Opinion Science

Mark Brandt studies a bunch of things. He’s an assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University. These days, he’s been exploring how we can think about belief systems as a network of interconnected opinions. Using mathematical simulations that specify how people’s opinions can be connected, Mark and his team have been able to establish a core model that explains a bunch of findings f...

David McRaney is an author and host of the podcast You Are Not So Smart . In June, he’s releasing a new book— How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion (you can pre-order it now). In the book, David goes on a wild journey to understand the mechanics of persuasion. He combines research in psychology with stories of persuasion on the ground to arrive at an understan...

Sohad Murrar studies how media and norms affect people's opinions about social groups. Does media representation matter? Can infotainment aimed at reducing misconceptions really work? In this episode, Sohad gives us a glimpse into what the research says, her own experiences consulting with Hollywood creatives, and how conveying social norms can be a potent way of addressing prejudice. Also at...

Julia Minson studies the psychology of disagreement. In particular, she's been working to understand what sorts of people are receptive to other opinions and how our perceptions of other people's receptiveness can improve conversations. Dr. Minson is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of government. Some things that come up in this episode: StoryCorps a...

Chris Petsko studies which stereotypes come to mind in a given moment. He's a social psychologist and postdoctoral scholar at Duke University. I talk with Chris about his "lens-based account of intersectional stereotyping," which argues that we can only pay attention to one social identity at a time. As a result, the stereotypes that come to mind depend on the one lens through which...

Zoe Chance is an assistant professor of marketing at the Yale School of Management. Prior to Yale, she managed a $200 million segment of the Barbie brand at Mattel. In February, she's releasing her first book: Influence Is Your Superpower . In this episode, we talk about Zoe's winding road to becoming a business school professor, the class she teaches at Yale on influence and persuasion,...

Another year in the books! Sure, there was a lot of wild stuff in 2021--an insurrection, COVID vaccine rollouts, a new president, another installment in the Tiger King franchise...and my daughter was born! But through it all, we had Opinion Science . This year saw a bunch of new listeners, amazing guests, and some ambitious episodes. Your support has meant a lot. So even though I'm a couple w...

Brian Ahearn specializes in applying the science of influence in everyday situations. He is one of only a dozen individuals in the world who currently holds the Cialdini Method Certified Trainer® (CMCT) designation, and he teaches the psychology of persuasion and influence as it applies to sales and other aspects of our lives. He's the author of Influence PEOPLE , which was named one of the b...

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 psych...

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...

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...

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?...

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...

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?...

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 tha...

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, c...

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 Sci...

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...

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 Lin...

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 (...

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 a...

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 Associa...

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...

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 sc...

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...