---
type: source
title: "The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks"
author: "Dan Kahan"
url: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1547
date: 2012-05-27
domain: cultural-dynamics
format: paper
status: processed
processed_by: clay
processed_date: 2026-03-08
claims_extracted:
  - "identity-protective cognition causes people to reject evidence that threatens their group identity even when they have the cognitive capacity to evaluate it correctly"
tags: [identity-protective-cognition, cultural-cognition, polarization, motivated-reasoning]
---

# The Polarizing Impact of Science Literacy and Numeracy on Perceived Climate Change Risks

Published in Nature Climate Change. Demonstrates that higher scientific literacy and numeracy predict *greater* polarization on culturally contested issues, not less. Extended by Kahan 2017 (Advances in Political Psychology) and Kahan et al. 2013 (Journal of Risk Research) with the gun-control statistics experiment.