1.5 – one scientist, five questions with Prof. Astrid Kause

Hello Prof. Kause, you are researching the link between sustainability and psychology. What makes this interface so interesting as a research topic?

Sustainability issues affect us all. This means that when we deal with sustainability, we are researching our own future and that of our children. How we as humans perceive sustainability is, in turn, a field of psychology. What are the perceived causes of climate change? How high do people perceive the risks of climate change and its consequences to be? How can we help people to better understand these risks? How do changes in consumer behaviour or in political support arise, or in perceptions and behaviour with regard to sustainability? We can explore these questions well using both qualitative methods such as interviews and focus groups and quantitative methods such as survey studies or experiments.

For a long time, the image of the utility-maximising human being prevailed in the theory of human decision-making. However, empirical research in recent decades has shown that people do not always want to maximise utility for themselves, but also for others, or for the environment. This then raises the question: how do people do that? How do they integrate and weigh different aspects? Or, to put it more generally: How do we act in the real world? And how can we as researchers describe this well?

What are you focusing on in this area?

I mainly conduct research on risk perception and communication. I examine how people interpret numbers, graphical representations and language used to communicate risks and associated uncertainties. I do this with the aim of developing tools and guidelines that support scientists, politicians, etc. in communicating risks and associated challenges in an understandable way. Simple and comprehensible language and easy-to-understand statistics are key here. If, for example, I know that there is a certain probability of flooding in my area, then I can decide whether or not to protect my house. But to do that, I first need to understand how likely this event is and how high a flood can get in principle.

I have also conducted empirical studies on processes of political polarisation. That is, how norms and cultural attitudes are related to the polarisation of people on certain topics that are actually not scientifically controversial. How does social information sharing change information? How do political attitudes ensure that I interpret risks in a certain way? What role does misinformation play? I am interested in how we can counteract polarisation and misinformation.

In this respect, my research also has a strong educational character, because it is about strengthening citizens in their understanding of global challenges, but also about weakening misinformation so that citizens are less susceptible to it.

What factors influence our risk perception in relation to climate?

There are several factors here, which I can only touch on here. The degree of familiarity with the topic plays a role. In general, we tend to perceive something as a high risk if we know little about it. For example, the risk associated with nuclear power was perceived as significantly higher in a 1976 survey than in 2016 because the technology was relatively new at the time and people knew little about it.

Another factor is dreadfulness. Basically, it's about how much control I have over the situation. We perceive risks that affect a relatively large number of people in one fell swoop as more of a threat than a risk that continuously claims the same or many more lives, as the example of the aftermath of 11 September 2001 shows. After the terrorists flew the hijacked planes into the World Trade Center, many people chose to travel by car rather than by plane for fear of the same thing happening to them. Here, their own sense of control appeared to be greater than it would have been on a plane. In fact, this behaviour then led to higher traffic density and an increased number of traffic deaths. Basically, people should have been more afraid of the journey to the airport than they were of the flight itself.

Cultural and political attitudes are also important for our risk perception. For example, if I was already concerned about climate change and then actually experience a major flood, it reinforces my concern. However, if I reject the idea of man-made climate change and then experience a flood, I interpret the flood event completely differently based on my attitude.

How do you think science communication or climate communication should be designed?

My aim is to enable citizens to make informed decisions. This means that science communication should be verbally, numerically and graphically transparent and comprehensible. Studies show that cryptic numbers or complicated graphical representations can quickly mislead people or arouse mistrust. There are many examples of this in climate communication that people without specialist expertise can hardly understand. This starts with terms such as ‘adaptation’ or ‘mitigation’. In concrete terms, this means that we not only need rigorous research into the risks of the modern world, such as climate, biodiversity loss, nuclear threats or car accidents, but also into how such information is understood and how it can be communicated simply to people who may have difficulties with it.

Good science communication combines the perspectives of the recipients and the scientists. It doesn't just communicate content that experts think people need to know, but also takes into account the prior knowledge, attitudes and uncertainties of the recipients. ‘Know your audience’ is a good summary of this. I have to prepare and communicate information differently for a group of scientists than, for example, for people I happen to meet on the street or my parents.

What is your sub-project in the Urban Climate Future Lab about?

We are investigating how people perceive climate risks such as heat and flooding in urban areas and how they react to them. We will conduct qualitative interviews in the context of Lower Saxony. To do this, we will work with our project partners to select sample cities. We will then conduct a large-scale survey to see if our interview results are also reflected in a larger sample.

In the second step, we want to shed light on the role of the individual in the urban transformation. The aim here is to bring together the perspectives of scientists and citizens. We look at how experts describe transformation, for example in architecture, green spaces or mobility, and what possible scenarios for a sustainable city might look like. We then get the public's opinion on these scenarios and then test experimentally how to increase acceptance of these scenarios. It is important to me that the public are taken along in transformation processes, that their individual perspectives are heard and that they can participate in making their city fit and resilient for the future.

Thank you for the interview.

Contact person

Prof. Dr. Astrid Kause

Co-Speaker Urban Climate Future Lab, Junior professorship for Sustainability Science and Psychology, Leuphana University Lüneburg

astrid.kause@leuphana.de

T04131.677-1723