Overview

This paper is an empirical test of two influential political communication claims:. First, using "climate change" rather than "global warming" makes the issue seem less serious and more manageable to the public (the Frank Luntz hypothesis). And second, framing mitigation costs as "higher taxes" rather than "higher prices" would reduce public support for climate legislation.

Key Findings

• In both the U.S. and Europe, the terms "global warming" and "climate change" were perceived as equally serious by the full sample.

• Republicans in the U.S. perceived "climate change" as more serious than "global warming". Democrats perceived "global warming" as more serious than "climate change".

• Describing climate mitigation costs as "higher taxes" (vs. "higher prices") did not reduce public support for policies like increasing gasoline costs.

Stand out data points

• 35 vs. 22 percentage points: the Democrat-Republican partisan gap in perceiving the issue as "extremely" or "very" serious under "global warming" vs. "climate change" framing respectively — a 13-point reduction in apparent polarisation driven entirely by word choice, not underlying belief change.

Examples of how Understories uses this research

• Credibility: The paper demonstrates that widely believed communication claims can be empirically wrong. Understories should flag when advocates cite the Luntz hypothesis as if it were settled — it is not.

• Personal relevance: The partisan moderation finding is the most practically relevant result: message personalisation by audience political composition matters more than a universal terminology rule. Understories should apply this when assessing whether a message's vocabulary is calibrated to its stated audience.

• Autonomy: The paper's core contribution is to replace intuitive assertion with empirical evidence — exactly the kind of traceable, testable knowledge base that Understories' autonomy principle calls for. The authors explicitly note that language claims "can be tested scientifically and objectively" rather than accepted on intuitive grounds.

Key quote

"Opinion leaders should use the phrase 'global warming' when talking to Democrats (who are most likely to be responsive) and should instead say 'climate change' when talking to Republicans."

© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. — All rights reserved.

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