Fal 2025 Events
Co-organizers: Jennifer Egloff & Jin Han
Program Associate: Almee Wang & Viv Wu
email: shanghai.hssc@nyu.edu
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Thursday, October 16, 2025
Thursday, October 16, 2025
Underestimation of Support for Climate Policies and Ways to Correct It
Underestimation of Support for Climate Policies and Ways to Correct It
Despite majority of citizens in most countries currently supporting climate mitigation and adaptation policies, people consistently underestimate this support. Such misperceptions can suppress individual and collective action on climate change through processes known as the spiral of silence and pluralistic ignorance. I first present results from my correlational studies (Prolific users in the U.S., Ns = 1912, 478) exploring the predictors and mechanisms of this underestimation. Results suggest that Americans’ information environment (e.g., frequency of climate discussions, exposure to conservative media) and their desire to share reality with others are the strongest predictors of misperceptions. Moreover, our data suggest that seeing others engage in environmentally harmful behaviors lowers perceived public support for climate policies more strongly than seeing environmentally helpful behaviors raises it. Finally, I introduce an experiment (Prolific, N = 2,606) testing whether correcting this misperception can improve climate attitudes and willingness to take climate action. Two weeks after the intervention, our correction produced a positive effect among participants who accurately remembered the provided poll results. Taken together, these findings suggest practical guidelines for when and how normative information can effectively promote collective action in domains such as climate change.
Despite majority of citizens in most countries currently supporting climate mitigation and adaptation policies, people consistently underestimate this support. Such misperceptions can suppress individual and collective action on climate change through processes known as the spiral of silence and pluralistic ignorance. I first present results from my correlational studies (Prolific users in the U.S., Ns = 1912, 478) exploring the predictors and mechanisms of this underestimation. Results suggest that Americans’ information environment (e.g., frequency of climate discussions, exposure to conservative media) and their desire to share reality with others are the strongest predictors of misperceptions. Moreover, our data suggest that seeing others engage in environmentally harmful behaviors lowers perceived public support for climate policies more strongly than seeing environmentally helpful behaviors raises it. Finally, I introduce an experiment (Prolific, N = 2,606) testing whether correcting this misperception can improve climate attitudes and willingness to take climate action. Two weeks after the intervention, our correction produced a positive effect among participants who accurately remembered the provided poll results. Taken together, these findings suggest practical guidelines for when and how normative information can effectively promote collective action in domains such as climate change.
Speaker's Bio:
Junho Lee joined New York University Shanghai as a postdoctoral teaching fellow of psychology in the fall 2025. He received his PhD in cognitive psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He was a postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern University in Boston, primarily working on a project funded by the US National Science Foundation on perception of social norms involving climate change. He investigates how people use various (and often ambiguous) information to make sense of the complex social world, and is interested in applying theories of moral psychology, causal reasoning, and social cognition to topical issues including the environment, inequality, and polarization.
Moderated by: Jin Han
Kant repeatedly characterizes the Transcendental Analytic as a “logic of truth”. Yet few interpreters have chosen to read Kant’s Transcendental Analytic as being centrally focused on the notion of truth. Instead, it has been common to read Kant as being primarily concerned with some adjacent notions, such as justification, awareness, or contentfulness. I believe this setting aside of truth is a mistake, and I aim to propose a way to rectify this mistake. My proposal will center on a re-reading of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction, and specifically his account of the “three-fold synthesis” as providing a theory of truth. First, I situate Kant’s discussion of “agreement”, “conformity” and “relation to an object” in its historical context, by showing that all three of these notions were traditionally used in definitions and debates about the nature of truth. Second, I explain how, given a proper understanding of these notions, transcendental idealism has a problem making sense of truth. Third, I show that Kant's “three-fold synthesis” in the Transcendental Deduction is best read as a solution to the problems by presenting an alternative theory of truth.
Kant repeatedly characterizes the Transcendental Analytic as a “logic of truth”. Yet few interpreters have chosen to read Kant’s Transcendental Analytic as being centrally focused on the notion of truth. Instead, it has been common to read Kant as being primarily concerned with some adjacent notions, such as justification, awareness, or contentfulness. I believe this setting aside of truth is a mistake, and I aim to propose a way to rectify this mistake. My proposal will center on a re-reading of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction, and specifically his account of the “three-fold synthesis” as providing a theory of truth. First, I situate Kant’s discussion of “agreement”, “conformity” and “relation to an object” in its historical context, by showing that all three of these notions were traditionally used in definitions and debates about the nature of truth. Second, I explain how, given a proper understanding of these notions, transcendental idealism has a problem making sense of truth. Third, I show that Kant's “three-fold synthesis” in the Transcendental Deduction is best read as a solution to the problems by presenting an alternative theory of truth.
Moderated by: Jennifer Egloff
Damian Melamedoff-Vosters is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at NYU Shanghai. He received his PhD from the University of Toronto. He specializes in 18th century German philosophy, with an emphasis on Kant's theoretical philosophy.
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