Political campaigns increasingly conduct experiments to learn how to persuade voters. Little research has considered the implications of this trend for elections or democracy. To probe these implications, we analyze a unique archive of 146 …
According to various sources the world is likely to witness another pandemic on the scale of COVID-19 in the future. How can the social and behavioral sciences contribute to a successful response? Here we conduct a cost-effectiveness analysis of an …
Advances in large language models (LLMs) could significantly disrupt political communication. In a large-scale pre-registered experiment (n = 4,955), we prompted GPT-4 to generate persuasive messages impersonating the language and beliefs of U.S. …
The highly influential theory of “Motivated System 2 Reasoning” argues that analytical, deliberative (“System 2”) reasoning is hijacked by identity when considering ideologically charged issues—leading people who are more likely to engage in such …
Much concern has been raised about the power of political microtargeting to sway voters’ opinions, influence elections, and undermine democracy. Yet little research has directly estimated the persuasive advantage of microtargeting over alternative …
It is widely assumed that party identification and loyalty can distort partisans’ information processing, diminishing their receptivity to counter-partisan arguments and evidence. Here we empirically evaluate this assumption. We test whether American …
Party elite cues are among the most well-established influences on citizens’ political opinions. Yet, there is substantial variation in effect sizes across studies, constraining the generalizability and theoretical development of party elite cues …
The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the …
Central to theories of political persuasion is treatment effect heterogeneity—the idea that people respond to political messages in different ways—so persuasion is easier when different messages are targeted to different audiences. The standard …
Concerns about video-based political persuasion are prevalent in both popular and academic circles, predicated on the assumption that video is more compelling than text. To date, however, this assumption remains largely untested in the political …