Evaluating the persuasive influence of political microtargeting with large language models.

Recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) have raised the prospect of scalable, automated, and fine-grained political microtargeting on a scale previously unseen; however, the persuasive influence of microtargeting with LLMs remains unclear. Here, we build a custom web application capable of integrating self-reported demographic and political data into GPT-4 prompts in real-time, facilitating the live creation of unique messages tailored to persuade individual users on four political issues. We then deploy this application in a preregistered randomized control experiment (n = 8,587) to investigate the extent to which access to individual-level data increases the persuasive influence of GPT-4. Our approach yields two key findings. First, messages generated by GPT-4 were broadly persuasive, in some cases increasing support for an issue stance by up to 12 percentage points. Second, in aggregate, the persuasive impact of microtargeted messages was not statistically different from that of non-microtargeted messages (4.83 vs. 6.20 percentage points, respectively, P = 0.226). These trends hold even when manipulating the type and number of attributes used to tailor the message. These findings suggest-contrary to widespread speculation-that the influence of current LLMs may reside not in their ability to tailor messages to individuals but rather in the persuasiveness of their generic, nontargeted messages. We release our experimental dataset, GPTarget2024, as an empirical baseline for future research.

Testing influences of openness, conscientiousness, nationalism, media diversity, social class, and informational echo chambers on support for official responses to COVID-19 in Wuhan in November, 2020.

Introduction: As the COVID-19 pandemic raged, controversies about governmental responses to the epidemic also emerged in China. Previous studies mainly described the phenomenon of individual differences on support for governmental responses to COVID-19 with less attention to the underlying causal mechanisms. Thus, this study tries to verify the factors influencing public support for official behaviors in COVID-19. Method: A questionnaire survey was drew on in Wuhan city during the COVID-19 outbreak. The quota sampling method was adopted according to the gender and age structure of the population in Wuhan as well as the educational structure of the urban population in China. Results: Through structural equation analysis, this study confirms that personal factors (namely conscientiousness and nationalistic ideology), behavioral factors (namely media diversity and echo chamber acts) exert significantly positive impacts on support for governmental responses. The echo chamber acts play important mediating roles in the relationship between each independent variable and support for governmental responses. Discussion: The originality of this study is that it constructs a comprehensive model of influencing factors of support for governmental responses with the personal, behavioral, and environmental factors. While contributing insight to political attitude in China, the research results also have significance for promoting public trust and constructing healthy public opinion in China.

Social media use and vaccination among Democrats and Republicans: Informational and normative influences.

Our objective was to determine whether social media influences vaccination through informational and normative influences among Democrats and Republicans. We use a probability-based longitudinal study of Americans (N = 1768) collected between December 2022 and September 2023 to examine the prospective associations between social media use and vaccination as well as informational and normative influence as mediating processes. Greater social media use correlates with more frequent vaccination (cross-lagged coefficients: COVID-19 = 0.113, p < 0.001; influenza = 0.123, p < 0.001). The underlying processes, however, vary between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats who use social media more are more likely to vaccinate because they encounter information about new pathogens. In contrast, Republicans who use social media more are more likely to vaccinate because they think that people who are important to them receive the recommended vaccines. Our findings underscore the potential for social media campaigns to promote vaccination, among both Democrats and Republicans by paying attention to the specific processes in each audience.

Parliamentary standards under attack: an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the Westminster Parliament.

Healthy democracies require ethical leadership and respect for rules, but since the 2000s we have witnessed serious attacks on standards in the UK Parliament. Two narratives about scandals will reveal cultural and social aspects that are often ignored by the public, journalists and parliamentary scholars. A slow development of conditions led to a scandal over misuse of expenses in 2009, while rule-breaking in Parliament during Prime Minister Johnson's term in office emerged more suddenly, in part out of the rupture of Brexit. Making sense of these cases about standards, and the connections between them, requires a theoretical approach that goes beyond looking at the bad behaviour of individuals or rotten cultures within a malfunctioning system. In the gap between the two, you find relationships. I make an argument for a relational, cultural and historical approach within which people act in complex configurations of interdependence as both individuals and socialised actors.

Advancing action on the political determinants of health in the United States.

In an era of political polarization, growing anti-science sentiment, and pervasive inequities in the social drivers of health, a rising tide of potentially harmful state policy proposals in the United States threaten to undermine the health of the public. In response, our health system's population health and government relations offices partnered with key health advocacy organizations in our state of New Hampshire to offer an interactive virtual learning series aimed at preparing diverse professionals and citizens to effectively advocate for sound health policies. Two hundred forty-seven individuals registered for the six-session series. Our findings indicate that participants experienced increased awareness of the political determinants of health, better understanding of specific legislative proposals in New Hampshire, and enhanced preparedness for advocacy, with many reporting greater active engagement in advocacy. Given its flexible and virtual nature, this innovative learning model could easily be adapted to promote dialogue and advocacy for sound health policy in diverse regional contexts.

Influence of Political Ideology on Colorectal Cancer Screening Among Adults in the United States.

BACKGROUND: Political ideologies have emerged as one of the risk factors driving healthcare decisions, including colorectal cancer screening in US adults. Previous links between conservative viewpoints and lower awareness of preventive health services have been established. We aimed to evaluate how differences in political ideology affect CRC screening practices using a nationally representative sample of US adults. METHODS: Using data from the 2020 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS), we compared compliance with CRC screening guidelines between conservative, moderate, and liberal political groups. Survey-weighted multivariable logistic regression models were employed to ascertain the relationship between political ideology and CRC screening. RESULTS: Of the 3368 respondents, 71.0% (95% CI: 67.8, 74.0) were screened for CRC. A total of 1026 (30.5%) were liberal, 1148 (34.1%) were moderate, and 1194 (35.4%) were conservative. Out of the conservatives (78.8%) were non-Hispanic Whites compared to moderates (61.4%) and liberals (64.0%). There was no significant difference in age, level of education, or income group by political ideology. In adjusted models, there was no significant difference in CRC screening by political ideology. CONCLUSION: Contrary to previous ties, we found no significant differences in compliance with CRC screening guidelines among these groups, concluding that CRC screening remains a significant health concern for all individuals, irrespective of political ideologies.

Emotionality in Transboundary Water: A Case Study of Helmand River.

While a substantial body of literature perceives rationality as the only path for negotiations over the use of the transboundary shared watercourse, recent scholarship has unveiled the role of emotion in decision-making processes over the use of the shared water. This research aims to challenge the conventional approach-rationality-by exploring affective dynamics of the riparian nations of the Helmand River (shared between upstream Afghanistan and downstream Iran) and how decisions over the use of the shared Helmand River are ingrained in the emotional dispositions of the riparian nations. Taking an integrated approach combining emotional political ecology and neoclassical realism, this research unravels the intricate emotional dynamics of the riparian nations to the flow of the Helmand River. The staggering increase in water withdrawal-both surface and groundwater resources- coupled with the population growth, and adverse effects of climate changes has stimulated the negative emotional dispositions of the borderland communities- the sufferings of farming communities due to lack of access to water-resulting in water conflict escalation in the Helmand River Basin. Finally, it is asserted that negotiations over the use of Helmand River are considered to be ill-equipped unless emotionality and rationality-a pluralistic approach- are equally weighed or gauged in water allocation and utilization by the co-riparian nations.

Urban trees as a lever for citizen engagement in public consultation processes: the case of Paris, France.

In the present context of increasing human population demography, worldwide social crises, and rapid ecological global change, large cities are facing major socio-environmental challenges. This convokes authorities to adapt their governance and urban planning to reconcile urban development, ecological systems, and city dwellers in the most sustainable way. To achieve such goals, local officials have to associate all local actors, including city-dwellers, to the decision-making process through participatory governance and/or participatory systems. Here, we elaborated an original pilot project governance system for a "Participatory System Combining Town Planning and Science" (the 2PS-CiTy), as part of the revision of the Local Urban Plan (LUP) of Paris, France, into a Bioclimatic LUP held from 2020 to 2024. By implementing 2PS-CiTy, we aimed to answer "How to turn trees into a lever for inhabitants' engagement in urban consultation systems?" Trees were chosen because they are emblematic elements of nature with significant roles in ecosystemic services such as urban climate regulation. Parisians were invited to (i) share in the first questionnaire some information on their knowledge about the LUP and their engagement in it, (ii) identify urban trees they consider remarkable, (iii) explain their choice in a second questionnaire, (iv) contribute to the urban consultation as part of the LUP revision, and finally, (v) give their feedback during a dedicated survey. Out of the 41 Parisians who took part in 2PS-City, 83% declared they were motivated to participate because they could contribute to the tree census, which in turn can constructively contribute to the Parisian LUP revision to bring more nature and sustainability in town. This study demonstrates that trees can be used as a lever for inhabitants' engagement in urban consultation systems to make cities more sustainable. Our survey also showed that the 2PS-CiTy governance system could be improved by (1) developing a participatory culture among decision-makers and (2) preventing nowadays silo governance from developing the most promising public governance systems that involve the departments of green space, urban planning, and local democracy.

The Development of the Urban-Rural Cleavage in Anglo-American Democracies.

We provide a mixed-methods, comparative analysis of the development of the urban-rural electoral cleavage in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States from the early 20th century to the present. Using aggregate election results, electoral district boundary files, and electoral district population measures, we construct a new comparable dataset of district election results and urbanity for the lower house of the legislature in each country. We use this dataset to measure the importance of the urban-rural divide for election outcomes across countries and time. We find that the cleavage has widened over time in each country, each arrived at its current urban-rural divide via a distinct developmental trajectory, which we interpret with reference to secondary literature. We conclude by discussing the significance of our findings for theories of both the causes and consequences of urban-rural divides and discuss the implications of our work for the comparative study of urban-rural cleavages.

Regime Type and Data Manipulation: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic.

CONTEXT: This study examines whether autocratic governments are more likely to manipulate health data than democratic governments. The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to examine this question owing to its global impact. METHODS: Three distinct indicators of COVID-19 data manipulation were constructed for nearly all sovereign states. Each indicator was then regressed on democracy and controls for unintended misreporting. A machine learning approach was then used to determine whether any of the specific features of democracy are more predictive of manipulation. FINDINGS: Democracy was found to be negatively associated with all three measures of manipulation, even after running a battery of robustness checks. Absence of opposition party autonomy and free and fair elections were found to be the most important predictors of deliberate undercounting. CONCLUSIONS: The manipulation of data in autocracies denies citizens the opportunity to protect themselves against health risks, hinders the ability of international organizations and donors to identify effective policies, and3 makes it difficult for scholars to assess the impact of political institutions on population health. This suggests that health advocates and scholars should use alternative methods to estimate health outcomes in countries where opposition parties lack autonomy or must participate in uncompetitive elections.

Dark triad and knowledge hiding in firms: Mediating role of perceived organizational politics.

Negative behaviors at the workplace always disturb the management of the firms. This research investigates the link between the dark triad and various types of Knowledge hiding (Evasive hiding, Playing dumb, and Rationalized hiding) in firms. In addition, this study explores perceived organizational politics as a mediator. The design of this study is quantitative and positivist. The data were collected in three waves (45 days gap) with a random sampling approach from 383 personnel/staff working in Chinese commercial banking firms. The data were analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique and Smartpls-4 software. This study confirms that dark-triad has a positive relation with knowledge hiding, except psychopathy and Machiavellianism, which have no significant correlation with playing dumb and evasive hiding, respectively. Perceived organizational politics significantly mediate the association between dark triad personality traits and the types of knowledge hiding. Employees with political skills and a trust-based culture can counter the dark-triad personalities and discourage the knowledge-hiding culture. For effective management of knowledge-hiding issues in firms, codifying implicit and explicit Knowledge and developing knowledge repositories can discourage a knowledge-hiding culture.

Political determinants of COVID-19 restrictions and vaccine rollouts: The case of regional elections in Italy and Spain.

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most significant public health crises in modern history, with considerable impacts on the policy frameworks of national governments. In response to the pandemic, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and mass vaccination campaigns have been employed to protect vulnerable groups. Through the lens of Political Budget Cycle (PBC) theory, this study explores the interplay between incumbent electoral concerns and political dynamics in influencing the implementation of NPIs and vaccination rollout within the administrative regions of Italy and Spain during the period spanning June 2020 to July 2021. The results reveal that incumbents up for the next scheduled election are 5.8 % more likely to increase the stringency of containment measures than those that face a term limit. The findings also demonstrate that the seats of the incumbent and coalition parties in parliament and the number of parties in the coalition have a negative effect on both the efficiency of the vaccination rollout and the stringency of NPIs. Additionally, the competitiveness of the election emerges as an important predictor of the strictness of NPIs. Therefore, our results suggest that incumbents may strategically manipulate COVID-19 policy measures to optimize electoral outcomes. The study underscores the substantive influence of political incentives, competitive electoral environments, and government coalitions on policy formulation during health emergencies.

Impacts of Internet literacy and Internet contact on the communication effect of university students' ideological and political education in China.

BACKGROUND: Internet has made the communication environment of ideological and political education (IPE) more complex for university students. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the impact of university students' Internet literacy and contact on the communication effects of IPE. METHODS: A total of 2283 Chinese university students were recruited to complete verified online questionnaires on Internet literacy, Internet contact duration, and the communication effects of IPE. SPSS V20 statistical software was used for the ordinal logistic regression analysis, chi-square test, and t-test. RESULTS: Up to 95.31 % of the university students obtained information through the Internet. There were significant differences between the ILS-high (54.93 %) and ILS-low (45.07 %) groups in both Internet literacy (P < 0.001) and Internet contact (P < 0.001). When comparing the communication effects of IPE between the ILS-high and ILS-low groups, both groups had the best emotional items and the worst cognitive dimensions. Internet literacy, Internet contact, major, and gender significantly impacted the communication effects of IPE. CONCLUSION: In the Internet era, there is an urgent need to improve university students' Internet literacy, so that they can have high Internet self-control contact skills to give full play to the positive guiding role of network media and improve the communication effects of university students' IPE.

Putting emotions into affective polarisation.

This contribution provides a brief commentary to Bakker's and Lelkes's plea to emotion researchers to engage more thoroughly with research on affective polarisation. I begin by summarising some of the main arguments and suggestions developed by Bakker and Lelkes and then make a number of suggestions that focus on how accounting for discrete emotions can make a particularly valuable contribution to affective polarisation research. The first suggestion pertains to the intentionality of emotions, and specifically of political emotions in intergroup contexts. The second suggestion emphasises that emotions convey meaning about social relations that is considerably richer than the information contained in affect alone. The third proposition highlights that relations characterised by discrete emotions also reveal information about the cultural value and appropriateness of these relations. Finally, I discuss how discrete emotions specifically contribute to processes of community building and social exclusion.

Romania's Pioneering Law: Establishing the Right to Personalized Medicine.

This analysis and commentary discuss Romania's landmark law, the first globally, acknowledging the right of citizens and patients to personalized medicine. Initiated following the EU Council's 2015 policy on personalized medicine, the law is a result of intersectoral collaborative efforts led by the Centre for Innovation in Medicine in Romania using a quadruple (later evolved to penta) helix model involving academia, public, private, and civil society sectors. Promulgated on May 24, 2023, the law legally entitles patients to personalized health care and in ways informed by individual genetic and phenotypic consideration. The law mandates informed consent for medical interventions and ensures data protection in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation. We suggest that this pioneering legislation paves the way for integrating personalized medicine into Romania's health care system, shaping clinical practice, research, and health policy. In all, it marks a significant step in redefining health care delivery, emphasizing individualized treatment and the political determinants of personalized medicine, and setting a precedent for future health care innovations worldwide.

Divided we fall: Constructive dialoguing about our political differences within family therapy training.

Widespread political polarization throughout the United States is a threat to the time-honored democratic tradition of utilizing civil discussion and respectful debate to express divergent views and strive for common ground. The political differences that divide us now are so deep and rife with toxic emotion that they threaten to undermine our social well-being at both the micro and macro levels. While family therapists are trained to work with relational tensions and to help family members to constructively negotiate their differences, the severity of the hostility and resentment tied to divergent political orientations has made this work increasingly difficult to achieve. This article explores how family therapy training programs can help trainees deepen their capacity for constructive political dialoguing that includes learning how to effectively manage their reactivity to those whose values and views may be dramatically different from their own so that they can support clients in doing the same.

Coding with the machines: machine-assisted coding of rare event data.

While machine coding of data has dramatically advanced in recent years, the literature raises significant concerns about validation of LLM classification showing, for example, that reliability varies greatly by prompt and temperature tuning, across subject areas and tasks-especially in "zero-shot" applications. This paper contributes to the discussion of validation in several different ways. To test the relative performance of supervised and semi-supervised algorithms when coding political data, we compare three models' performances to each other over multiple iterations for each model and to trained expert coding of data. We also examine changes in performance resulting from prompt engineering and pre-processing of source data. To ameliorate concerns regarding LLM's pre-training on test data, we assess performance by updating an existing dataset beyond what is publicly available. Overall, we find that only GPT-4 approaches trained expert coders when coding contexts familiar to human coders and codes more consistently across contexts. We conclude by discussing some benefits and drawbacks of machine coding moving forward.

Predicting vaccination hesitancy: The role of basic needs satisfaction and institutional trust.

Autonomous motivation is considered a powerful driver of health behaviour, but less is known about the specific roles played by basic needs. Drawing on the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this research examined basic needs as a motivational determinant of vaccination. We hypothesized that satisfaction of basic needs (autonomy, competence, relatedness) has both a direct and an indirect effect (through trust in science and government) on vaccine hesitancy. Two studies (Study 1: N = 968 French and British; Study 2, pre-registered: N = 716 Americans) tested our hypotheses and compared vaccinated and non-vaccinated individuals using multigroup structural equation models. We found positive direct (in both studies) and indirect (in Study 1) effects of autonomy satisfaction on vaccine acceptance. In contrast, competence satisfaction was directly and indirectly, via science mistrust, related to vaccine hesitancy, particularly among non-vaccinated people. Competence satisfaction also indirectly reduced the intention to vaccinate in both studies. We found no impact of relatedness. Complementing previous work on self-determination theory, our research demonstrates the importance of considering the distinct roles of basic needs. Moreover, we highlight that increasing autonomy and science trust may be an efficient strategy to improve vaccine acceptance and vaccination, even among reluctant individuals.

The Impact of Political Orientation and Government Change on Public Satisfaction with Food Policy in South Korea.

This study investigates the relationship between political orientation, government change, and public satisfaction with food policies in the Republic of Korea. Utilizing data from the Consumer Behavior Survey for Foods (CBSF) conducted by the Korea Rural Economic Institute from 2020 to 2021, we employ fixed effects models to examine the impact of political orientation, the presence of a conservative government, and their interactions on satisfaction across various dimensions of food policy. We also analyze the change in satisfaction levels from 2020 to 2021 based on shifts in political orientation. The results reveal complex dynamics between political alignment, government performance, and public perceptions. While conservatives and liberals exhibit higher satisfaction with labeling policies, they show lower satisfaction with safety and redress policies. The presence of a conservative government is associated with higher satisfaction in specific policy areas but lower overall satisfaction. Changes in political orientation significantly influence policy satisfaction, with shifts away from conservatism and towards liberalism leading to decreased satisfaction. The findings highlight the importance of understanding the nuanced preferences of different political groups and the need for responsive and transparent food policy frameworks. This study advances the theoretical understanding of the political economy of policy satisfaction and provides novel policy implications for effective governance.

Correlates of climate change skepticism.

While much research has examined the correlates of climate change beliefs from an alarmist perspective, less work has systematically measured climate change skepticism. This study aims to create a comprehensive tool capturing climate skeptics' beliefs and test its association with individual difference variables. 502 European adults completed a 22-item questionnaire on climate change (CC) skepticism as well as measures of ambiguity tolerance, belief in a just world (BJW), dark-side personality traits, and self-esteem. Principal components analysis revealed a four dimension structure of CC. Political ideology was the most consistent and significant predictor across the climate change skepticism factors. Dark-side traits, also played a role. Future research should further validate this measure and explore how climate change information could be tailored to different audiences. Understanding the nuances and causes of climate skepticism can enable more effective communication to promote sustainability.