Aaron McCright

Professor and Chairperson, College of Social Science/Lyman Briggs College Michigan State University

  • East Lansing MI

Dr. McCright specializes in environmental sociology, sociology of science and technology, and social movements.

Contact

Michigan State University

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Biography

Aaron M. McCright is Professor and Chairperson in the Department of Sociology at Michigan State University. His sociological research investigates how interrelationships among scientific developments, political processes, and social dynamics influence society’s capacity for recognizing and dealing with environmental degradation and technological risks. Dr. McCright is most well-known for his work analyzing the political dynamics and public understanding of climate science and policy in the United States—especially organized climate change denial and political polarization on climate change. In addition, his recent work helps to improve our sociological understanding of societal risk and increase the effectiveness of our risk governance for promoting a more sustainable society. Dr. McCright also investigates the roles of public opinion for social movements, especially how we can use public opinion surveys to investigate how citizens identify with different social movements over their life course. Further, he conducts research on the effectiveness of inquiry-based learning projects for improving students’ scientific and statistical knowledge, skills, and attitudes. He has published two books, has authored over a dozen chapters in edited volumes, and has written a few commissioned reports. He also has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles in such scholarly journals as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Nature Climate Change; Global Environmental Change; Climatic Change; Public Opinion Quarterly; Social Problems; Social Science Quarterly; Theory, Culture, and Society; The Sociological Quarterly; Journal of Risk Research; Organization and Environment; Environment and Behavior; Population and Environment; and Environmental Politics. He was named a 2007 Kavli Frontiers Fellow in the National Academy of Sciences, he served as a 2008-2009 Lilly Teaching Fellow at MSU, and he received the 2009 Teacher-Scholar Award and the 2009 Curricular Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Award at MSU.

Industry Expertise

Research
Education/Learning

Areas of Expertise

Political Polarization
Values and Sciences
Climate Change Politics
Climate Change
Climate Change Denial
Trust in Science
Social Movement Identity

Accomplishments

2007 Kavli Frontiers Fellow

Given by the National Academy of Sciences

2009 Teacher-Scholar Award

An award given by MSU

The 2009 Curricular Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Award

An award given by MSU

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Education

Washington State University

Ph.D.

Sociology

Washington State University

M.A.

Sociology

News

Putting science into practice: Why we need to play our part

Union of Concerned Scientists  

2017-03-08

In his op-ed, Young claimed that Al Gore is responsible for “politicizing” the science of climate change in the United States through his production of An Inconvenient Truth in 2006. However, sociologists Aaron McCright and Riley Dunlap document that the politicization of climate change in the U.S. happened much earlier than 2006 and that it was not because of well-intentioned documentaries; rather, it was due to the strategic work of the George W. Bush administration on behalf of private interests...

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How Is Climate Change Denial Still a Thing?

Inverse  online

2016-12-29

“We’re really in uncharted territory,” says Aaron McCright, a sociologist at Michigan State University, tells Inverse. “I can’t think of any time in the last couple hundred years where there has been a society in which a large group of people are somewhat impervious to empirical reality.”

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You need to get inside the mind of a climate change denier if you want to change it

Quartz  

2016-11-17

Trump and Ebell are not outliers. According to a study by sociologists Aaron M. McCright and Riley Dunlap, based on an analysis of Gallup surveys of public opinion between 2000 and 2010, 32% of adults in America deny that there is a scientific consensus on climate change. There’s a clear political divide on the issue in the US: According to a 2016 survey by Pew Research, only 15% of conservative Republican Americans agreed with the statement “the Earth is warming mostly due to human activity,”compared with 79% of liberal Democrats...

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Journal Articles

Ideology, capitalism, and climate: Explaining public views about climate change in the United States

Energy Research & Social Science

2016

Over the last three decades, climate change has become publicly defined as an important social problem deserving action. A substantial body of social science research examines the patterns of climate change views in the general publics of countries around the world. In this review essay, we identify the strongest and most consistent predictors of key dimensions of climate change views within many countries, and we also discuss the prevailing theoretical explanations of these specific effects.

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The politicization of climate change and polarization in the American public's views of global warming, 2001–2010

The Sociological Quarterly

2011

We examine political polarization over climate change within the American public by analyzing data from 10 nationally representative Gallup Polls between 2001 and 2010. We find that liberals and Democrats are more likely to report beliefs consistent with the scientific consensus and express personal concern about global warming than are conservatives and Republicans.

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Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States

Global environmental change

2011

We examine whether conservative white males are more likely than are other adults in the US general public to endorse climate change denial. We draw theoretical and analytical guidance from the identity-protective cognition thesis explaining the white male effect and from recent political psychology scholarship documenting the heightened system-justification tendencies of political conservatives.

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