Using generative AI to increase sceptics' engagement with climate science

Bence Bago, Philippe Muller and Jean-François Bonnefon
Additional contact information
Bence Bago: Tilburg University [Tilburg] - Netspar
Philippe Muller: IRIT - Institut de recherche en informatique de Toulouse - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - UT2J - Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Toulouse INP - Institut National Polytechnique (Toulouse) - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - EPE UT - Université de Toulouse - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - TMBI - Toulouse Mind & Brain Institut - UT2J - Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - EPE UT - Université de Toulouse - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Climate scepticism remains an important barrier to public engagement with accurate climate information, because sceptics often actively avoid information that contains climate science facts. There still lacks a scalable, repeatable intervention to boost sceptics' engagement with climate information. Here we show that generative artificial intelligence can enhance engagement with climate science among sceptical audiences by subtly modifying headlines to reduce anticipated disagreement, regret and negative emotions, without compromising factual integrity. Headlines of climate science articles modified by an open-source large language model led to more bookmarks and more upvotes, and these effects were strongest among the most sceptical participants. Participants who engaged with climate science as a result of this intervention showed a shift in beliefs towards alignment with the scientific consensus. These results show that generative artificial intelligence can alter the information diet sceptics consume and holds promise for advancing public understanding of science when responsibly deployed by well-intentioned actors.

Keywords: Psychology and behaviour; Psychology; Communication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Nature Climate Change, 2025, ⟨10.1038/s41558-025-02424-9⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Using generative AI to increase sceptics’ engagement with climate science (2025)
Working Paper: Using Generative AI to Increase Skeptics’ Engagement with Climate Science (2025)
Working Paper: Using Generative AI to Increase Skeptics’ Engagement with Climate Science (2025)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05323238

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-025-02424-9

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().