Scientists overwhelmingly agree that climate change exists and is caused by human activity. It has been argued that communicating the consensus can counter climate scepticism, given that perceived scientific consensus is a major factor predicting public belief that climate change is anthropogenic. However, individuals may hold different models of science, potentially affecting their interpretation of scientific consensus. Using representative surveys in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Norway, we assessed whether the relationship between perceived scientific consensus and belief in anthropogenic climate change is conditioned by a person’s viewing science as ‘the search for truth’ or as ‘debate’. Results show that perceived scientific consensus is higher among climate change believers and moreover, significantly predicts belief in anthropogenic climate change. This relationship is stronger among people holding a model of science as the ‘search for truth’. These results help to disentangle the effect of implicit epistemological assumptions underlying the public understanding of the climate change debate.

Nanotechnologies are becoming a larger presence in everyday life and are viewed by governments and economic actors as a key area for development. The theory of social representations suggests that specialist views eventually disseminate to shape representations among the public. Yet nanotechnologies remain relatively little known to the general public. The media emphasize potential benefits, while potential risks get less attention. The literature has not yet addressed whether representations by a well-informed population (scientists) are indeed structured in terms of the risk–benefit polarity that dominates research framing to date. We attempted a systematic assessment of how background knowledge about nanotechnology may influence experts’ perception. Study 1 delivered the first demonstration derived from a qualitative analysis confirming the existence of a polarized representation of nanotechnologies, contrasting opportunity (medical, economic, and technological) and risk. Interestingly, risk was distinguished at two levels: that associated with nanomaterial characteristics (toxicity, reactivity) and at the larger scale of impact (health, environment, legislation). Does this polarity indicate a ‘yes, but’ logic (nanotechnology carries opportunity but also risk), or two clusters of specialists (sensitive, respectively, to opportunity or to risk)? Study 2 surveyed a larger sample of experts who self-described their scientific background and role viz. nanotechnology. Role had no influence. Specialists consensually viewed that nanotechnology represents opportunity, but depending on scientific background they did not agree to the same extent that nanotechnology also constitutes a risk. Participants with a physics and chemistry background tended to represent nanotechnologies predominantly in terms of opportunities and not in terms of inherent risks or impacts. In contrast, toxicologists, life and social scientists appeared to explicitly incorporate both benefits and risks in their representation of this new technology. Environmental scientists were a more diverse group, divided between the two patterns of representation.

Inconsistency between the expressed support for resource-conservation ideas and behaviours has emphasized the need to develop a better understanding of the psychosocial processes through which formal laws (reified universe) also become informal norms (consensual universe). Experimental paradigms of the sociocognitive approach to social norms are able to assess if cultural change fostered by the legal/reified universe has been incorporated by society to the level of influencing, and being expected, in interpersonal communications. This article proposes to combine elements from the social representations theory and the sociocognitive approach to social norms in a diagnose proposal for cultural change (appropriation and consensualization dimensions). Through a self-presentation paradigm, results of Study 1 show that conservation beliefs and behaviours are indeed used in interpersonal contexts in order to be well-seen; yet, this informal valorization is context-dependent. In Study 2, a hetero-evaluation paradigm was used. Results show that conservation beliefs are socially valued and crucial for people to be positively seen (appropriation). However, the expression of conservation behaviours is not required (consensualization). Overall, these results show that conservation beliefs and behaviours have become informal norms in Portugal. Still, this valorization is not yet homogeneous; it partially tolerates belief–behaviour inconsistency, a typical dynamic of emancipated representations.

One of the ways to tackle the current environmental crisis is by trying to change beliefs and behaviors through the issuance of new laws. But laws and formal norms only become effective once they are also informally valued. This paper aims at determining whether law-regulated pro-environmental beliefs and behaviors (a) have acquired social value in Brazil, as they have in Europe and (b) pertain to two different construal levels, which could help explain the persistent belief-behavior gap in the environmental field. These two objectives are addressed in two studies using self-presentation and hetero-judgment paradigms. Results confirm the proposed hypotheses and are discussed in terms of social change for sustainability.