Perhaps others have seen it already, but I found this pre-print (first posted in September) deeply troubling, raising concerns about how LLMs used for classification tasks in research open new researcher-degrees-of-freedom, which they call "LLM-hacking" (akin to p-hacking) arxiv.org/pdf/2509.08825

Clear evidence that at universities conservatives don't face higher obstacles than liberals to establish student groups + invite outside speakers. "These results fail to offer support for the view that conservative students encounter more difficulty in efforts to access campus resources."

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.

New paper with Salvo Nunnari which aims to detect (partisan) motivated reasoning (MR) using experimental designs based on information order. This provides a flexible way to detect deviations from Bayesian updating which can be explained by MR. osf.io/preprints/so...

We really need to stop asking items like this using agree-disagree scales or comparable formats. These estimates aren't informative. academic.oup.com/poq/article/... www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Central attitudes in political belief systems are more resistant to change than peripheral attitudes, but not necessarily less amenable to persuasive attempts: https://osf.io/6a8ue

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.

Partisan voters can reward candidates who stick to the party line even on unpopular issues. Under uncertainty, voters infer that ideologically rigid candidates are also more likely to back the party's other, more popular positions academic.oup.com/sf/advance-a...

They find that survey professionalism is common, but there is limited evidence that survey professionals lower data quality. Professionals do not systematically differ from non-professionals and don’t exhibit more response instability. Read the paper here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Currently in FirstView: In “Survey Professionalism: New Evidence from Web Browsing Data,” Bernhard Clemm von Hohenberg, @tiagoventura.bsky.social, Tiago Ventura, @jonathannagler.bsky.social, @ericka.bric.digital, & Magdalena Wojcieszak provide evidence on survey professionalism across three samples.

Survey experiments' popularity in political science is getting attention. What is good and bad about them? How can one maximize their benefits and mitigate their downsides? Greg Huber and I wrote up our thoughts: Paywalled: doi.org/10.1016/bs.h... Free: m-graham.com/papers/Huber...

NEW PAPER w/ @cselmendorf.bsky.social & @jkalla.bsky.social: An under-appreciated reason why voters oppose dense new housing, especially in less-dense neighborhoods: they think it looks ugly and want to prevent that, even in other neighborhoods. Some of what we think is NIMBYism might not be!

A thread on our recent paper (w/Raihan Alam @raihanalam) in PNAS on why punishment often fails and what it means for crime, cooperation, democracy, and the rule of law. I’m super excited for it, it’s the lab’s most extensive experimental work to date. Check it out! 1/ www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Do any meta-analyses or other reflection pieces exist that catalog the sorts of mechanisms specifically, and outcomes generally, studied as consequences of providing white Americans information on their declining population share?

(1/10) 🚨Preprint alert!🚨 In this article, I challenge claims of a generational rise of conservative men. In the media and recent academic publications, the so-called ‘youth gender gap’ has been interpreted as a generational phenomenon. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

✨New preprint! Why do people express outrage online? In 4 studies we develop a taxonomy of online outrage motives, test what motives people report, what they infer for in- vs. out-partisans, and how motive inferences shape downstream intergroup consequences. Led by @felix-chenwei.bsky.social 🧵👇

New WP on political violence in democracies with the fantastic @dianebolet.bsky.social and @bjarneck.bsky.social. Sadly very topical, but with some positive results osf.io/preprints/so... 1/

Very few Americans support actual political violence. Many more support intimidation. Almost no one thinks it’s appropriate to kill your political opponents, but many more would dox them. Read the latest: goodauthority.org/news/very-fe...

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....

#OpenAccess from August 2025 - Cleaning up Politics: Anti-Corruption Appeals in Electoral Campaigns - cup.org/4msGB8X "Surprisingly, a clean disciplinary record does not substantively enhance a candidate’s anticorruption appeal..." - Sofia Vera

A cautiously optimistic result on AI and disinformation. A week before 2024 UK elections 13% of all voters used AI to ask about political topics. A randomized trial found this may be good: using AI led to similar gains in true knowledge as doing web research, regardless of model & prompt used.

📣 MORAL APPEALS IN POLITICAL COMMUNICATION 📣 New version of @twidmann.bsky.social and my working paper answering: * Have moral appeals increased over time? * Is the tendency to moralize ideologically patterned? * Are some topics consistently more moralized than others? osf.io/preprints/os...

We often hear from reviewers: "what about demand effects?" So we developed a method to eliminate them. Something weird happened during testing: We couldn’t detect demand effects in the first place! (1/8)

New preregistered report @jepsjournal.bsky.social "Thin" populism treatments manipulate perceptions of people-centrism + anti-elitism But: some treatments (e.g., "American people") affect perceptions of host ideology, complicating causal analyses of impact of populist rhetoric cup.org/4n3DvZm

colleagues in political science. the formal update to the Garand and Giles journal ranking survey is now live. many of you will receive an email momentarily inviting you to participate. in the event you do NOT receive an invitation, please see this website to self-enroll. thanks! sharing = caring!

Now Out on First View: "Can (Thin) Populism be Manipulated without Manipulating Host Ideology? Evidence from a Conjoint Validation Approach" www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

New JEPS: Debunking NIMBY Myths Increases Support for Affordable Housing, Especially Near Respondents' Homes www.cambridge.org/core/service... -correcting stereotypes/misperceptions re: affordable housing increases support for building it -Effects often *larger* for housing near people's homes

𝘈 𝘖𝘯𝘦-𝘗𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘯 Statistical Power www.carlislerainey.com/blog/2025-08...

I expect this to be an important book. Congrats, @tanikar.bsky.social. academic.oup.com/book/60875

As the U.S. celebrates Labor Day, what do voters think about the working poor? In POQ, Benjamin Newman shows that most blame structural problems for poverty among workers – but that race and personal experience shape views too. Read now: doi.org/10.1093/poq/...

#OpenAccess from @jepsjournal.bsky.social - Do Immigrants’ Partisan Preferences Influence Americans’ Support for Immigration? - cup.org/4p2Xskp - @danielmcdowell.bsky.social & David A. Steinberg #FirstView

On Prolific, "we estimate that about 34% of online study participants use LLMs to answer open-ended questions atleast some of the time..." Seems like a very timely paper for behavioural scientists using online samples: osf.io/preprints/so... ; We really need more papers on this issue

Some people find politics interesting. Others do not. In a new paper, I show that appealing to MEANING increases political interest. In 6 experiments, connecting what people find meaningful in their lives to politics increases political interest. Link: osf.io/preprints/so...

Peterson & Jeong find that local media strengthens issue accountability. By reducing uncertainty about legislators’ policy positions, news makes voters more likely to evaluate politicians on issues, not just party lines. #MediaAndPolitics Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

There's a new issue of the section newsletter out! This one's on sample considerations in experiments: professional survey-takers, LLM usage, rural contexts, and more! connect.apsanet.org/s42/newslett...

New job ad: Assistant Professor of Quantitative Social Science, Dartmouth College apply.interfolio.com/172357 Please share with your networks. I am the search chair and happy to answer questions!

Anyone have favorite options for printing SEM output in R like semTable that work for v4.5.1? My Googling has turned up little.

new in early view at Political Psychology -->

New publication, out in Political Analysis: There is an increasing array of tools to measure facets of morality in political language. But while they ostensibly measure the same concept, do they actually? I and @fhopp.bsky.social set out to see what happens.

Also, you don't need to live in Texas to attend! You just need to be willing to travel here!

New Post: "For Your Syllabus: Statistical Power" Add content on statistical power to your social science courses. Not just to methods courses. For substantive courses, Bloom's MDE (i.e., 80% power to detect 2.5*SE) is easy to teach and really helpful! www.carlislerainey.com/blog/2025-08...

TAMU will be hosting the Texas American Behavior Conference on Nov. 7-8 this year. Apply by Aug. 31 using the link below. Let me know if you have any questions! tamu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

TAMU will be hosting the Texas American Behavior Conference on Nov. 7-8 this year. Apply by Aug. 31 using the link below. Let me know if you have any questions! tamu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Another well-deserved award for Lucia! She's doing fantastic work and is on the market this fall!

🚨 Updated working paper! Ekin Dursun and I ask what instruments best manipulate emotions on surveys (osf.io/56h4g). We find that vignettes really work! They have large effects on emotions of interest & smaller effects on emotions *not* of interest. But as always, it's complicated.👇 (1/17)

NEW - Field Experiments Invoking Gloating Villains to Increase Voter Participation: Anger, Anticipated Emotions, and Voting Turnout - cup.org/45KpoSo - Gregory A. Huber, Alan S. Gerber, Albert H. Fang & John J. Cho #OpenAccess

Can embarrassment of one's party dampen partisanship and polarization? One would think. In a forthcoming paper at @poqjournal.bsky.social, Taylor Carlson, @stevenwwebster.bsky.social, and I examine what we call "partisan embarrassment," including looking at the ramifications of these feelings...

🚨Pre-print alert🚨 Research shows citizens in many Western democracies are increasingly affectively polarized––they feel warm toward their own party but quite cold toward opposing parties. But how does it feel to “feel warmly”? @katharinalawall.bsky.social, @mtsakiris.bsky.social & I asked. 🧵1/8

Inflation was a big issue--maybe even *the* issue--in 2024. But do citizens understand how to interpret inflation rates? Using some new data from @verasight.bsky.social, the answer seems to be largely: no. On top of that, Republicans show significantly less understanding than Democrats.

New preprint! We developed new measurement tools to examine moralization in ~2B Twitter/X & Reddit posts and ~5M traditional media texts. Key finding: moralization increased markedly on social media from 2013-2021; more than traditional media; associated with multiple user dynamics 🧵👇