Public engagement with emerging technologies: Does reflective thinking affect survey responses?
Public engagement with emerging technologies: Does reflective thinking affect survey responses?
Researchers disagree on the extent that brief survey methods accurately reflect citizens’ opinions of unfamiliar scientific concepts. We examine whether encouraging participants to engage in more reflective thinking affects their perceptions of emerging climate technologies. Drawing on dual-process theories of reasoning, we apply experimental manipulations to encourage fast, intuitive thinking or slow, reflective thinking when responding to an online survey. Similarities in concept evaluation time between the Control and the Intuitive treatment groups indicates that citizens default to fast intuitive judgements to form opinions. However, despite a successful manipulation check, the reflective treatment group did not show any substantively different results. Therefore, encouraging additional thinking is unlikely to shift public perceptions. Post hoc analysis suggests participants with stronger views may nonetheless take more time to consider their response, without prompting. These findings support the validity of surveys as a method for eliciting stable and meaningful public perceptions of emerging technologies.
climate engineering, dual-process theory, emerging technologies, public engagement, survey research
096366252110294
Carlisle, Daniel P.
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Feetham, Pamela M.
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Wright, Malcolm J.
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Teagle, Damon A. H.
396539c5-acbe-4dfa-bb9b-94af878fe286
7 July 2021
Carlisle, Daniel P.
adcd4f01-867a-42e1-8e2b-189602dff1fb
Feetham, Pamela M.
10e40704-ea2a-4ea7-8890-d9fe7076baad
Wright, Malcolm J.
b91319a5-5906-4824-8a9a-b7dba3654d3e
Teagle, Damon A. H.
396539c5-acbe-4dfa-bb9b-94af878fe286
Carlisle, Daniel P., Feetham, Pamela M., Wright, Malcolm J. and Teagle, Damon A. H.
(2021)
Public engagement with emerging technologies: Does reflective thinking affect survey responses?
Public Understanding of Science, .
(doi:10.1177/09636625211029438).
Abstract
Researchers disagree on the extent that brief survey methods accurately reflect citizens’ opinions of unfamiliar scientific concepts. We examine whether encouraging participants to engage in more reflective thinking affects their perceptions of emerging climate technologies. Drawing on dual-process theories of reasoning, we apply experimental manipulations to encourage fast, intuitive thinking or slow, reflective thinking when responding to an online survey. Similarities in concept evaluation time between the Control and the Intuitive treatment groups indicates that citizens default to fast intuitive judgements to form opinions. However, despite a successful manipulation check, the reflective treatment group did not show any substantively different results. Therefore, encouraging additional thinking is unlikely to shift public perceptions. Post hoc analysis suggests participants with stronger views may nonetheless take more time to consider their response, without prompting. These findings support the validity of surveys as a method for eliciting stable and meaningful public perceptions of emerging technologies.
Text
Public engagement with emerging technologies
- Accepted Manuscript
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e-pub ahead of print date: 7 July 2021
Published date: 7 July 2021
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by The Massey University Research Fund [RM21368].
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Keywords:
climate engineering, dual-process theory, emerging technologies, public engagement, survey research
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Local EPrints ID: 450829
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/450829
ISSN: 0963-6625
PURE UUID: c0894845-0e7f-42d9-9708-2107df01afb3
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Date deposited: 13 Aug 2021 16:34
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 02:50
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Contributors
Author:
Daniel P. Carlisle
Author:
Pamela M. Feetham
Author:
Malcolm J. Wright
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