Tomorrow I will co-moderate a panel on AI use in grad school with @aricaschuett.bsky.social, who has put together a superb panel: @yiqingxu.bsky.social Rachel Gillum @yamilrvelez.bsky.social @lpargyle.bsky.social Grad students (& others) should tune in! Register: connect.apsanet.org/graduate/

My new theory paper (early draft) A new reason why concentrated wealth destroys democracy: common ownership A standalone media owner maximizes profit. A common owner like Musk (who owns X + SpaceX) will run the media firm at a loss to increase the $ of his total portfolio tinyurl.com/mcekr7cd

Why do arguments often change people’s beliefs without changing their attitudes? In a new APSR with @scottclifford.bsky.social and @patrickpliu.bsky.social, we point to belief relevance: arguments are more persuasive when they grapple with the idiosyncratic reasons people hold their political views.

The APSA Pres Task Force on AI, Politics, & Political Science's report comes in the form of an edited volume identifying questions & establishing a foundation for the empirical study of how politics & governance are affected by AI. Check out these early chapter drafts: shorturl.at/cMZzI #polisky

Happy to share that my Cambridge Element with @patrickpliu.bsky.social, Tailored Experiments: Personalized Interventions Using Generative AI, has been accepted as part of Jamie Druckman’s Experimental Political Science series.

Our chapter! preprints.apsanet.org/engage/apsa/... "AI is more likely to reinforce existing patterns of [information] exposure and behavior than it is to transform how people understand and relate to the political world" (w/@jenpans.bsky.social @aasiegel.bsky.social @yamilrvelez.bsky.social)

“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/

It was a pleasure to chat with Andy Luttrell about my new paper on persuasion, joint with Scott Clifford and Patrick Liu. It's an exciting time to revisit classic debates about opinion formation and change!

People already hand off decisions to AI when drafting emails, polishing papers, or writing code. Survey research will not be immune. In my new post, I offer an initial look at preferences for AI delegation in surveys and who is most open to it. newinstruments.substack.com/p/all-hail-o...

🚨New working paper w/ the legendary @cbwlezien.bsky.social! Lots of talk about inflation & voters' political views. But how well do voters actually understand info about inflation? We find that most citizens conflate changes in rates w/ changes in prices. This has important consequences...

New Substack: how I think about adaptivity in research design, and the strange path that got me there newinstruments.substack.com/p/surveys-th...

extremely happy to share that "Political Pundits and the Maintenance of Ideological Coalitions" is conditionally accepted at @polbehavior.bsky.social osf.io/8c3fr/files/...

Come share your research at NYU! The NYU Social Psychology Program is inviting speakers for 2026-2027! If you’re passing through NYC next year and are interested in giving a research talk nominate yourself using this short form by MAY 15th: docs.google.com/forms/d/1yTI...

A thoughtful essay from @yamilrvelez.bsky.social on the LLM-bots-in-surveys problem newinstruments.substack.com/p/who-answer...

New paper w/ @yamilrvelez.bsky.social! A lot of great research on political microtargeting discounts personalization: tailored ads (using AI or not) rarely beat a single-best message. We define two types of microtargeting, clarify when tailoring matters, & showcase a novel audio-based design.

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...

New paper with Stephanie Zonszein! Political news is more important than ever, but local papers are shuttering across the US. In recent years, innovative community-centered outlets led by journalists have taken to WhatsApp and social media to reach groups such as immigrants. What are their effects?

Congratulations to @yamilrvelez.bsky.social, @patrickpliu.bsky.social, and @scottclifford.bsky.social ! we think attitudes are some function of beliefs; our exps routinely move beliefs but not (even correlated) attitudes. This team found a way to guess which beliefs matter more (and they do!)

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.

Science communication has never been more important. In this animation, @yamilrvelez.bsky.social, Donald Green and I break down our research exploring whether AI chatbots can increase political engagement among young, politically unaligned voters. Link to animation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCuX...

People feeling hopeless about AI/LLMs spoiling all online polling and survey research should take a look at what @yamilrvelez.bsky.social is doing with “Pulse” — a tool to detect proof of life that’s compatible with Quatrics

An AI Voter bot improves knowledge about politics But, the AI bot has weak effects on downstream outcomes like vote preferences and party evaluations among respondents whose primary issue position aligns closely with one of the parties. Partisan action is hard to change. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

This paper was a blast to work on. The challenge: present party positions across many issues, in real time, using language voters actually use. 🧵 on why we went with a more involved retrieval-based approach and where I think these tools are headed.

🚨Excited to share our new paper published in PNAS (joint with @yamilrvelez.bsky.social and Don Green)! AI can enhance political knowledge and provide balanced information about politics with proper guardrails and vetted sources (e.g., party platforms). www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Looking for a tl;dr for these two excellent papers? I've got you covered: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

🚨 New in Nature+Science!🚨 AI chatbots can shift voter attitudes on candidates & policies, often by 10+pp 🔹Exps in US Canada Poland & UK 🔹More “facts”→more persuasion (not psych tricks) 🔹Increasing persuasiveness reduces "fact" accuracy 🔹Right-leaning bots=more inaccurate

As @seanjwestwood.bsky.social's terrifying new PNAS article demonstrates, LLMs can now pass almost every attention check, mirror personas, stay consistent across pages, and systematically bias responses in the aggregate. So here’s a different angle: verify physical presence, not text.

#OpenAccess from @polanalysis.bsky.social - Crowdsourced Adaptive Surveys - https://cup.org/4pNclb0 - @yamilrvelez.bsky.social#OpenAccess

The latest issue of PA is out now. We have a great collection of papers by @yamilrvelez.bsky.social, @sysilviakim.bsky.social, @mattblackwell.bsky.social, @sophieehill.bsky.social, @dwlee.bsky.social, @melissazrogers.bsky.social, @kaipingchen.bsky.social, @samuelbaltz.bsky.social (1/2)

Ever stared at a table of regression coefficients & wondered what you're doing with your life? Very excited to share this gentle introduction to another way of making sense of statistical models (w @vincentab.bsky.social) Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf... Website: j-rohrer.github.io/marginal-psy...

I had a blast presenting my work on tailored experiments and adaptive surveys at the Summer Institute of Computational Social Science. Nothing better than a room full of engaged and smart people getting into the weeds about algorithms, causal inference, and the messy realities of working with AI.

From our new issue: "Confronting Core Issues: A Critical Assessment of Attitude Polarization Using Tailored Experiments " by YAMIL RICARDO VELEZ (@YamilRVelez) and PATRICK LIU (@patrickpliu) #APSRNewIssue www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Currently in FirstView: In “Crowdsourced Adaptive Surveys,” @yamilrvelez.bsky.social introduces a methodology (CSAS) that converts open-ended text from participants into survey items and applies a multi-armed bandit algorithm to determine which questions should be prioritized in the survey.

Another survey methods talk at 𝗡𝗬𝗔𝗔𝗣𝗢𝗥 coming up next week to put on your calendar: Wed April 23 - 𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗦𝘂𝗿𝘃𝗲𝘆 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 (led by @yamilrvelez.bsky.social , @joshua-lerner.bsky.social , and myself) RSVP below 👇

🧵 Why do facts often change beliefs but not attitudes? In a new WP with @yamilrvelez.bsky.social and @scottclifford.bsky.social, we caution against interpreting this as rigidity or motivated reasoning. Often, the beliefs *relevant* to people’s attitudes are not what researchers expect.

New paper! AI lets us query humanity’s collective knowledge (or a subset of it) – rapidly addressing any given concern about vaccines in detail. So can information-focused LLM conversations shift vaccination intentions? In an RCT of 1,124 HPV vax-hesitant parents: yes!

New working paper with two great coauthors!

While there is a growing body of work suggesting information can change beliefs, effects on attitudes tend to be muted. We sketch out why this might be the case, drawing attention to the role of belief relevance. See 🧵 below!

🧵 Knowing which questions to ask is one of the most critical aspects of survey design, but we often rely on guesswork to devise questionnaires. What if we were to rely directly on participants?

#OpenAccess from @polanalysis.bsky.social - Crowdsourced Adaptive Surveys - cup.org/4aY2OH4 - @yamilrvelez.bsky.social "This paper introduces a crowdsourced adaptive survey methodology (CSAS) that unites advances in natural language processing and adaptive algorithms..." #FirstView

Special Issue Alert! How do digital & social media fuel alternative identities, extreme narratives & online communities in times of crisis? Submit your work exploring their role in propaganda, misinformation, and reshaping society! ispp.org/wp/wp-conten... @polpsyispp.bsky.social #polisky

Good discussion featuring @profsanderlinden.bsky.social, @yamilrvelez.bsky.social & @sumitra.bsky.social re. Ecker et al´s "Why Misinformation Must Not be Ignored" piece in this thread. Summarizing my thoughts.... 1/5

Interesting perspectives. Feels like some disconnect from standard polisci accounts (e.g. effects of misinfo/fact-checks often have limited scope, but that doesn't mean misinfo is overall inconsequential www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...). Was also curious about this part and dug around on the cites...

Important paper clarifying what reproducibility looks like in the age of LMs. The authors argue that local open-weight LMs are preferable to proprietary ones due to the temporal instability of model outputs.

How concerned should we be about backsliding during the second Trump term? Have past concerns come to fruition? Bright Light Watch asked experts to assign probabilities to concrete "bad" events in several past waves and the most recent one. We collaborated on a report summarizing these predictions.

Psychological inoculation against misinformation does not appear to transfer to real posts or synthetic posts using other misinformation techniques osf.io/preprints/ps... #polisky #polpsych #socpsych #misinformation