What lights Republicans' fire

Climate change vs environmental destruction – words matter

grist

@grist

·

May 7

The phrases “global warming” and “climate change” performed the worst of all in terms of emotional engagement and audience attention. Read more here: (link: https://buff.ly/2vGkeoC) buff.ly/2vGkeoC

For the experiment this spring, SPARK Neuro brought in 120 people — divided evenly among Republicans, Democrats, and Independents — and sat them down at the lab. Participants wore electroencephalography (EEG) devices on their heads so the researchers could measure the electrical activity coming from their brains every fraction of a second.

While a webcam tracked their facial expressions, little straps on their fingers measured the sweat that accompanies heightened emotions through galvanic skin response — the main technology that’s used in lie detector tests. SPARK Neuro takes the tornado of data from all of those sources and runs it through algorithms to quantify their subjects’ reactions to whatever they heard.

In this case, they listened to audio recordings of six particular phrases. “Global warming” and “climate change” performed the worst of all in terms of emotional engagement and audience attention. They were trumped by a batch of less familiar phrases: climate crisis, environmental destruction, weather destabilization, and environmental collapse.

https://grist.org/article/why-your-brain-doesnt-register-the-words-climate-change/?utm_content=buffere547e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer