About six in ten Americans (63%) say they “rarely” or “never” discuss global warming with family and friends, while 37% say they do so “occasionally” or “often.”
About half of Americans (51%) say they hear about global warming in the media once a month or more frequently, an increase of eight percentage points since our March 2018 survey. About one in four Americans (27%) say they hear about it in the media only several times a year or less, and 8% say they never hear about it.
Only about one in four Americans (23%) say they hear people they know talking about global warming once a month or more. In contrast, 39% say they hear people they know talking about it only several times a year or less, and about one in four (24%) say they never hear people they know talk about global warming.
More than six in ten Americans (64%) say the issue of global warming is either “extremely” (12%), “very” (18%), or “somewhat” (33%) important to them personally. About one in three (36%) say global warming is either “not too” (19%) or “not at all” (17%) personally important.
Social science research has shown that two types of social norms can have a powerful influence on people’s behavior: injunctive norms – the belief that friends and family expect you to behave in a given way; and descriptive norms – the belief that friends and family are themselves behaving in that way.Ballew, M. T., Goldberg, M. H., Rosenthal, S. A., Cutler, M. J., & Leiserowitz, A. (2019). Climate change activism among Latino and White Americans. Frontiers in Communication, 3(58), 1-15. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00058/full, Cialdini, R. B. (2003). Crafting normative messages to protect the environment. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12(4), 105-109. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8721.01242, Doherty, K. L., & Webler, T. N. (2016). Social norms and efficacy beliefs drive the Alarmed segment’s public-sphere climate actions. Nature Climate Change, 6, 879-884. https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3025, Schultz, P. W., Nolan, J. M., Cialdini, R. B., Goldstein, N. J., & Griskevicius, V. (2007). The constructive, destructive, and reconstructive power of social norms. Psychological Science, 18(5), 429-434. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01917.x
Fewer than half of Americans (45%) perceive an injunctive norm, saying it is either “extremely” (5%), “very” (14%), or “moderately” important (26%) to their family and friends that they take action to reduce global warming. About four in ten Americans (41%) perceive a descriptive norm, saying their family and friends make either “a great deal of effort” (3%), “a lot of effort” (8%), or “a moderate amount of effort” (30%) to reduce global warming.
About half of Americans say they have thought about global warming before today either “a lot” (23%) or “some” (31%). Fewer say they have thought about global warming just “a little” (31%) or “not at all”(15%).