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Politics and Social Change Lab

@pascl-stanford.bsky.social
326 followers 2 following 84 posts

Research lab @stanford.edu studying persuasion, polarization, and social change. Director: @robbwiller.bsky.social

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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Thanks to @herbertchang.bsky.social for sharing his insightful work on how AI can influence politics under geopolitical threat in the lab last week! @robbwiller.bsky.social
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Robb Willer @robbwiller.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
🚨Come work with us! 🚨 We're hiring a postdoc for Stanford's AI for Public Benefit Lab (ai4pb.stanford.edu), in partnership with @stanfordhai.bsky.social Open to PhDs from psych, poli sci, sociology, CS, econ, HCI, data science, etc. Please share! Position: postdocs.stanford.edu/prospective/...
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
It was a pleasure having Sophia Pink back at PASCL. Her field experiment on the benefits of starting multiple goals at once vs. one at a time was ambitious, informative, and widely applicable. Thank you, Sophia!!!
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davidbroska.bsky.social @davidbroska.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Americans favor predistributive policies over redistributive policies. Our new paper is now out in PNAS 🚨 Paper: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... We have also written a summary of the article for Kudos, a brief report on our brief report: link.growkudos.com/1eb04zt75ds
Americans favor predistributive over redistributive policies
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Ashwini Ashokkumar @ashwinia.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
New paper in @nature.com with @lukebeehewitt.bsky.social, @isaiasghezae.bsky.social, & @robbwiller.bsky.social: Can LLMs predict results of social science experiments? Across 70 experiments, we find a strong correspondence (r=.85) between predicted and observed effects. doi.org/10.1038/s415... 🧵
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Robb Willer @robbwiller.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Glad to see this WP from our lab out today, a labor of love over last year. Kudos to @davidbroska.bsky.social and @jonnekamphorst.bsky.social for their hard work on it! Please share any comments, suggestions, or criticisms of the research. All are welcome!
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Thanks to Jonas Schoene for sharing his work on how people judge the immorality of organizations! @robbwiller.bsky.social
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davidbroska.bsky.social @davidbroska.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Americans say they want less inequality. Why don’t they support policies to reduce it? New paper: across 31 nationally representative survey waves (N=384,248) and a preregistered experiment (N=1,009), Americans favor PREdistributive over REdistributive policies 🧵 osf.io/preprints/so...
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Thanks to @davidbroska.bsky.social for sharing his new methods for simulating social science experiments! Stay tuned for more in the coming months👀 @robbwiller.bsky.social
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Robb Willer @robbwiller.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Climate change impacts are here, but public support for action remains polarized. Which climate messages move people? In a ~13,500-person megastudy, we tested 10 of the most-cited messages. Six increased pro-environmental attitudes in the U.S.—but only by 1–4 percentage points. 🧵
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Robb Willer @robbwiller.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Can AI voter guides help voters decide while remaining accurate, nonpartisan, and trustworthy? Very grateful to @stanfordimpactlabs.bsky.social for a new grant supporting our next work on this (building on work led by Joe Mernyk & Jonne Kamphorst): bsky.app/profile/robb...
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Congrats to our own @robbwiller.bsky.social on being awarded the 2026 #GuggenheimFellowship for his outstanding and innovative work in #Sociology! Read more about the @guggfellows.bsky.social: www.gf.org/stories/anno...
gf.org
Announcing the 2026 Guggenheim Fellows — Guggenheim Fellowships: Supporting Artists, Scholars, & Scientists
Since 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has given Fellowships to exceptional artists, writers, scholars, and scientists, empowering them to pursue meaningful work under the freest possible conditions.
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Robb Willer @robbwiller.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Very grateful to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. I’ve been so lucky to have such incredible students, collaborators, and mentors. Above all, I feel very lucky that I get to work on topics I care so deeply about with collaborators who are also my friends.✊❤️ #guggfellows2026
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Thanks @austin-van-loon.bsky.social for sharing your creative work on how Americans' perceptions of the US influence their immigration policy attitudes!
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Robb Willer @robbwiller.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
@nature.com has published three groundbreaking papers on reproducibility, analytical robustness, and replicability across the social sciences. Sincere thanks are due to the many folks who contributed to these projects. It’s painstaking work, and a great service to social science.
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Robb Willer @robbwiller.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
Are you Chicago-bound for SPSP 2026? Quick plug to the Politics & Social Change Lab affiliates presenting talks & posters on coalitions, issue advocacy, media framing, inequality, social media & well-being, and other topics. Very proud of them and their work! 😀 Details below 👇
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
🎉 Congratulations 🎉 to our lab director @robbwiller.bsky.social who has been honored by @spspnews.bsky.social for his work applying social/behavioral science to public policy through collaborations w/ @whitehouse-47.bsky.social COVID response team, US DOJ, & @natlgovsassoc.bsky.social, among others!
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Thanks @pnasnexus.org for sharing our new work on AI authorship labeling and persuasion...check out their post to learn more! Paper link: ow.ly/KXeE50YhHag Isabel O. Gallegos, Chen Shani, @shi-weiyan.bsky.social, Federico Bianchi, Izzy Gainsburg, @jurafsky.bsky.social, @robbwiller.bsky.social
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
Check out this super exciting work showing that AI-supported voter guides can be designed to be trustworthy and have a host of pro-democratic outcomes! @jsmernyk.bsky.social @jonnekamphorst.bsky.social @adambonica.bsky.social @robbwiller.bsky.social
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Thanks @gsb.stanford.edu for covering our work in their piece "How to Talk About Climate Change Across Political Divides" stanford.io/4jQi2Ct Amazing work from Jan Voelkel @nmalhotra.bsky.social @robbwiller.bsky.social & many others! Original article in Nature Climate Change: rdcu.be/e1cbZ
stanford.io
How to Talk About Climate Change Across Political Divides
A “tournament” of common climate messaging strategies finds which are more likely to sway opinions.
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
Honored that our field experiment w Nat'l Governors Assoc won a 2025 Expy Award from Analyst Institute! Congrats to @chagaiweiss.bsky.social @robbwiller.bsky.social and Don Green! WP: osf.io/preprints/os... Join Analyst Group to build more effective strategies for greater impact bit.ly/ExpyJoin
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Huge thanks to @cydneydupree.bsky.social for an insightful presentation of her work investigating how White Americans’ use of values-based language shapes cross-racial affiliation! @robbwiller.bsky.social
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
Big thanks to Sarah Constantino for sharing her exciting research on social tipping points and climate change solutions with the lab this past Tuesday! @robbwiller.bsky.social
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Thank you to @myra.bsky.social for her recent insightful presentation on how sycophantic AI can reduce people’s willingness to take responsibility and repair interpersonal conflicts! @robbwiller.bsky.social
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
Thank you to Kasey Rhee for an exciting recent presentation on her work analyzing how party registration has shifted across demographic groups using an unprecedented dataset of six billion voter records! @robbwiller.bsky.social
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
Proud to have our very own Ben Kinder present his undergraduate thesis research in our lab, focusing on pragmatic biases and strategic discrimination in American voting preferences. Excited to see where this work goes!
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Thank you to @joshcjackson.bsky.social and Dan Medvedev for a fascinating recent lab presentation on how attitudes toward the rich vary globally! Innovative methods and fascinating findings, all around. @robbwiller.bsky.social
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
Big thanks to @kobihackenburg.bsky.social for sharing his comprehensive research program on the capacity of AI-Human conversation to facilitate attitude change. Really exciting stuff!
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
Check out more details in our paper (arxiv.org/abs/2511.01805), webpage (lm-belief-change.github.io), and code (github.com/JiayiGeng/lm...) Co-authors include @howard-chen.bsky.social, Ryan Liu, @manoelhortaribeiro.bsky.social, @robbwiller.bsky.social, @gneubig.bsky.social, and Thomas Griffiths
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
Awesome work by Jiayi Geng leading this preprint investigating then question, "Do LM assistants change their beliefs as context accumulates?"
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
Thanks to Paul Lendway for presenting his work on sermon rhetoric and what it tells us about Evangelical alignment with the Republican Party. Looking forward to reading the book that comes out of this research! @robbwiller.bsky.social
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Robb Willer @robbwiller.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
🚨New WP!🚨 Structured AI Dialogues Can Increase Happiness and Meaning in Life In a preregistered RCT, four psychology-grounded #AI chatbots improved well-being across several outcomes. Co-authors: Jonas Schoene, Johannes Eichstaedt, Aadesh Salecha, Sonja Lyubomirsky 🧵👇
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Paper: osf.io/preprints/ps... OSF/prereg: osf.io/g59fm/ All chatbots linked above!
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Major kudos to brilliant post-doc Jonas Schoene, who led this project! Thanks to co-authors: Johannes Eichstaedt,, Aadesh Salecha, Sonja Lyubomirsky And to: @stanfordhai.bsky.social, @stanfordpacs.bsky.social, @pascl-stanford.bsky.social, @uclaanderson.bsky.social
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
We find high public interest in using validated well-being chatbots. In a nationally rep survey (N=3,056), about 1/2 of U.S. adults said they’d use empirically validated well-being chatbots. About 1/4 have already used #generativeAI chatbots for well-being.
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Importantly, results generalized to key subpopulations, including those with high baseline levels of anxiety or depressed mood.
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Linguistic analyses showed users had diff conversations with each chatbot: Savoring → Sensory perceptions & positive emotions Gratitude → Social interactions & positive emotions Meaning → Reflection on others & cognitive processes Hero’s journey → Achievement & cognitive processes
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Does use tradeoff with human therapy? Maybe, though initial evidence against: conversations increased willingness to try well-being chatbots again and to seek human therapy, even among those previously reluctant.
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
RESULTS: All four chatbots… ⚡️Improved happiness, life satisfaction, and meaning, ⚡️Reduced anxiety and depressed mood, relative to control. Effect sizes exceed or match those from traditional positive psych interventions in @dunnhappylab.bsky.social recent meta-analysis.
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
#4: The Hero’s Journey Chatbot Guides the user to reframe their life story in terms of the archetypal Hero’s Journey, highlighting challenges, strengths, and next steps (h/t Ben Rogers, @kurtjgray.bsky.social, Herrison Chicas) 👉 herobot.cpwbinterventions.xyz/readme
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
#3: The Meaning Chatbot Prompts the user to reflect on what gives their life purpose, such as people, activities, and beliefs that are meaningful to them. 👉 cpwbinterventions.xyz/readme
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
#2: The Gratitude Chatbot Guides user through a short exercise to express gratitude to a specific person. Encourages the user to notice others’ contributions and articulate what they appreciate. 👉 gratitudebot.cpwbinterventions.xyz/readme
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
#1: The Savoring Chatbot Guides user to slow down and reflect on a positive moment from their life in detail, e.g., associated sensations, thoughts, and meaning. 👉 savoringbot.cpwbinterventions.xyz/readme
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
In a preregistered, randomized experiment (N=2,922), we tested whether four different AI chatbots could improve happiness and feelings of meaning in life.
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Millions use #GenerativeAI chatbots for emotional support, yet little research re: whether AI dialogues can improve psychological well-being We test whether brief, structured dialogues grounded in psych research can reliably help WP👉 osf.io/preprints/ps...
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
We were fortunate to work with Governor Spencer Cox and the @natlgovsassoc.bsky.social on a field experiment testing the #DisagreeBetter ads. We find politicians advocating for civil discourse increase viewers' openness to those they disagree with politically. Learn more👇 bsky.app/profile/robb...
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
Very cool to see @robbwiller.bsky.social quoted in the @wsj.com talking about our work (led by @chagaiweiss.bsky.social) testing the effects testing the #DisagreeBetter ads: www.wsj.com/politics/min...
wsj.com
Meet the Lawmakers Trying to Bring Civility Back to Politics
In a growing movement, state legislators in Minnesota, Arkansas, Kansas and beyond are taking on America’s political rage. Opponents are “not the devil.”
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Robb Willer @robbwiller.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
Last night's @60minutes.bsky.social with Governor Spencer Cox offers a great chance to learn about the #DisagreeBetter campaign, an effort to encourage respectful and constructive political disagreement: www.cbsnews.com/video/928202...
cbsnews.com
9/28/2025: A Lonely Voice; The Mystery of the Eagle S; Dana White
First, a message from Utah Gov. Cox after the Charlie Kirk murder. Then, a report on undersea cable cutting in the Baltic Sea. And, UFC head Dana White: The 60 Minutes Interview.
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Politics and Social Change Lab @pascl-stanford.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
Kudos to all the many folks who led the project, Jan Voelkel, Nick Stagnaro, James Chu, @dgrand.bsky.social, Jamie D. and the many, many others who contributed (e.g., @civichealthproject.bsky.social) Learn more about the challenge! 👇 www.strengtheningdemocracychallenge.org
strengtheningdemocracychallenge.org
Home | Strengthening Democracy Challenge
Strengthening American democracy through collaboration, cooperation, and crowdsourcing.
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