Dear colleagues,
We are pleased to invite you to the the second webinar of our Spring 2026
series: "Seeing Climate Clearly: Misperceptions, Social Norms, and
Collective Action" hosted by APA Division 34 (Society for Environmental
Population and Conservation Psychology).
???? *Date & Time:* February 20, 2026 | 01:00 PM (Eastern time)
???? *Format:* Virtual (Zoom)
???? *Registration link here
<https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BJ51MPXiQfq8a_yH0Mj8Cw>*
Our featured speaker is *Dr. Nathan Geiger*, Assistant Professor of
Behavior, Education, and Communication, Climate and Energy at the
University of Michigan.
*Talk title:**Why don’t we realize that others (also) care about the
planet? Pluralistic ignorance on climate change, its causes, and its
correction*
*Abstract:*Enacting policies to address climate change is aided by
accurately understanding how popular different climate policies are. Yet,
emerging work suggests that people tend to assume that others hold more
anti-climate views than they actually do – a phenomenon known as
pluralistic ignorance. The presentation first highlights nationally
representative evidence that despite supermajority support for several
climate policies in the US, Americans believe that well under half of other
Americans support these policies. Next, I explore possible causes of shared
misperceptions, considering informational, heuristic-based, and
motivational causes fostering inaccuracies. Finally, I explore emerging
work exploring how these shared misperceptions can be corrected. Taken
collectively, these results demonstrate the “false social reality” on
climate policy (i.e., that a potential barrier to enaction of these
policies is not that they are unpopular but rather that people misperceive
them to be unpopular), possible causes of these shared misperceptions, and
how to use interventions to correct this false social reality.
The presentation will be followed by a live Q&A.
We hope you will join us for this engaging event.
Best regards,
Stylianos Syropoulos
--
Stylianos Syropoulos, PhD (He/His),
Assistant Professor, College of Global Futures, Arizona State University.
Director, Intergenerational Decisions and Effective Action Lab.
Faculty Affiliate, Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, ASU.
Faculty Affiliate, Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, ASU.
Faculty Affiliate, Center for Behavior, Institutions and the Environment.
Core Faculty, ASU Farm.
Past-President, SEPCP (APA Division 34).