptable changes in society.<\/p>\n But Hoffarth and Hodson sensed there was something more to it than the economy-versus-environment clash between the two sides.<\/p>\n The researchers drew upon Hodson\u2019s area of expertise on \u201cintergroup relations,\u201d which examines how groups come to think about, and mentally represent, each other.<\/p>\n Hoffarth and Hodson distributed surveys to 384 participants in the U.S., half of whom identified as liberals and the other half as being either middle of the road or conservatives.<\/p>\n Statements were grouped into four categories of beliefs:<\/p>\n Participants were asked to rate their level of agreement with these statements, ranging from \u201cstrongly disagree\u201d to \u201cstrongly agree.\u201d<\/p>\n The researchers made a startling discovery: the \u201cenvironmentalist threat\u201d category played a much larger role in participants\u2019 climate change perceptions than the researchers originally thought.<\/p>\n \u201cIt turns out that the pushback against environmentalists is actually explaining considerably more of the effect than concerns about the economy,\u201d says Hodson. \u201cWhen we saw that, we thought, \u2018wow, we\u2019re really onto something here.\u2019 There really is an intergroup element here. It\u2019s not all about the economy, even though when you turn on the news at six o\u2019clock it\u2019s all about the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n The dynamic then becomes an us-versus-them clash in which \u201cthose on the right who are denying climate change think that left-wing environmentalists have an agenda and that they\u2019re hijacking this climate change movement as a way to further their agenda,\u201d says Hodson.<\/p>\n\n