Dear Colleagues, Some of you may find our new article, "Cool Dudes," of interest. It combines McCright's and my past work on political polarization over climate change with the "white male effect" established in risk perception studies, and clearly finds that conservative white males are outliers in terms of their views of climate change.
Riley Dunlap Riley E. Dunlap Regents Professor Laurence L. and Georgia Ina Dresser Professor Department of Sociology Oklahoma State University Stillwater, OK 74078 405-744-6108 ________________________________________ From: ASA Environmental Sociology Section List [enviro...@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of Aaron Matthew McCright [mccri...@msu.edu] Sent: Friday, September 16, 2011 11:00 AM To: enviro...@listserv.brown.edu Subject: New Article on Climate Change Public Opinion Here's a new article that extends recent work by Riley and I on the political polarization on climate change in the American public. Cheers, Aaron McCright, Aaron M., and Riley E. Dunlap. 2011. "Cool Dudes: The Denial of Climate Change among Conservative White Males in the United States." Global Environmental Change 21:1163-1172. Abstract: We examine whether conservative white males are more likely than are other adults in the U.S. general public to endorse climate change denial. We draw theoretical and analytical guidance from the identity-protective cognition thesis explaining the white male effect and from recent political psychology scholarship documenting the heightened system-justification tendencies of political conservatives. We utilize public opinion data from ten Gallup surveys from 2001 to 2010, focusing specifically on five indicators of climate change denial. We find that conservative white males are significantly more likely than are other Americans to endorse denialist views on all five items, and that these differences are even greater for those conservative white males who self-report understanding global warming very well. Furthermore, the results of our multivariate logistic regression models reveal that the conservative white male effect remains significant when controlling for the direct effects of political ideology, race, and gender as well as the effects of nine control variables. We thus conclude that the unique views of conservative white males contribute significantly to the high level of climate change denial in the United States. **************************************** Aaron M. McCright, Ph.D. Associate Professor Lyman Briggs College Department of Sociology Environmental Science and Policy Program Michigan State University mccri...@msu.edu LYMAN BRIGGS OFFICE E-185 Holmes Hall Lyman Briggs College Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48825-1107 office: 517-432-8026 fax: 517-432-2758 SOCIOLOGY OFFICE 401A Berkey Hall Department of Sociology Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824-1111 office: 517-355-6639 fax: 517-432-2856
