Very interesting talk for anyone interested in belief formation, persuasion or information provision experiments more generally!

“Writing is hard.” Thrilled to share that this simple idea led to a new paper in Political Analysis! Where most text methods focus on content, I test if expression is also effortful action. I find simple measures like character counts reveal attitudes and predict voting. cup.org/4cUmoXi 1/

From our FirstView: Partisan Expressive Responding: Lessons from Two Decades of Research by @mattgraham.bsky.social doi.org/10.1017/S000...

New Issue Highlight: Could better teaching be as simple as giving teachers the right information—no rewards, no pressure, no oversight?

1/ "Silicon samples" are becoming more and more common in research and polling. One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want. The updated version of this preprint is now online! THREAD🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2509.13397

👇Staggering results of expansion of early public children on female employment in Germany

📰 Do the effects of partisan media fade quickly or accumulate over time? ➡️ Using multiwave experiments, M Baum et al. show a single exposure can have effects lasting up to a week, while cumulative effects are hard to detect www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

A fascinating data-driven look at what blocked shipping routes mean for global trade. @economist.com

📄Published Today in Nature: 500 researchers reproduced 100 studies across the social & behavioral sciences to assess their analytical robustness (led by @balazsaczel.bsky.social & @szaszibarnabas.bsky.social). Article: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Preprint: osf.io/preprints/me... TLDR: 1/11

How costly is apprenticeship dropout—and for whom? Using an IV approach, our new @europeansocreview.bsky.social article finds strong income penalties, but only for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. My great coauthors patzinaalex.bsky.social & @katymorris.bsky.social 💖 tinyurl.com/tk4nkdb3

Pleased to see this one out in its JOP-formatted version @thejop.bsky.social www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Looking for insights on Open Peer Review - in particular, a person wanting to be open though the journal is not? For ex: If I publish in a double blind journal, but decide to post the peer review & editorial docs in a space like OSF. Is this unethical, illegal, best practice?

My personal rule for IVs is that, if there's really only one reason why Z and Y are correlated, then you should be able to tell me Z and Y, and I'd be able to figure out what X is without you telling me. (1/n)

We got a paper in @pspolisci.bsky.social l on public administration beyond public administration journals A substantial share of quantitatively oriented PA research is being produced in top economics journals! www.cambridge.org/core/journal... @karlemilbendtsen.bsky.social Five stylized facts:

You and whose economy? Group-based retrospection in economic voting by Christoffer Hentzer Dausgaard is now available in Early View. @chdausgaard.bsky.social ajps.org/2026/03/20/y...

Psychology has a whole cottage industry in which people come up with some construct that is essentially "attitudes/beliefs/expectations/feelings about X", and then the central claim is that this construct is a super important determinant of future X outcomes.>

New paper with Don Green and @ethanvporter.bsky.social in the QJPS. After much deliberation, we went with a title that just states the result. 📝 journal: www.emerald.com/qjps/article...

Do conjoint/factorial/vignette experiments reflect choices in the real world? Are hypothetical scenarios in the artificial survey context externally valid? Do hypothetical bias, intention-behavior gap and social desirability biases undermine validity? Two cautionary studies on this question:

out now in Science: @loganjames.bsky.social collected pairs of sounds in 16 species where we *know* which sound is more attractive (to that species) he played them to ppl on themusiclab.org, asking, in each pair, which was nicer. humans agreed w other animals doi.org/10.1126/science.aea1202

Fascinating paper on supply-side factors of negativity bias, misinformation and misperceptions. Also interesting measurements of accuracy of reporting and negativity bias of specific media orgs (e.g. CNN, Fox News).

Conditionally accepted at the APSR (w/ @scottclifford.bsky.social & @patrickpliu.bsky.social): Why does political information so often change beliefs but NOT attitudes? We highlight the role of belief relevance, or the extent to which beliefs bear on attitudes.

When you collect data online, are the results from humans or AI? In a project led by Booth PhD student Grace Zhang, we estimate the prevalence of AI agents on commonly used survey platforms: osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵

I'm also curious about this!

Writing simulations in DeclareDesign just went from "I should do that, but it's kind of a lot of work" to extremely easy

#rstats Here's a useful guide to creating publication-ready #ggplot figures to journal specifications, which is often quite fiddly. jaquent.github.io/2026/02/crea...

interesting paper on effect of paternity leave reform on gender beliefs and norms. #WinningHeartsAndMinds www.nber.org/papers/w34862

Russia, Venezuela, Iran, China, the Sahel region, the United States ... Want to know why state agents carry out brutal repression — or participate in illegal coups? Our new book "Making a Career in Dictatorship" provides answers — it just got published by @academic.oup.com: tinyurl.com/ystwm3tf

Paper on statistical power necessary for interaction effects doi.org/10.1177/2515...

"Acceptable or Not? Understanding Attitudes Toward Citizens' Discrimination Against Frontline Workers" by @halling.bsky.social, @mathildececchini.bsky.social, & Benedicte Gronhoj shows that language-based requests are viewed as more acceptable than religious ones. doi.org/10.1111%2Fpa...

dplyr 1.2.0 is out now and we are SO excited! - `filter_out()` for dropping rows - `recode_values()`, `replace_values()`, and `replace_when()` that join `case_when()` as a complete family of recoding/replacing tools These are huge quality of life wins for #rstats! tidyverse.org/blog/2026/02...

Is meat consumption becoming political? @willemboterman.bsky.social & @eelcoharteveld.bsky.social examine Dutch surveys showing meat eating aligns with right-wing ideology & climate scepticism. Read OPEN ACCESS: buff.ly/HU5Mdec @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social #polsky #polsci #FoodPolitics

We’re organizing a workshop at Aarhus University. Please share and consider submitting! 🗓️ 13–14 April 2026 | 📝 Deadline: Mon, 16 Feb 2026 (extended abstract) — junior scholars prioritized 🎤 Keynotes: @stefwalter.bsky.social (Univ. of Zurich) & @hhuang.bsky.social (Ohio State)

Survey experiments have become a popular methodology among social scientists. Has it been effective? In POQ, Rauf et al. study the efficacy of 100 survey experiments. Their results show that a majority of hypotheses were not supported. Read now: doi.org/10.1093/poq/...

Here comes another aviation analogy. I sincerely hope that these types of tools will be used to help us do _better_ research first and foremost. I fear instead it will be used to help us do _more_ research _faster_. The magic of autopilot is that it helps pilots fly better, not more.

Some closing thoughts for my students this semester on LLMs and learning #rstats datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-12...

I was going to just share an excerpt of this great @donmoyn.bsky.social piece, but there are too many excerpts worth sharing. Just read the whole thing. If you care about governance, democracy, and the rule of law, these issues are crucial. open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni...

Today I published a replication outlining concerns with "Instrumentally Inclusive" by Turnbull-Dugarte and López Ortega (2024, APSR). I document seemingly idiosyncratic and ad hoc choices made by the authors that create a pattern of statistically significant results consistent with their theory.

🚨 SynthNet is out 🚨 Researchers propose new constructs and measures faster than anyone can track. We (@anniria.bsky.social @ruben.the100.ci) built a search engine to check what already exists and help identify redundancies; indexing 74,000 scales from ~31,500 instruments in APA PsycTests. 🧵1/3

📄 New WP version out - full overhaul! The Politics of Evidence Selection (w/ @jesperasring.bsky.social ) Comments welcome! 🔗 osf.io/preprints/so...

Interesting new study on the elusive connection between organizational performance and user satisfaction

After a huge post-election flip in economic perceptions, I thought Democrats and Republicans might be lying to pollsters to send a partisan message — but I was wrong! New in the Journal of Experimental Political Science (open access): doi.org/10.1017/XPS....

I think this is kind of neat and I don't think anyone else has noticed it (I've looked and I can't find anyone who has) osf.io/preprints/so... Maybe I should back off "justification" language, but it's at least a remarkable coincidence. I still think someone else *must* have noticed it...

When there is a random way to do something, there is a less random way that is better but requires more thought. In this case, regression models that make no sense don't belong in a multiverse analysis. An inferential regression without a causal justification is like an opinion without reasons.

We need to have a conversation about random seeds. Don't use 42. blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/if-your-ra...

We are hiring PhDs and postdocs to work on the ERC project GETGOV, where I am the PI. We will investigate governing elites since 1789. I am sure that it will be a lot of fun and result in great research! Postdocs: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available... PhDs: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

👀 this new meta-analysis on edutainment by @bardiarahmani.bsky.social, Montano, @dylanwgroves.bsky.social, and Green doi.org/10.1017/bpp.... 377 ests in 77 exps: edutainment moves attitudes, norms, beliefs 📊 Effects persist ⏳ Many reasonable theories about effect heterogeneity are not supported 😇

Currently in FirstView: In “Balancing Precision and Retention in Experimental Design,” @gustavodiaz.org and Erin Rossiter study how experimental design choices can increase precision when estimating treatment effects. Specifically, they examine block-randomized and pre-post designs.

great story, this chart RULES

osf.io/preprints/ps... Preprint: Jan Pfänder and Hugo Mercier "The rational impression account of trust in science"