Gateway belief model

The basic mechanism of the gateway belief model involves realigning people's (mis)perception of the degree of group consensus with the factual degree of consensus. This parallels research in social psychology on leveraging norm-perception as a vehicle for social change.[22]

For example, early research[23] showed that college students frequently misperceive the social consensus on campus binge drinking. Through a method known as "estimate and reveal", social psychologists have attempted to reveal the discrepancy between students' subjective perceptions of the drinking norm among their peers and the actual norm (which is typically much lower). Social norm communication campaigns indeed evidence that increasing awareness of the actual drinking norm has positive subsequent impacts on students' own attitudes and behavior towards binge drinking.[24]

While excessive binge drinking is often harmful to the individual, large-scale societal misperceptions of scientific agreement on social dilemmas such as climate change or vaccines can be collectively harmful. When the consensus intervention involves experts rather than peers, the social influence process is referred to as obedience.[16]

The "sticky" nature of myths and the spread of misinformation is often cited as a major cause of public confusion over the nature of scientific consensus.[25][26][27] Prominent examples include autism-vaccine controversies,[28] the causal link between smoking and lung cancer[29] and the role of carbon dioxide emissions in driving global warming.[30][31]

People's perception of expert consensus has generally shown to be sensitive to anecdotal evidence and misinformation.[7][25][32] Vested-interest groups, sometimes referred to as "merchants of doubt",[31] deliberately try to undermine public understanding of the scientific consensus on these topics through organized disinformation campaigns.[8][7][25][32]

Other related concepts include the false-consensus effect[33] and pluralistic ignorance.

The "cultural cognition of scientific consensus" thesis[34] advocated by Dan Kahan stands in contrast to the gateway belief model (GBM)[35] but has not been supported by empirical results.[36] The cultural cognition thesis suggests that people will credit or dismiss empirical evidence based on whether it coheres or conflicts with their cultural or political values, a process known as "identity-protective cognition".[27][35] Because people are committed to the types of beliefs that define their everyday socio-political relations, the cultural cognition thesis predicts that exposing people to consensus information on contested issues will therefore increase attitude polarization.[34]

The empirical results of the gateway belief model contradict the prediction of the "cultural cognition of scientific consensus".[36][37][38] Notably, an emphasis on scientific consensus does not backfire, and can reduce or neutralize belief polarization between (political) groups.[9][39][37][40][25][32] Related research has also shown that conveying scientific agreement can reduce directional motivated reasoning,[36][41] although other research on this topic has revealed more mixed results.[42][43][38]

One explanation for these findings is that changing beliefs about what other groups think (so-called "meta-beliefs") does not require a full and immediate adjustment of one's own worldview. Perceived consensus can therefore be seen as a "non-identity threatening" cognition,[44] especially when a norm is described among a neutral out-group (scientists).[36] Kahan has a notable on-going scholarly debate in the literature with van der Linden and Lewandowsky on the role of perceived consensus and cultural cognition.[27][37][45][46][47]