Before the end of this year, I’m glad to share a short perspective/policy piece, recently out with @joshcjackson.bsky.social , Zhao Wang, and @williambrady.bsky.social: “Large AI Models Have a Prioritization Problem: Policy Implications and Solutions.”

It’s grad school application season, and I wanted to give some public advice. Caveats: -*-*-*-* 
> These are my opinions, based on my experiences, they are not secret tricks or guarantees 
> They are general guidelines, not meant to cover a host of idiosyncrasies and special cases

In a new paper, we find that sycophantic #AI chatbots make people more extreme--operating like an echo chamber Yet, people prefer sycophantic chatbots and see them as less biased Only open-minded people prefer disagreeable chatbots: osf.io/preprints/ps... Led by @steverathje.bsky.social

🚨 New preprint 🚨 Across 3 experiments (n = 3,285), we found that interacting with sycophantic (or overly agreeable) AI chatbots entrenched attitudes and led to inflated self-perceptions. Yet, people preferred sycophantic chatbots and viewed them as unbiased! osf.io/preprints/ps... Thread 🧵

English language is filled with trait words like “caring” and “smart” These words are the currency of personality/social psych, yet key questions remain about their evolution, function, and structure We take on these questions in a preprint led by @yuanzeliu.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/ps...

Today (w/ @ox.ac.uk @stanford @MIT @LSE) we’re sharing the results of the largest AI persuasion experiments to date: 76k participants, 19  LLMs, 707 political issues. We examine “levers” of AI persuasion: model scale, post-training, prompting, personalization, & more!  🧵:

On the Malleability of Democratic Attitudes: Do Citizens' Views of Democracy Vary With How They Feel?: https://osf.io/hz2mt

✨Did markets make Americans more cooperative❓🔍 ✅YES‼️ Between 1850 and 1920, the US became the largest and most integrated economy in the world 📶🌎 We show that this shift didn’t just move goods and affect prices—it fundamentally changed culture and behavior 🧵 👇 1/17

Great new paper by Stagnaro & Amsalem in NatComm: Detailed fact-based informational module about gun control leads to persistent reductions in polarization (attitudes move towards midpoint). Seeing the evidence cited by other side makes opinions more moderate www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This paper is now published. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Want to make nice graphs with me, starting this summer? I am hiring for two PhD positions at the University of Witten/Herdecke.

New preprint on prejudice and state centralization: osf.io/preprints/ps... Our team of historians, psychologists, and anthropologists analyzed 90 historical societies and Chinese records from 206 BCE - 1911 CE In both studies, we find a link btw group prejudice and historical state centralization

We are deeply saddened to share the passing of James Liu, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Political Psychology and long-time ISPP member. We are forever grateful for his contributions to our field. Our thoughts are with his loved ones. He will be greatly missed. ispp.org/news/in-memo...

It has been a challenge to identify predictors of moralization. This new study finds that perceived polarization prospectively predicts attitude moralization during the 2020 US Presidential election psycnet.apa.org/record/2024-... #psychology #socialpsyc #PsychSciSky #BehSci Polisky