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Factors influencing environmental attitude: The relationship between environmental attitude defensibility and cognitive reasoning level
Author(s) -
Yount James R.,
Horton Phillip B.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
journal of research in science teaching
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.067
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1098-2736
pISSN - 0022-4308
DOI - 10.1002/tea.3660291005
Subject(s) - cognition , psychology , environmental education , class (philosophy) , social psychology , pedagogy , computer science , neuroscience , artificial intelligence
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between factors believed to contribute to the formation of environmental attitudes by college nonscience majors. Key relationships addressed were the effects of a university environmental studies course on (a) environmental attitudes, (b) the amount of factual information that is brought to bear on an environmental attitude decision (defensibility), and (c) the linkages between the affective and the cognitive domains of freshman and sophomore students. When compared to the control group, the students who attended an environmental studies class did not significantly change their attitudes, but they did exhibit increases in their total [ F (3, 132) = 5.91, p < 0.01] and count [ F (3, 132) = 4.86, p < 0.01] levels of defensibility. These findings corroborate work performed by Kinsey (1978) and Kinsey and Wheatley (1980, 1984). In addition, students in the environmental studies course who had higher cognitive reasoning scores were more prone to increase defensibility [ F (6, 129) = 3.78, p < 0.01]. These data imply a linkage between cognitive and affective domains in the environmental attitude decision‐making process.