Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel are two social psychologists who study the gears and levers of romantic relationships. What do people find attractive in a partner? How do relationships evolve over time? And critically, do romantic movies get any of this stuff right?

Paul and Eli host the podcast, Love Factually, which dissects popular romantic films from the standpoint of behavioral science. What do they get wrong? What do they get right?

On the show this month, we talk about the podcast, how scientists can study something like human love, and why people don't quite know what they find attractive until they stumble upon it.

Also, at the end of the episode, I mention my print shop, Indispensable Letterpress. Check out the cards and posters I've been making using old technologies. Maybe even pick something up for a friend this holiday season? Be careful, though--your support will tell me that you approve of my obsession with the antiquated machines that fill my basement.

Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScience

Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Sara Grady studies the function of entertainment—why we watch, play, and listen to the media that fill our lives. She's an assistant professor of Communication at Ohio State University. In our conversation, we explore what entertainment actually does for us, what it means to connect with fictional characters, and how storytelling shapes our relationships and well-being. Sara also shares her path from film production to media psychology and why understanding stories only deepens their magic. 

Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScience

Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

You didn't think #HotSciCommSummer was done, did you?

Join me for a whole new season of Hot SciComm summer, a special laid-back podcast series featuring writers, podcast producers, video producers, speakers, and more. Get ready to hear from seven more top-notch science communicators and hear how they got into this area, how they approach their communication, and what you can learn about doing it yourself.

The new season is still aimed at science journalists and scientists interested in sharing scientific research outside of a university setting, but if you’re a curious person wanting to learn more about science media, I’m happy to have you.

This summer welcomes Adam Cole, Joel Bervell, Alex Dainis, Alison Fragale, Joe Palca, Sarah McAnulty, and Lulu Miller!

Join me every week starting next Monday for Hot SciComm Summer! 

Listen to the whole series: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/hot-scicomm-summer/

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This is a rebroadcast of Episode 27: Giving and Getting Good Gifts (December 21, 2020).

It’s that time of year when winter holidays send people on a buying spree as they collect gifts to give to every friend, family member, and acquaintance. And you’d think that after so many years of giving gifts for all sorts of holidays, we’d be pretty good at it. Right? Well, not according to research in psychology. In this episode, we explore the psychology of why giving to others is such a good thing to do, and also where gift givers go wrong. Along the way, we’ll pick up some tips for how to approach giving in a smarter, more effective way.

Many guests in this episode!

• We hear from Laura and Bethany Sanders about childhood gifting go awry. Laura Sanders is a stand-up comedian and illustrator, so check out her work!
• Dr. Lara Aknin is an associate professor of Social Psychology at Simon Fraser University. She studies what makes people happy.
• Dr. Jeff Galak is an associate professor of Marketing at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. He also runs the YouTube channel, “Data Demystified.”
• Dr. Julian Giviis an assistant professor of Marketing at West Virginia University's John Chambers College of Business and Economics. He studies gift-giving.

Research in this episode:

Part I: Why give to others? Lara Aknin and her colleagues found that college students were happier when giving money to other people vs. spending on themselves (Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2008). She has replicated this finding all over the world, with kids, and other populations (see Dunn et al., 2020).

Part II: How gift-givers and gift-recipients disagree.

A. Gift-givers focus on the moment of giving whereas recipients are thinking more long-term (Galak, Givi, & Williams (2016)

B. Gift-givers think price matters more than receivers do (Flynn & Adams, 2009)

C. Givers avoid repeatedly giving the same thing, but recipients don’t mind (Givi, 2020)

D. People opt to give sentimental gifts less often than receivers would prefer (Givi & Galak, 2017); giving something as a gift can also imbue it with sentimentality and make the affection for the gift last longer (Yang & Givi, 2015)

E. Just ask people what they want (Gino & Flynn, 2011)

F. Giver-centric gifts make people feel closer to each other, even though we think recipient-focused gifts are the most appropriate (Aknin & Human, 2015)

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

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Melina Palmer is founder and CEO of The Brainy Business, which provides behavioral economics consulting to businesses of all sizes from around the world. Her podcast, The Brainy Business, has downloads in over 160 countries and is used as a resource for teaching applied behavioral economics for many universities and businesses.

In this episode, I talk to Melina about how she got involved in the world of behavioral science, what behavioral economics means to her, and how she goes about applying research in social science to address real challenges in business.

You can read the first chapter of her book, What Your Customer Wants and Can’t Tell You, for free using this link: http://www.thebrainybusiness.com/opinionscience

For more information about my comments about "honesty nudges" at the end of the episode, you can check on a recent article by Kristal et al. (2020) and this BuzzFeed News article.


For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/applying-behavioral-science-with-melina-palmer/

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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This episode follows up on the previous episode of Opinion Science about IBM's Project Debater. If you haven't already, be sure to check out that episode.

But this week we hear more from Harish Natarajan, Dan Zafrir, and Noa Ovadia--three accomplished debaters. They'll share how they got into debate, what debate means to them, and why the exercise of debate is so important.

In the opening section of the episode, we hear a quick clip from social psychologist Richard Petty. And the study I summarize is from a working paper by Peter Schwardmann, Egon Tripodi, and Joël J. van der Weele.

Music in this episode by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).


For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/debate-with-harish-natarajan-dan-zafrir-noa-ovadia/

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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In 2019, IBM introduced the world to Project Debater: an AI system that could go up against humans to debate anything. In this episode, we trace Project Debater’s growth from just an idea to a fully fledged piece of technology and the public debates it’s engaged in. And it raises a bigger question: is persuasion a fundamentally human ability or is it really something that machines are capable of?

We hear from IBM engineer and project leaders Noam Slonim, expert debaters Harish Natarajan, Dan Zafrir, and Noa Ovadia, communication neuroscientist Elisa Baek, and best-selling author Daniel Pink.

To learn more about Project Debater, visit IBM’s Project Debater website and watch this great mini documentary about the system. 

Clips from IBM events were made available by IBM and are licensed creative commons.


For a transcript of this episode, head to: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/to-persuade-is-human/

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

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Josh Compton studies how “inoculating” people against persuasion can make them more resistant to arguments they encounter later. Dr. Compton is an associate professor of speech at Dartmouth and has written a lot about “inoculation theory,” which began (as a theory) back in the 60s with the work of William McGuire. We talk about lots of inoculation theory’s many extensions and applications.

Things we mention in this episode:

• The “virgin-soil epidemic” explanation of disease spread among indigenous people following Columbus’ voyage to the Americas. (See this Atlantic article by Ostler, 2020)
• William McGuire’s original formulation of “inoculation theory” (McGuire, 1964)
• A lot of the work Josh discusses is reviewed in Compton et al. (2021) and Compton (2021).
• Online games that help inoculate against fake news: “Bad News”, “Breaking Harmony Square”, and “Go Viral!” 

For a transcript of this episode, go to: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/inoculating-against-persuasion-with-josh-compton/

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScience

Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Daniel Pink is a bestselling author who uses social science research to explore big questions about what it means to be human. He’s written six books, and a new one comes out in February—The Power of Regret. You can also check out his Masterclass on sales and persuasion. In our conversation, Dan gives a look into his writing process. How does he go from an idea for a book to the final product? And how does he draw on social science along the way? This was a super fun chat—check it out!

Things that come up in our conversation:

• Scapple: a mind-mapping app that Dan uses.
• The psychology of counterfactual thinking (see Smallman & Summerville, 2018)
• Classic social influence study on reusing hotel towels (Goldstein, Cialdini, & Griskevicius, 2008)
• “Paper Lion” by George Plimpton
• Stumbling on Happiness by Dan Gilbert
• How to Change by Katy Milkman

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

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Jesse Graham studies human morality and what it means for our political opinions. He’s an Associate Professor of Management at the Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah. As a graduate student with Jonathan Haidt, he helped develop Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), which has gone on to be a massively influential theory of morality and how it develops. One of Jesse’s key insights was that these moral foundations help explain the divides between liberal and conservative people, which has implications for all kinds of political opinions and pressing topics like political polarization.

In our conversation, Jesse fills us in on the early days of his research and the development of MFT over time, walks through the implications of MFT for political ideology, and reflects on where the theory is now.


Things that come up in this episode:

• Divisions between liberal and conservatives: antipathy (Iyengar et al., 2019), geographic segregation (Motyl et al., 2014), avoiding each other’s opinions (Frimer, Skitka, & Motyl, 2017), and even shorter Thanksgiving dinners (Chen & Rohla, 2018; Frimer & Skitka, 2020)
• Jonathan Haidt’s “Social Intuitionist Model” of morality (Haidt, 2001)
• Moral Foundations Theory (Graham et al., 2013; for a useful overview, check out MoralFoundations.org)
• Values beyond the moral (Schwartz, 1992)
• How adult political leanings can be predicted from observations of them as kids (Block & Block, 2006)
• Ideology and geographic preferences (Motyl et al., 2020)
• Moral foundations and the basis of vaccine attitudes (Amin et al., 2017; Karimi-Malekabadi et al., 2021), needle exchange attitudes (Christie et al., 2019), and a variety of political attitudes including abortion (Koleva et al., 2012)

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/moral-foundations-political-opinion-with-jesse-graham

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScience

Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Dr. Ashley Amaya is a senior survey methodologist at Pew Research Center. She has a PhD in Survey Methodology and is an expert when it comes to polling the country’s opinions. Our conversation highlights how the simple polling numbers you see on the news are the results of months—sometimes years—of work.

Dr. Amaya shares how Pew recruits and maintains high-quality samples of survey respondents, carefully designs the questions that get asked, and checks their surveys’ demographics against the broader population. We also talk about what consumers should look for when assessing a poll’s legitimacy and where else experts are looking for the public’s opinion.

A few things that come up in this episode:

• 65% of U.S. adults think there is intelligent life on other planets (Pew Research Center; June 30, 2021)
• Pew Report: “Measuring the Risks of Panel Conditioning in Survey Research” (June 9, 2021)
• Sampling methods: address-based sampling vs. random digit dialing (RDD) vs. non-probability sampling
• Weighting survey responses by demographics (see this page on Pew’s website)
• The importance of well-written survey questions (see this video from Pew)

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/polling-101-with-ashley-amaya/

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScience

Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

In a new occasional series on Opinion Science, Portraits gives a snapshot of insights in social science. This week, Dr. Vanessa Bohns shows us how we're more influential than we give ourselves credit for.

Vanessa's new book is You Have More Influence Than You Think. It's available September 7th.

To hear the full conversation I had with Vanessa, go back to Episode 21 of Opinion Science: More Influence Than You Realize with Vanessa Bohns.

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScience

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Larisa Heiphetz studies how kids think about religion and morality. She’s an assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University where she runs the Columbia Social and Moral Cognition Lab. As a new dad, I’ve been thinking about how young kids form opinions—do they even form opinions at all? So I was curious to talk with Larisa about her work on how kids make different kinds of judgments and think about their new social worlds.

 If your interested in participating yourself (or your young child!) in Dr. Heiphetz’s research, you can sign up for studies here: https://columbiasamclab.weebly.com/childstudysign-up.html

 Things we mention in this episode:

• Developmental psychology as a research tool to understand big questions (see Heiphetz, 2014)
• How we think of moral as different from facts and preferences (e.g., Heiphetz et al., 2013, 2014, 2017)
• Research on how kids evaluate “helpers” and “hinderers” (e.g., Hamlin & Van de Vondervoort, 2018).
• Psychological “essentialism” and why kids tend to think that way (Heiphetz, 2020)

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/how-kids-judge-with-larisa-heiphetz/

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScience

Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Matt Grizzard is a communication scholar who studies how people relate to characters in entertainment media as a sign of how much they enjoy one story versus another. A guiding framework behind this work is "affective disposition theory." What is that? Well, listen to the episode! We talk about this theory, how it helps us understand people's reactions to what happens to characters in media, and what it means for the importance of entertainment in our everyday experience. 

Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScience

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How can we make the world less prejudiced? Research from the social sciences hints at a promising solution. This week, we do a deep dive on “The Contact Hypothesis”: what it is, how we know it works, and what its limits are.

We hear from four experts in this area whose research sheds light on the question:

• Tom Pettigrew, emeritus professor of psychology at University of California, Santa Cruz
• Linda Tropp, professor of social psychology at University of Massachusetts-Amherst
• Shreya Bhattacharya, economist; PhD from the University of Houston
• Salma Mousa, assistant professor of political science at Yale University

 
For a transcript of this episode, fully annotated with references, go to: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/the-contact-hypothesis/ 

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

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Greg Maio studies human values. He’s a professor of psychology at the University of Bath in England.* He also co-wrote the popular textbook, The Psychology of Attitudes and Attitude Change, and in 2016, his own book came out called The Psychology of Human Values. In our conversation, he shares his work on what values are and why they’re so important. We talk about when values guide or choices (and when they don’t), how people have a hard time articulating their values, and how we can design interventions around the values that people can come together on.

*In my intro for this episode, I mistakenly said the University of Bath was in Wales. It is actually in England. Greg was at Cardiff University for years before recently moving to Bath, and Cardiff is in Wales.  Sorry for the mixup!

Some things we mention in this episode:

• What are values? (See this useful online article by Dr. Maio.)
• How do values work and how has the science on this evolved? (see Maio, 2010)
• How values can act as “truisms” that make them hard to defend (Maio & Olson, 1998; Bernard, Maio, & Olson, 2003; 2005)
• Values can contribute unity on otherwise divisive issues (e.g., Wolf, Haddock, Manstead, & Maio, 2020)

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit:  http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/values-with-greg-maio/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScience

Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Richard E. Nisbett has spent his career studying how people think. He is an emeritus professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, and his research has influenced how psychologists think about reasoning, introspection, culture, and intelligence. He has written several important books over his career, including The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why and Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking.

His newest book is Thinking: A Memoir.

In this episode, Nisbett shares samples of his work relating to our inability to know the inner workings of our own minds, whether we can call various cognitive biases “errors” in reasoning, and how culture shapes the way we interact with the world.

Some things that come up in this episode:

• Nisbett’s favorite study: Norman R. F. Maier’s finding that people fail to understand where their insights come from (Maier, 1931)
• The classic set of studies by Richard Nisbett and Tim Wilson on our failure to introspect on cognitive processes (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977)
• The study where a goat entered a classroom (but that was really about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation; Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973)
• Nisbett’s work on errors in reasoning (Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Nisbett, 1992)
• Early work by Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama on the effects of culture on how we think about ourselves (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; also see Markus’ book Clash!)
• The “Culture of Honor” (Nisbett, 1996)
• Cross-cultural differences in analytic versus holistic thinking (see Nibsett’s Geography of Thought for a summary)

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/thinking-with-richard-nisbett/

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Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

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Neil Lewis Jr. doesn’t just study social questions—he studies them in the places where they matter. He’s an assistant professor of communication at Cornell University, and he’s interested in social inequities, how they work, and how we can address them. In addition to his own research, he also consults for organizations and contributes to FiveThirtyEight. He was named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science in 2019 and won the SAGE Young Scholar award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in 2020.

In our conversation, Neil shares his research on health communication and education disparities, talks about what it takes to collaborate outside of academic institutions, and how he approaches science communication.

Things we mention in this episode:

• In my introduction to this episode, I pull from a variety of sources to highlight the value of applied psychological research. These include the research by the Research Branch, Information and Education Division of the War Department, a history of social psychology (Kruglanski & Stroebe, 2011), Kurt Lewin’s research on eating organ meats (Lewin, 1943), reflections on social psychology’s “fun and games” (Ring, 1967), references to social psychology’s “crisis of confidence” (Elms, 1975), and Katz’s reflection on the value of basic and applied social research (Katz, 1951).
• Field study of health messages in a physician waiting room (Lewis et al., 2020) and the laboratory research it was based on (Albarracin et al., 2007)
• Neil brings up a controversial paper suggesting that social psychology isn’t a science—instead, it’s a study of history (Gergen, 1973)

The opening of the episode features audio from the World War II film, Why We Fight: Prelude to War, produced by the U.S. Office of War Information (1942).


Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/taking-social-science-into-the-world-with-neil-lewis-jr/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Alie and Micah Caldwell produce the YouTube channel, Neuro Transmissions. Their videos present the basics of neuroscience and psychology in an accessible, engaging way. Alie is a neuroscientist and senior science writer at the University of Chicago Medicine. Micah is a licensed professional clinical counselor. In our conversation, we talk about the origins of Neuro Transmissions, their philosophy of science communication, and their new book.

Check your local bookstores for their upcoming book: Brains Explained: How They Work and Why They Work That Way.

Some science communication resources that came up in our conversation:

• ComSciCon: A free science communication workshop for graduate students
• Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science
• COMPASS Science Communication Trainings
• Alan Alda’s book, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?
• The Union of Concerned Scientists

 Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/neuro-transmissions-with-alie-&-micah-caldwell/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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Chris Bail is a computational social scientist. He wrangles the data that our social interactions leave behind to better understand how ideas spread. He is Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Duke University, where he directs the Polarization Lab. A Guggenheim and Carnegie Fellow, he studies political extremism on social media using tools from the emerging field of computational social science. 

He is the author of Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make our Platforms Less Polarizing.

Things we mention in this episode:

• Internet bots for good and evil
• @simscreens: A Twitter bot tweeting out frames from The Simpsons
• Using Twitter bots to understand polarization (Bail et al., 2018)
• Many people just don’t care about politics (check out my interview with Nathan Kalmoe)
• Dr. Bail’s earlier work on how anti-Muslim sentiment spreads (Bail, 2016)
• Tools developed by the Polarization Lab to fight back against polarization

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Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/social-media-polarization-with-chris-bail/

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Nazita Lajevardi studies public opinion relating to Muslim Americans. She’s a political scientist and attorney at Michigan State University. In 2020, she published Outsiders at Home: The Politics of American Islamophobia. The book is an extension of her research on public opinion about Muslims in the United States, discrimination faced by Muslim Americans in politics, and the experience of facing these biases. In our conversation, we talk about all these questions and what makes Muslim American identity so tricky to pin down.


Note. The brief clip at the top of the show is from Episode 4 ("Strawberries") of the Hulu show Ramy and is presented for purposes of commentary and education.

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Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/american-islamophobia-with-nazita-lajevardi/

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Dr. Robert Cialdini is an internationally recognized expert on the science of influence. His book Influence is one of the most influential business and psychology books of all time, selling over five-million copies worldwide. As a social psychologist, Cialdini has conducted foundational research on compliance, social norms, and helping behavior. But he is perhaps best known for boiling influence down to several key principles.

He just released an updated and expanded edition of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, and it’s well worth checking out! I was excited to talk with him about the new book, how he started studying influence, what made him write a book for the public at a time when academics stayed within their university walls, and how we can be effective communicators of social science findings.

Things we mention in this episode:

• “Basking in reflected glory” (Cialdini et al., 1976)
• The “full cycle” approach to social psychology (Cialdini, 1980; Mortensen & Cialdini, 2010)
• Observing littering in a natural environment to study psychological questions (Cialdini & Baumann, 1981)
• Belonging to a group feels personal when your personal identity and group identity are fused (Swann & Buhrmester, 2015)
• People who are highly identified with a political party are more willing to hide evidence of tax fraud by a politician from their party (Ashokkumar, Galaif, & Swann, 2019)

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Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/influence-with-robert-cialdini/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScience

Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScience

Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Dr. Iris Schneider studies the psychology of "ambivalence," which is when we can see both the pros and cons of something. Oftentimes research shows that ambivalence can be problematic, getting in the way of people being able to form a coherent view on something. However, Dr. Schneider suggests that there can be benefits to ambivalence if we're able to see it not as a challenge to overcome but a state to be embraced.

Things we mentioned in this episode.

• For some good general resources for reading about the psychology of ambivalence, see: van Harreveld, Nohlen, & Schneider (2015); Schneider & Schwarz (2017)
• You can see people’s ambivalence by tracking the movement of their mouse as they choose whether something is “good” or “bad” (Schneider et al., 2015)
• Only a third of people’s everyday decisions are between two alternative options (Fischoff, 1991)
• Some people just tend to be more ambivalent than others, and it’s related to having less bias (Schneider et al., 2020; Simons et al., preprint)
• Lots of characteristics of people’s opinions can be considered either valuable or problematic, depending on your perspective (e.g., Rydell et al., 2006; Tormala et al., 2011)
• Identity-based motivations guide people’s interpretation of difficulty (e.g., Oyserman, 2015)

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit:  http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/ambivalence-with-iris-schneider/

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Mohamed Hussein studies how the psychology of persuasion and politics interact. He is an assistant professor of marketing at Columbia Business School. On the podcast, we talk about his work on "receptiveness," or people's openness to hearing out opinions they disagree with. (For more on receptiveness, check out episode 56, Receptiveness to Other Opinions with Julia Minson). But the research we talk about includes studies on how "you" versus "we" language affects how receptive we seem (Hussein & Tormala, 2024) as well as studies showing the costs of being receptive across political party lines (Hussein & Wheeler, 2024). 

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Ken DeMarree studies how opinion science applies how we see ourselves. He’s an associate professor of psychology at the University at Buffalo. In our conversation, we talk about how opinion science can be used to understand things like self-esteem, how people sometimes desire opinions they currently disagree with, and how some people just tend to be pretty confident in their views.

Things we mention in this episode:

• California’s Self-Esteem Task Force (Guardian; NYT; The Cut)
• The psychology of strong opinions can help us understand how people see themselves (DeMarree et al., 2007)
• More “accessible” self-esteem is more durable and impactful (DeMarree et al., 2010)
• Seeing yourself in both positive and negative ways makes your self-esteem more susceptible to influence (DeMarree et al., 2011)
• When we want an opinion we don’t already have, it makes us conflicted (DeMarree et al., 2014; 2017)
• Some people just tend to be more confident in their views than others (DeMarree et al., 2020)

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/opinions-of-ourselves-with-ken-demarree/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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David Melnikoff studies how our goals affect how we feel about things. When stuff helps us reach a goal, we like it…even if it’s not the kind of thing we’d ordinarily like. In our conversation, we talk about what psychologists mean when they talk about people’s “attitudes,” how goals can affect those attitudes, and why all of this means that people can sometimes come to like immoral people. 

Things that come up in this episode:

• What is an “attitude”? (For more on this concept, check out this webpage.)
• “Instrumentality” and “action valence” affect how we feel about someone in the moment (Melnikoff, Lambert, & Bargh, 2019)
• Morality isn’t always a valued quality in other people (Melnikoff & Bailey, 2018)

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/liking-what-helps-you-with-david-melnikoff/

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Dr. Ana Gantman studies how people process moral stuff. She’s an assistant professor at Brooklyn College, and she finds that our attention is often drawn more quickly to morally relevant stimuli in our environment. More recently, she’s been looking into how our moral judgments collide with bureaucracy and how we can use moral psychology to address issues surrounding consent and sexual assault. 

Things we mention in this episode:

• The “moral pop-out” effect where moral stuff grabs our attention (Gantman & Van Bavel, 2014; Brady, Gantman, & Van Bavel, 2020)
• Moral pop-out seems to work like a motivational state because it goes away when needs for justice are satisfied (Gantman & Van Bavel, 2016)
• Using EEG to study the time course of moral perception (Gantman et al., 2020)
• The books The Utopia of Rules and Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber
• How “phantom rules” can be selectively enforced when someone’s violated other social norms. 
• Taking “consent pledges” before a party can get college students to moralize consent (The Daily Princetonian)

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/moralizing-and-attention-with-ana-gantman/

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Dr. Matt Rocklage studies the words we use to express opinions. He’s an assistant professor of marketing the University of Massachusetts-Boston. In our conversation, Matt talks about the Evaluative Lexicon, which is a tool he developed to quantify the language of opinion. Take an online review, feed it into the Evaluative Lexicon, and it’ll tell you how much the person liked or disliked the product and how much their emotions played a role in their opinion. His research with this tool has shown just how potent emotion can be and how we should approach studying language in psychology.

Things we mention in this episode:

• The “Evaluative Lexicon” (Rocklage & Razio, 2015; Rocklage et al. 2018); you can learn more at: http://www.evaluativelexicon.com/ 
• Emotion-based opinions tend to be stronger (Rocklage & Fazio, 2016; 2018; Rocklage & Luttrell, in press)
• The role of emotion in consumer reviews (Rocklage & Fazio, 2020)
• People turn to emotional language more when trying to be persuasive (Rocklage, Rucker, & Nordgren, 2018)

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit:  http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/language-of-opinion-with-matt-rocklage/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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Jay Van Bavel studies how our social identities shape the way we see ourselves and the people around us. He’s an associate professor of psychology at New York University. In an upcoming book, he and his colleague, Dominic Packer, present social identity theory. It’s a classic theory in social psychology that has inspired tons of research and continues to give insight into the modern world. At its root, it’s the idea that people often adopt an “us vs. them” mindset, which fuels lots of conflict between groups. In our conversation, Jay shares the basic tenets and controversies surrounding social identity theory and the direction his own research lab is going.

For a quick overview of Social Identity Theory, featuring Dr. Van Bavel, you can check out this YouTube video [13:36] I made.

Things we mention in this episode:

• Dominic Packer’s research on identity and dissent.
• The pioneering work of John Turner and Henri Tajfel and the development of social identity theory.
• Marilynn Brewer’s “Optimal Distinctiveness Theory”
• Jay’s research on how social identities affect our thought and behavior in domains like politics (e.g., Van Bavel & Pereira, 2018) and social media (Brady, Crockett, & Van Bavel, 2020).
• According to Facebook’s global creative director, Andrew Keller, the average person scrolls through 300 feet of mobile content a day.
• Lilliana Mason’s book (Uncivil Agreement) applying social identity to politics.

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/social-identities-with-jay-van-bavel/

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Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Michael F. Schein is a writer, speaker, and founder of the marketing agency, MicroFame Media. In his new book, The Hype Handbook, he explores the antics of historically successful “hype artists”—cult leaders, music promoters, propagandists, etc.—to extract 12 common strategies that get people excited about and committed to new ideas.

In our conversation, we talk about how “hype” is or is not the same as “persuasion,” how much we’re able to learn from stories of historical hype artists, and the ethical and practical limits of hype.

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/hype-with-michael-f-schein/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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Lara Aknin studies what makes people happy. In particular, she’s spent a lot of time looking at how being generous can improve one’s well-being. She is an associate professor of social psychology at Simon Fraser University, and you heard her a couple weeks ago on Opinion Science. Her work was featured on our episode on gift-giving, but she has so much interesting work that it seemed setting aside a whole episode for our entire conversation.

Things that come up in this episode:

• College students were happier when spending money on others vs. on themselves (Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2008; for a replication see Aknin et al., 2020)
• The positive effects of spending on others extends around the world (Aknin et al., 2013), in small rural societies (Aknin et al., 2015; Aime et al., 2017), with children (Aknin, Hamlin, & Dunn, 2012), and among ex-offenders (Aknin et al., 2018).
• Giver-focused gifts promoted greater relationship closeness than recipient-focused gifts (Aknin & Human, 2015)
• For reviews of the effects of “prosocial spending,” see Aknin et al. (2018) and Dunn et al. (2020)

 Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/when-money-buys-happiness-with-lara-aknin/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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Although 2020 will be remembered mostly for annoyances and deeply tragic events, one thing that kept me going this year was starting this podcast. Being able to talk with friends, people I've long admired, and people I had only recently met was a real joy.

I wanted to put together an episode with some notable moments in Opinion Science this year. It's not truly a "best of" per se because I really am attached to every episode! Although I was learning on the fly how to podcast, there's aspects of all of this year's episodes that I value.

So instead, I've chosen some particularly meaningful episodes for me, fan favorites, and moments that highlight what this show is all about.

If you're new to the show, this is a great place to start! And if you've been listening since the beginning, join me on some fun memories from this year.

-Andy


Featured 2020 episodes:

• Episode 1: Word of Mouth with Jake Teeny
• Episode 6: Film Criticism with Alissa Wilkinson
• Episode 9: Systemic Racism with Phia Salter
• Episode 15: Political Campaigning with Joe Fuld (*Hear the new season of his podcast)
• Episode 16: Implicit Bias with Mahzarin Banaji
• Episode 19: Political Humor as Persuasion with Danna Young (*See her new TED Talk)
• Episode 20: The Cognitive Dissonance Episode
• Episode 22: Political Persuasion with Alex Coppock
• Episode 23: Polling Young Voters with Kristen Soltis Anderson

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Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

It’s that time of year when winter holidays send people on a buying spree as they collect gifts to give to every friend, family member, and acquaintance. And you’d think that after so many years of giving gifts for all sorts of holidays, we’d be pretty good at it. Right? Well, not according to research in psychology. In this episode, we explore the psychology of why giving to others is such a good thing to do, and also where gift givers go wrong. Along the way, we’ll pick up some tips for how to approach giving in a smarter, more effective way.

Many guests in this episode!

• We hear from Laura and Bethany Sanders about childhood gifting go awry. Laura Sanders is a stand-up comedian and illustrator, so check out her work!
• Dr. Lara Aknin is an associate professor of Social Psychology at Simon Fraser University. She studies what makes people happy.
• Dr. Jeff Galak is an associate professor of Marketing at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. He also runs the YouTube channel, “Data Demystified.”
• Dr. Julian Giviis an assistant professor of Marketing at West Virginia University's John Chambers College of Business and Economics. He studies gift-giving.

Research in this episode:

Part I: Why give to others? Lara Aknin and her colleagues found that college students were happier when giving money to other people vs. spending on themselves (Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2008). She has replicated this finding all over the world, with kids, and other populations (see Dunn et al., 2020).

Part II: How gift-givers and gift-recipients disagree.

A. Gift-givers focus on the moment of giving whereas recipients are thinking more long-term (Galak, Givi, & Williams (2016)

B. Gift-givers think price matters more than receivers do (Flynn & Adams, 2009)

C. Givers avoid repeatedly giving the same thing, but recipients don’t mind (Givi, 2020)

D. People opt to give sentimental gifts less often than receivers would prefer (Givi & Galak, 2017); giving something as a gift can also imbue it with sentimentality and make the affection for the gift last longer (Yang & Givi, 2015)

E. Just ask people what they want (Gino & Flynn, 2011)

F. Giver-centric gifts make people feel closer to each other, even though we think recipient-focused gifts are the most appropriate (Aknin & Human, 2015)

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/gift-giving-psychology/

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Two guests! Drs. Eva Pietri and India Johnson stop by to share the important work they’re doing together on the power of role models for underrepresented groups in STEM fields.

Things that come up in this episode:

• Women and racial and ethnic minorities are under-represented in STEM fields (National Science Board, 2020)
• Encouraging identity-safety in STEM among Black (Johnson, Pietri, Fullilove, & Mowrer, 2019; Pietri, Johnson, & Ozgumus, 2018) and Latina women (Pietri, Drawbaugh, Lewis, & Johnson, 2019)
• Using videos to enhance relatability of scientists (Pietri, Johnson, Majid, & Chu, in press)
• Extending these ideas to encourage women to identify with male scientists (Pietri, Drawbaugh, Johnson, & Colvin, in press)

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/intersectional-role-models-in-stem-with-india-johnson-eva-pietri/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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Kurt Gray studies our moral minds and how we grapple with everyday ethics. In his new book, Outraged, he explores the deep psychology of human nature and what it means for how we navigate politically divisive times. In our conversation, we do a deep dive into his perspective that morality is fundamentally about our ideas of harm, which conflicts with how other theories talk about morality. We also get into what it means for concepts to shift with time or circumstance.

If you like this conversation, check out other episodes with moral psychologists whose views differ from Kurt's: 

• Episode 47: Moral Foundations & Political Opinion with Jesse Graham
• Episode 81: Moral Language with Morteza Dehghani

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Dr. Eric Hehman studies the geography of bias. Lots of research has looked at the prejudice that lives in an individual person’s head, but Eric looks at the average amount of bias in particular location. On average, some counties have more implicit bias than others, and some states have more bias than others. But what does it mean? That’s what Eric and I talk about this week!

Things we mention in this episode:

• Zippia’s collection of fun maps, including Thanksgiving sides, pickle fandom, and sandwich preferences. 
• Regional implicit biases are related to police use of force against African Americans in that region (Hehman, Flake, & Calanchini, 2018)
• Inspiration for Eric’s focus on regional bias (Motyl et al., 2014; Rae & Olson, 2015; Rentfrow et al., 2013)
• How same-sex marriage legislation affected anti-gay bias one state at a time (Ofosu, Chambers, Chen, & Hehman, 2019)
• Validating region-based measures of bias (Hehman, Calanchini, Flake, & Leitner, 2019)
• Searching for environmental features that relate a region’s level of bias (Hehman, Ofosu, & Calanchini, 2020)
• The “bias of crowds” model of implicit bias (Payne, Vuletich, & Lundberg, 2017)

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/geography-of-bias-with-eric-hehman/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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Melanie Green studies stories. She’s a professor of Communication at University of Buffalo, and for years she’s been looking into whether stories can serve to persuade people. Are stories just entertainment or can they change our minds? In this episode, we talk about stories, her research on persuasion, and the experience of being transported by a story.

Topics that come up in this episode:

• People differ in their “transportability,” which is associated with their receptiveness to narrative persuasion (Mazzocco et al., 2010)
• Narrative persuasion depends on transportation (Green & Brock, 2000)
• Meta-analyses of narrative persuasion studies (Braddock & Dillard, 2016; Oschatz & Marker, 2020; Zebregs et al., 2015)
• Research by Jeff Niederdeppe’s lab on story-telling in health communication
• Stories continue to be persuasive after proven false (Green & Donahue, 2011)
• People make judgments of a person’s warmth or competence depending on whether they tell stories (Clark, Green, & Simons, 2019)

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/persuasion-via-story-telling-with-melanie-green/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScience

Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Kristen Soltis Anderson is a pollster and co-founder of Echelon Insights. For five years, she co-hosted the podcast, The Pollsters, she hosts the SiriusXM show, The Trendline, and the Fox Nation show What Are the Odds? She also regularly appears on television to discuss the latest polls.

She’s spent a lot of time looking at polls of Millennials in particular. In 2015, she published her first book, The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (And How Republicans Can Keep Up), in which she reviews data on millennials’ tendency to vote for Democrats and the unique features of modern life that may be driving this shift.

In this episode, we have a great conversation about her work, what political polling can reveal, and how young voters’ preferences may affect the 2020 U.S. election…and other elections to come.

Some things that come up in this episode:

• Generation Z enjoys mocking Millennials (Buzzfeed)
• The Bennington College study of political attitudes over one’s lifetime (Newcomb, 1943; Alwin, Cohen, & Newcomb, 1992)
• Kristen’s new report on Generation Z and Millennials’ optimism for the future (Walton Family Foundation, 2020)

Check out my new audio course on Knowable: "The Science of Persuasion."

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/polling-young-voters-with-kristen-soltis-anderson/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Alex Coppock is an assistant professor of Political Science at Yale University. His research considers what affects people's political beliefs, especially the kinds of messages people regularly encounter--TV ads, lawn signs, Op-Eds, etc. In this episode, he shares the findings of a big, new study that just came out as well as what it means for how persuasion works.
 

Things that came up in this episode:

• A new study testing dozens the efficacy of dozens of political ads (Coppock, Hill, & Vavreck, 2020)
• The long-lasting effects of newspaper op-eds on public opinion (Coppock, Ekins, & Kirby, 2018)
• The effects of lawn signs on vote outcomes (Green, Krasno, Coppock, Farrer, Lenoir, & Zingher, 2016)
• Framing effects in persuasion (for an overview, see Chong & Druckman, 2007)
• The sleeper effect (see here for an overview)

For a transcript of this episode, visit: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/political-persuasion-with-alex-coppock/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Vanessa Bohns studies the difference between how much influence people have and how influence they think they have. On the podcast, we talk about her studies, why people underestimate their influence, and whether this means we should try asking for more than we do now.

If you sit tight until next year, Dr. Bohns has a book coming out called You Have More Influence than You Think.

A few things that come up in our conversation:

• For a general overview of Dr. Bohns’ research on this topic, you can check out this article in Harvard Business Review or her review in Current Directions in Psychological Science.
• People underestimate how many people they have to ask in order to get someone to agree to do something (Flynn & Bohns, 2008).
• People even underestimate their influence in getting people to do ethically questionable things (Bohns, Roghanizad, & Xu, 2014).
• We don’t realize how uncomfortable it is for people to say no to requests (Bohns & Flynn, 2010).
• The influence process is different between in-person versus emailed requests (Roghanizad & Bohns, 2017).
• People’s biases about influence even extend to how they think about unwanted romantic advances (Bohns & DeVincent, 2019).
• We break down the difference between the “spotlight effect” and the “invisibility cloak” bias.
• Tory Higgins’ “saying is believing” effect shows how much power audiences have (Higgins & Rholes, 1978).

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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Just a quick word about new episodes on the way and a switch to biweekly shows.

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Elliot Aronson has seen a long and influential career in social psychology. Aronson got his PhD in 1959 from Stanford University, working with Leon Festinger on some of the first experiments testing dissonance theory. He authored a celebrated social psychology textbook, now in its twelfth edition, and he pioneered the research on the jigsaw classroom--"a cooperative learning technique that reduces racial conflict among school children, promotes better learning, improves student motivation, and increases enjoyment of the learning experience."

Two weeks ago, I released a big episode on cognitive dissonance (check it out!), which pulled together interviews with several people who are experts in the field. Elliot Aronson was one of those experts, and I'm excited to share our full conversation with you this week. We talk dissonance but Elliot also shares how he became a social psychologist and what it takes to run a high-impact experiment.

Check out Elliot's writing:

• The Role of Cognitive Dissonance in the Pandemic: A recent article in the Atlantic by Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris
• The Social Animal: Elliot's social psychology textbook
• Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): A popular book about cognitive dissonance and other biases.
• Not By Chance Alone: Elliot's autobiography
• Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion

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Last week's special episode on cognitive dissonance pulled together interviews with several people who are experts in the field. Joel Cooper is one of those experts! When I first started getting interested in the social psychology of cognitive dissonance, Joel's book (Cognitive Dissonance: 50 Years of a Classic Theory) was so useful.

You heard snippets of this interview in last week's episode, but I want to share it all on its own for anyone interested in more about Joel's story. We get into plenty of things that didn't fit into last week's show, including Joel's perspective on what made dissonance theory so influential, how dissonance can be felt vicariously, and why he used to use odd measurement scales.

For a transcript of this show, visit the episode's webpage: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/cognitive-dissonance-with-joel-cooper

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In 1957, Leon Festinger published A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Along with a collection of compelling experiments, Festinger changed the landscape of social psychology. The theory, now referenced constantly both in and outside of academic circles, has taken on a life of its own. And it’s still informing new research and analysis more than 60 years later.

For the grand 20th episode of Opinion Science, I want to give you an insider’s look at the theory–its inspiration, the people involved, the classic studies, and the remaining controversies.

Throughout the show you’ll hear from people who have studied cognitive dissonance and who knew the infamous Leon Festinger: Elliot Aronson, Joel Cooper, Jeff Stone, April McGrath, and Mike Gazzaniga.

To learn more about cognitive dissonance, check out these two books written by two of our guests: Cognitive Dissonance: 50 Years of Classic Theory and Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me).

For a transcript of this show, visit the episode's webpage: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/cognitive-dissonance/

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Dr. Dannagal Young studies political humor. She pulls together psychology, communications, and political science, to understand how political satire works to change minds and expand political knowledge. She also has a new book: Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States, which explores how satire became a tool of political left and outrage media because a tool of the political right.

Some things that come up on this episode:

• Daily Show viewers were particularly well-informed about the 2004 election (Young, 2004)
• Jon Stewart defending the Daily Show on Crossfire (2006)
• Jokes lead people to suspend critical thinking about a message (Polk, Young, & Holbert, 2009; Young, 2008)

For a transcript of this show, visit the episode's webpage: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/political-humor-as-persuasion-with-danna-young

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Sandra Matz is a computational social scientist at Columbia Business School. She uses big data to understand people and what motivates them to act. And she has a new book out! It's Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior, and it's an enjoyable, easy-to-read introduction to what your online data say about who you are and how communicators can use those insights to serve up compelling content--for better or worse.

At the top of the show, I also mention a big new academic book I edited with Richard Petty and Jake Teeny: The Handbook of Personalized Persuasion: Theory and Application.

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Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Allison Earl studies the challenges of getting health information to people who need it. Her research looks at how people react defensively to information about their health and how to improve it. In this episode, she shares her research on people's tendency to avoid threatening health information and how simple meditation exercises can make people more open to these kinds of messages.

Some things that come up in this episode: 

• Targeting health information to specific groups makes people feel judged (Derricks & Earl, 2019)
• Rejecting information about stimatized health issues (Earl, Nisson, & Albarracín, 2015)
• Race disparities in attention to HIV-prevention information (Earl et al., 2016)
• Trigger warnings as a way to get people ready for emotional information (Gainsburg & Earl, 2018)
• Meditation makes people more open to threatening health information (Takahashi & Earl, 2020)

For a transcript of this show, visit the episode's webpage: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/health-communication-with-allison-earl

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Kristof Dhont studies the psychology behind humans’ complicated feelings about animals. In particular, his research looks at how the existence of “speciesism” can stem from the same psychological factors that also produce other social prejudices. In this episode, Kristof and I talk about how people avoid connecting meat to the animals it comes from, how a social dominance worldview gives rise to speciesism, and what psychology can (and can’t) tell us about effective advocacy.

Check out Dr. Dhont’s new book: Why We Love and Exploit Animals: Bridging Insights from Academia and Advocacy

And as I mention at the end of the episode, a few years ago, I wrote my own vegan cookbook: Vegan Spanish Cooking.

Some of the things that come up in this episode:

• How people disconnect “meat” from the animals it comes from (Kunst & Hohle, 2016)
• Why people still eat meat even when they object to its production (“the meat-paradox”; Bastian & Loughnan, 2016)
• Denying animals’ “minds” to justify meat-eating (Bastian, Loughnan, Haslamn, & Radke, 2011) 
• “Social dominance orientation” (see this helpful summary)
• Connecting social dominance and speciesism (Dhont et al., 2014; 2016)
• How dehumanization reflects treating animals as lesser beings (Costello & Hodson, 2010)

 
For a transcript of this show, visit the episode's webpage: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/how-we-think-about-animals-with-kristof-dhont/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

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Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Mahzarin Banaji is a professor of psychology at Harvard University. In the 90s, she and her colleagues pioneered the research in social psychology on implicit bias. They are perhaps best known for creating the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which purports to measure the preferences that people are unable or unwilling to say they have. Using this tool, psychologists have arrived at fascinating findings about bias, which have spawned a productive (and sometimes contentious) field of research. Together with Anthony Greenwald, Dr. Banaji wrote the popular book, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People.

I talked with Mahzarin about her early days studying psychology and what prompted her to study implicit bias. She also shared new research on how implicit biases have changed over time and what this means for how to achieve social progress.

If you’re interested in the IAT—the test that researchers use to measure implicit bias—you can take one yourself at the official Project Implicit website.

You can also check out one of Mahzarin’s recent projects: Outsmarting Human Minds. It’s a website devoted to bringing insights from social psychology to the public.

Finally, I usually link to a bunch of primary articles that come up in the episode, but we covered a lot of ground in this one! However, we spent a lot of time on a recent paper led by Mahzarin’s graduate student, Tessa Charlesworth, on how implicit biases have changed over time (Charlesworth & Banaji, 2019). For an accessible summary of this research, check out their article in Harvard Business Review.

For a transcript of this show, visit the episode's webpage: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episode/implicit-bias-with-mahzarin-banaji/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScience

Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.