Robb Willer

Saturday's No Kings protests were massive, inclusive, and nonviolent. It was an honor to team up with @owasow.bsky.social to analyze how nonviolent resistance can wins hearts, minds, and elections.

A first look at the #Metascience2027 Conference themes 👀 📌 “Research Reform in an Era of Rapid Change: What Works, For Whom, and How?” The question is no longer whether change is needed, but what actually works. 🧵👇

Amazing opportunity!!! ⬇️

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

Congrats to Profs. Jackie Hwang and Robb Willer (@robbwiller.bsky.social)! sociology.stanford.edu/news/robb-wi...

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

Candidates & journalists who avoid talking about climate change should reflect on the findings of this study: Climate messages are helpful in building public support for climate action. @robbwiller.bsky.social @nmalhotra.bsky.social @mattomildenberger.bsky.social @coveringclimatenow.org

Can AI predict how people will respond in social science experiments? A new @nature.com paper by Team Scientist @robbwiller.bsky.social and collaborators had LLMs act as survey respondents. https://bit.ly/4bWppFw

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... 🧵

It was such a pleasure working with Ashwini, Luke, and Isaias on this project over the past few years. They are a lot of fun, take the work seriously, have great values, and are seriously awesome people. 🧵👇

Interesting read for sociologists given how sociologists vary in whether anthropology is to be seen as a role model or cautionary tale.

AOC Makes A Great Point 👉.......

As always: if there's any class of people who do not have due process rights, then *nobody* has due process rights, because the government can just claim someone is in that class and there's no process to establish otherwise.

gonna start talking like this to my boss

I watched the Questlove documentary Earth, Wind and Fire: To Be Celestial vs. That's the Weight of the World (HBO Max) and it was just about everything I could ask from a music doc. Enthralling, revelatory, and makes the case (as if the case needed to be made) for EWF's greatness AND weirdness.

US inflation is the highest in the G7.

www.yahoo.com/news/politic...

it’s hard to explain how much shit like this has radicalized people. like i’m a white middle-aged broad who’s always been liberal but i’ve gone full-on “abolish ICE/reform scotus/the next dem candidate must commit to mass prosecutions” and you will not sway me from that position.

New public pre-print with @aarslew.bsky.social and Martin Bisgaard 🧵 We introduce a perspective on democratic erosion that focuses on quiet anticipation among political elites: what do they think happens to those who cross a strongman that challenges democracy? www.researchgate.net/publication/...

“The most preposterous rainbow was coming out of the castle I was supposed to be going home to... It looked like something out of My Little Pony.” - Tom Holland on the rainbow that delayed shooting on Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.

Boy this was a long road, but glad it's finally out! @dgrand.bsky.social @robbwiller.bsky.social @arechar.bsky.social (along with Michael N. Stagnaro, James N. Druckman, not tagable)

The forensic report is available here: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... Incredible stuff

Amazing.

New short paper w @jkalla.bsky.social ! Candidates gain from moderation, but less than many theories expect. Many conclude voters must not care about issues. This is wrong. Small *average* effects mask large effects on specific issues & are consistent with widespread issue-based voting 🧵

This is a welcome and important step to normalize and popularize the use of Registered Reports. Thanks @magdalenaskipper.bsky.social for your leadership, and for the work of the neuroscience and behavioral research editors to test and validate the model at Nature.

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!

Bruce Springsteen has no fucks to give. 👏

New in Nature Climate Change, Prof. @robbwiller.bsky.social and @pascl-stanford.bsky.social examine the most persuasive climate change messaging strategies. bsky.app/profile/robb...

Nina. Newport Jazz Festival, July 4, 1968. David Redfern.

Dear ChatGPT, Am I the Asshole? While Reddit users might say yes, your favorite LLM probably won’t. We present Social Sycophancy: a new way to understand and measure sycophancy as how LLMs overly preserve users' self-image.

New study from @oii.ox.ac.uk researchers finds friendlier chatbots make more mistakes. Lead author @lujain.bsky.social, second author Franziska Sofia Hafner, senior author @rocher.lc. Read more: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

New ASR paper finds no effect of state right-to-work laws on employment or number of business establishments (1946-2019). Argues that state spillovers, such as tax breaks in non-right-to-work states, explain the non-effect of right-to-work. gated: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The past decade has had a silver lining: Chuck evolving from Jordanesque business class self-interest to a moral leader on behalf of LGBT people and immigrants

Considerable progress has been made in the field of leadership. However, this is undermined by a commitment to ideas which have been repeatedly debunked that refuse to die--called "Zombie Leadership" This paper outlines 8 core claims of zombie leadership: leadershiphq.com.au/wp-content/u...

BREAKING: Congressman Johnny Olszewski (D-MD) is introducing a constitutional amendment to establish term limits for Supreme Court Justices. The ROBE Act would establish 18-year term limits for justices.

Same energy:

For a year and a half, @carorowland.bsky.social, @lehersingh.bsky.social, Marisa Casillas, Shanley Allen, and I have been meeting to discuss whether innateness is still a useful concept to think about in studying language acquisition. Here's our take: osf.io/preprints/ps...

#climate #environment #publicopinion

After 2031, eulogy may displace strategy. leedrutman.substack.com/p/the-democr...

New math “If you have a $600 drug, and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600 percent reduction." —RFK Jr

New climate comms paper has my full attention! They revised 10 of the most-cited messaging strategies & then conducted what a massive preregistered study. Quick summary: the right frames are persuasive, but effects are small. There are no magic words. So glad to have this research to build from.