Correcting misperceptions of the material benefits associated with union membership increases Americans' interest in joining unions.

How accurate are Americans' perceptions of the material benefits associated with union membership, and do these perceptions influence their support for, and interest in joining, unions? We explore these questions in a preregistered, survey experiment conducted on a national sample, representative of the US population on a number of demographic benchmarks (n = 1,430). We find that Americans exhibit large and consistent underestimates of the benefits associated with unionization, as compared to evidence from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and peer-reviewed academic research. For example, 89% of Americans underestimated the life-time income premium associated with union membership, 72% underestimated the percentage of union members who receive health insurance from their employer, and 97% overestimated the average union dues rate. We next randomly assigned half of the participants to receive a brief, informational correction conveying results of academic and government research on the material benefits associated with union membership, or not. Those who received the correction reported 11.6% greater interest in joining a union, 7.8% greater support for unions, and 6.9% greater interest in helping to organize a union in their workplace, as compared to the control group. These results suggest that, overall, Americans tend to underestimate the material benefits associated with unionization, misperceptions of these benefits are causally linked to Americans' support for unionization, and correcting these misperceptions increases a range of pro-union sentiments in the American mass public.

Disadvantaged group members are prouder of their group when using the language of the dominant group compared to their native language.

In ethnically and linguistically diverse societies, disadvantaged groups often face pressures to acquire and speak the advantaged group's language to achieve social inclusion and economic mobility. This work investigates how using the advantaged group's language affects disadvantaged group members' in-group pride and collective self-esteem, relative to using their native language. Across six experimental studies involving Palestinian citizens of Israel (total N = 1,348), we test two competing hypotheses: Disadvantaged group members may experience greater in-group pride when using a) their native language, due to its emotional significance (the nativity hypothesis), or b) the language of the advantaged group, due to activation of habituated compensatory responses to dominance relations (the identity enhancement hypothesis). We found that respondents reported significantly higher in-group pride when responding to a Hebrew survey when compared to performing the same activity in Arabic (Studies 1a and 1b), regardless of whether the researchers administering the survey were identified as Jewish or Arab (Studies 2a and 2b). Study 3 replicated this effect while employing the "bogus pipeline" technique, suggesting the pride expression was authentic, not merely driven by social desirability. Finally, Study 4 (pre-registered) examined additional measures of positive regard for the in-group, finding that participants described their group more positively in an attribute selection task, and reported greater collective self-esteem, when surveyed in Hebrew, rather than in Arabic. Taken together, these findings suggest that language use influences disadvantaged group members' perceptions and feelings concerning their group when those languages are associated with relative position in an intergroup hierarchy.

Academics are more specific, and practitioners more sensitive, in forecasting interventions to strengthen democratic attitudes.

Concern over democratic erosion has led to a proliferation of proposed interventions to strengthen democratic attitudes in the United States. Resource constraints, however, prevent implementing all proposed interventions. One approach to identify promising interventions entails leveraging domain experts, who have knowledge regarding a given field, to forecast the effectiveness of candidate interventions. We recruit experts who develop general knowledge about a social problem (academics), experts who directly intervene on the problem (practitioners), and nonexperts from the public to forecast the effectiveness of interventions to reduce partisan animosity, support for undemocratic practices, and support for partisan violence. Comparing 14,076 forecasts submitted by 1,181 forecasters against the results of a megaexperiment (n = 32,059) that tested 75 hypothesized effects of interventions, we find that both types of experts outperformed members of the public, though experts differed in how they were accurate. While academics' predictions were more specific (i.e., they identified a larger proportion of ineffective interventions and had fewer false-positive forecasts), practitioners' predictions were more sensitive (i.e., they identified a larger proportion of effective interventions and had fewer false-negative forecasts). Consistent with this, practitioners were better at predicting best-performing interventions, while academics were superior in predicting which interventions performed worst. Our paper highlights the importance of differentiating types of experts and types of accuracy. We conclude by discussing factors that affect whether sensitive or specific forecasters are preferable, such as the relative cost of false positives and negatives and the expected rate of intervention success.

Correcting misperceptions of out-partisans decreases American legislators' support for undemocratic practices.

There is substantial concern about democratic backsliding in the United States. Evidence includes notably high levels of animosity toward out-partisans and support for undemocratic practices (SUP) among the general public. Much less is known, however, about the views of elected officials-even though they influence democratic outcomes more directly. In a survey experiment conducted with state legislators (N = 534), we show that these officials exhibit less animosity toward the other party, less SUP, and less support for partisan violence (SPV) than the general public. However, legislators vastly overestimate the levels of animosity, SUP, and SPV among voters from the other party (though not among voters from their own party). Further, those legislators randomly assigned to receive accurate information about the views of voters from the other party reported significantly lower SUP and marginally significantly lower partisan animosity toward the other party. This suggests that legislators' democratic attitudes are causally linked to their perceptions of other-party voters' democratic attitudes. Our findings highlight the importance of ensuring that office holders have access to reliable information about voters from both parties.

Pragmatic bias impedes women's access to political leadership.

Progress toward gender equality is thwarted by the underrepresentation of women in political leadership, even as most Americans report they would vote for women candidates. Here, we hypothesize that women candidates are often disadvantaged by pragmatic bias, a tendency to withhold support for members of groups for whom success is perceived to be difficult or impossible to achieve. Across six studies (N = 7,895), we test whether pragmatic bias impedes women's access to a highly significant political leadership position-the US presidency. In two surveys, 2020 Democratic primary voters perceived women candidates to be less electable, and these beliefs were correlated with lower intentions to vote for women candidates (Studies 1 and 2). Voters identified many reasons women would be less electable than men, including others' unwillingness to vote for women, biased media coverage, and higher requirements to prove themselves. We next tested interventions to reduce pragmatic bias. Merely correcting misperceptions of Americans' reported readiness for a woman president did not increase intentions to vote for a woman (Study 3). However, across three experiments (including one preregistered on a nationally representative sample), presenting evidence that women earn as much support as men in US general elections increased Democratic primary voters' intentions to vote for women presidential candidates, an effect driven by heightened perceptions of these candidates' electability (Studies 4 to 6). These findings highlight that social change efforts can be thwarted by people's sense of what is possible, but this may be overcome by credibly signaling others' willingness to act collectively.

Correcting inaccurate metaperceptions reduces Americans' support for partisan violence.

Scholars, policy makers, and the general public have expressed growing concern about the possibility of large-scale political violence in the United States. Prior research substantiates these worries, as studies reveal that many American partisans support the use of violence against rival partisans. Here, we propose that support for partisan violence is based in part on greatly exaggerated perceptions of rival partisans' support for violence. We also predict that correcting these inaccurate "metaperceptions" can reduce partisans' own support for partisan violence. We test these hypotheses in a series of preregistered, nationally representative, correlational, longitudinal, and experimental studies (total n = 4,741) collected both before and after the 2020 US presidential election and the 2021 US Capitol attack. In Studies 1 and 2, we found that both Democrats' and Republicans' perceptions of their rival partisans' support for violence and willingness to engage in violence were very inaccurate, with estimates ranging from 245 to 442% higher than actual levels. Further, we found that a brief, informational correction of these misperceptions reduced support for violence by 34% (Study 3) and willingness to engage in violence by 44% (Study 4). In the latter study, a follow-up survey revealed that the correction continued to significantly reduce support for violence approximately 1 mo later. Together, these results suggest that support for partisan violence in the United States stems in part from systematic overestimations of rival partisans' support for violence and that correcting these misperceptions can durably reduce support for partisan violence in the mass public.

Religious identity cues increase vaccination intentions and trust in medical experts among American Christians.

Containing the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States requires mobilizing a large majority of the mass public to vaccinate, but many Americans are hesitant or opposed to vaccination. A significant predictor of vaccine attitudes in the United States is religiosity, with more-religious individuals expressing more distrust in science and being less likely to get vaccinated. Here, we test whether explicit cues of common religious identity can help medical experts build trust and increase vaccination intentions. In a preregistered survey experiment conducted with a sample of unvaccinated American Christians (n = 1,765), we presented participants with a vaccine endorsement from a prominent medical expert (NIH Director Francis Collins) and a short essay about doctors' and scientists' endorsement of the vaccines. In the common religious identity condition, these materials also highlighted the religious identity of Collins and many medical experts. Unvaccinated Christians in the common identity condition expressed higher trust in medical experts, greater intentions to vaccinate, and greater intentions to promote vaccination to friends and family than those who did not see the common identity cue. These effects were moderated by religiosity, with the strongest effects observed among the most religious participants, and statistically mediated by heightened perceptions of shared values with the medical expert endorsing the vaccine. These findings demonstrate the efficacy of common identity cues for promoting vaccination in a vaccine-hesitant subpopulation. More generally, the results illustrate how trust in science can be built through the invocation of common group identities, even identities often assumed to be in tension with science.

Elite party cues increase vaccination intentions among Republicans.

Overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic requires motivating the vast majority of Americans to get vaccinated. However, vaccination rates have become politically polarized, and a substantial proportion of Republicans have remained vaccine hesitant for months. Here, we explore how endorsements by party elites affect Republicans' COVID-19 vaccination intentions and attitudes. In a preregistered survey experiment (n = 1,480), we varied whether self-identified Republicans saw endorsements of the vaccine from prominent Republicans (including video of a speech by former President Donald Trump), from the Democratic Party (including video of a speech by President Joseph Biden), or a neutral control condition including no endorsements. Unvaccinated Republicans who were exposed to the Republican elite endorsement reported 7.0% higher vaccination intentions than those who viewed the Democratic elite endorsement and 5.7% higher than those in the neutral control condition. These effects were statistically mediated by participants' reports of how much they thought Republican politicians would want them to get vaccinated. We also found evidence of backlash effects against Democratic elites: Republicans who viewed the Democratic elite endorsement reported they would be significantly less likely to encourage others to vaccinate and had more negative attitudes toward the vaccine, compared with those who viewed the Republican elite endorsement or the neutral control. These results demonstrate the relative advantage of cues from Republican elites-and the risks of messaging from Democrats currently in power-for promoting vaccination among the largest vaccine-hesitant subgroup in the United States.

Conservative and liberal attitudes drive polarized neural responses to political content.

People tend to interpret political information in a manner that confirms their prior beliefs, a cognitive bias that contributes to rising political polarization. In this study, we combined functional magnetic resonance imaging with semantic content analyses to investigate the neural mechanisms that underlie the biased processing of real-world political content. We scanned American participants with conservative-leaning or liberal-leaning immigration attitudes while they watched news clips, campaign ads, and public speeches related to immigration policy. We searched for evidence of "neural polarization": activity in the brain that diverges between people who hold liberal versus conservative political attitudes. Neural polarization was observed in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), a brain region associated with the interpretation of narrative content. Neural polarization in the DMPFC intensified during moments in the videos that included risk-related and moral-emotional language, highlighting content features most likely to drive divergent interpretations between conservatives and liberals. Finally, participants whose DMPFC activity closely matched that of the average conservative or the average liberal participant were more likely to change their attitudes in the direction of that group's position. Our work introduces a multimethod approach to study the neural basis of political cognition in naturalistic settings. Using this approach, we characterize how political attitudes biased information processing in the brain, the language most likely to drive polarized neural responses, and the consequences of biased processing for attitude change. Together, these results shed light on the psychological and neural underpinnings of how identical information is interpreted differently by conservatives and liberals.

Belief in the Utility of Cross-Partisan Empathy Reduces Partisan Animosity and Facilitates Political Persuasion.

In polarized political environments, partisans tend to deploy empathy parochially, furthering division. We propose that belief in the usefulness of cross-partisan empathy-striving to understand other people with whom one disagrees politically-promotes out-group empathy and has powerful ramifications for both intra- and interpersonal processes. Across four studies (total N = 4,748), we examined these predictions in online and college samples using surveys, social-network analysis, preregistered experiments, and natural-language processing. Believing that cross-partisan empathy is useful is associated with less partisan division and politically diverse friendship networks (Studies 1 and 2). When prompted to believe that empathy is a political resource-versus a political weakness-people become less affectively polarized (Study 3) and communicate in ways that decrease out-partisans' animosity and attitudinal polarization (Study 4). These findings demonstrate that belief in cross-partisan empathy impacts not only individuals' own attitudes and behaviors but also the attitudes of those they communicate with.

High economic inequality leads higher-income individuals to be less generous.

Research on social class and generosity suggests that higher-income individuals are less generous than poorer individuals. We propose that this pattern emerges only under conditions of high economic inequality, contexts that can foster a sense of entitlement among higher-income individuals that, in turn, reduces their generosity. Analyzing results of a unique nationally representative survey that included a real-stakes giving opportunity (n = 1,498), we found that in the most unequal US states, higher-income respondents were less generous than lower-income respondents. In the least unequal states, however, higher-income individuals were more generous. To better establish causality, we next conducted an experiment (n = 704) in which apparent levels of economic inequality in participants' home states were portrayed as either relatively high or low. Participants were then presented with a giving opportunity. Higher-income participants were less generous than lower-income participants when inequality was portrayed as relatively high, but there was no association between income and generosity when inequality was portrayed as relatively low. This research finds that the tendency for higher-income individuals to be less generous pertains only when inequality is high, challenging the view that higher-income individuals are necessarily more selfish, and suggesting a previously undocumented way in which inequitable resource distributions undermine collective welfare.

What drives the gender gap in charitable giving? Lower empathy leads men to give less to poverty relief.

We draw upon past research on gender and prosocial emotions in hypothesizing that empathy can help explain the gender gap in charitable giving. In a nationally representative survey, we found that men reported less willingness to give money or volunteer time to a poverty relief organization, gaps that were mediated by men's lower reported feelings of empathy toward others. We also experimentally tested how effective a variety of different ways of framing poverty relief were for promoting giving. Framing poverty as an issue that negatively affects all Americans increased men's willingness to donate to the cause, eliminating the gender gap. Mediation analysis revealed that this "aligned self-interest" framing worked by increasing men's reported poverty concern, not by changing their understanding of the causes of poverty. Thus, while men were generally less motivated by empathy, they responded to a framing that recast charitable giving as consistent with their self-interest. Exposure to the same framing, however, led women to report lower willingness to volunteer time for poverty relief, suggesting that framing giving as consistent with self-interest may discourage those who give because of an empathic response to poverty.

Gossip and ostracism promote cooperation in groups.

The widespread existence of cooperation is difficult to explain because individuals face strong incentives to exploit the cooperative tendencies of others. In the research reported here, we examined how the spread of reputational information through gossip promotes cooperation in mixed-motive settings. Results showed that individuals readily communicated reputational information about others, and recipients used this information to selectively interact with cooperative individuals and ostracize those who had behaved selfishly, which enabled group members to contribute to the public good with reduced threat of exploitation. Additionally, ostracized individuals responded to exclusion by subsequently cooperating at levels comparable to those who were not ostracized. These results suggest that the spread of reputational information through gossip can mitigate egoistic behavior by facilitating partner selection, thereby helping to solve the problem of cooperation even in noniterated interactions.

Large language models could change the future of behavioral healthcare: a proposal for responsible development and evaluation.

Large language models (LLMs) such as Open AI's GPT-4 (which power ChatGPT) and Google's Gemini, built on artificial intelligence, hold immense potential to support, augment, or even eventually automate psychotherapy. Enthusiasm about such applications is mounting in the field as well as industry. These developments promise to address insufficient mental healthcare system capacity and scale individual access to personalized treatments. However, clinical psychology is an uncommonly high stakes application domain for AI systems, as responsible and evidence-based therapy requires nuanced expertise. This paper provides a roadmap for the ambitious yet responsible application of clinical LLMs in psychotherapy. First, a technical overview of clinical LLMs is presented. Second, the stages of integration of LLMs into psychotherapy are discussed while highlighting parallels to the development of autonomous vehicle technology. Third, potential applications of LLMs in clinical care, training, and research are discussed, highlighting areas of risk given the complex nature of psychotherapy. Fourth, recommendations for the responsible development and evaluation of clinical LLMs are provided, which include centering clinical science, involving robust interdisciplinary collaboration, and attending to issues like assessment, risk detection, transparency, and bias. Lastly, a vision is outlined for how LLMs might enable a new generation of studies of evidence-based interventions at scale, and how these studies may challenge assumptions about psychotherapy.

The moral roots of environmental attitudes.

Americans' attitudes about the environment are highly polarized, but it is unclear why this is the case. We conducted five studies to examine this issue. Studies 1a and 1b demonstrated that liberals, but not conservatives, view the environment in moral terms and that this tendency partially explains the relation between political ideology and environmental attitudes. Content analyses of newspaper op-eds (Study 2a) and public-service announcements (Study 2b) found that contemporary environmental discourse is based largely on moral concerns related to harm and care, which are more deeply held by liberals than by conservatives. However, we found that reframing proenvironmental rhetoric in terms of purity, a moral value resonating primarily among conservatives, largely eliminated the difference between liberals' and conservatives' environmental attitudes (Study 3). These results establish the importance of moralization as a cause of polarization on environmental attitudes and suggest that reframing environmental discourse in different moral terms can reduce the gap between liberals and conservatives in environmental concern.

Moral reframing increases support for economically progressive candidates.

Economically progressive candidates-candidates who champion redistributive policies designed to reduce inequality-rarely win elections in the United States. Here, we propose that progressive candidates achieve greater support by framing their policy platforms in terms of values that resonate beyond their progressive base. In two experiments (total N = 4,138), including one preregistered experiment conducted on a nationally representative probability sample, we found that a presidential candidate who framed his progressive economic platform using values consistent with the "binding" moral foundations-e.g. patriotism, family, and respect for tradition-as opposed to values consistent with the "individualizing" foundations, e.g. equality and social justice, received significantly stronger support. This effect was driven by increased support among conservatives and, unexpectedly, moderates as well. By comparison, a manipulation of how progressive the candidate's platform was had small and inconsistent effects. Despite the potential gains associated with binding framing, analyses using presidential candidates' debate speeches reveal that appeals to binding values are least common among progressive candidates. These findings show, however, that the alignment between values and candidate support is malleable, suggesting economically progressive candidates can build broader coalitions by reframing the values they associate with their platforms.

The effects of short messages encouraging prevention behaviors early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Effectively addressing public health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic requires persuading the mass public to change their behavior in significant ways. Many efforts to encourage behavior change-such as public service announcements, social media posts, and billboards-involve short, persuasive appeals, yet the effectiveness of these messages is unclear. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, we tested whether short messages could increase intentions to comply with public health guidelines. To identify promising messages, we conducted two pretests (n = 1,596) in which participants rated the persuasiveness of 56 unique messages: 31 based on the persuasion and social influence literatures and 25 drawn from a pool of crowdsourced messages generated by online respondents. The four top-rated messages emphasized: (1) civic responsibility to reciprocate the sacrifices of health care workers, (2) caring for the elderly and vulnerable, (3) a specific, sympathetic victim, and (4) limited health care system capacity. We then conducted three well-powered, pre-registered experiments (total n = 3,719) testing whether these four top-rated messages, and a standard public health message based on language from the CDC, increased intentions to comply with public health guidelines, such as masking in public spaces. In Study 1, we found the four messages and the standard public health message significantly outperformed a null control. In Studies 2 and 3, we compared the effects of persuasive messages to the standard public health message, finding that none consistently out-performed the standard message. This is in line with other research showing minimal persuasive effects of short messages after the very early stages of the pandemic. Across our studies, we found that (1) short messages can increase intentions to comply with public health guidelines, but (2) short messages featuring persuasive techniques from the social science literature did not substantially outperform standard public health messages.

Homophily and acrophily as drivers of political segregation.

Political segregation is an important social problem, increasing polarization and impeding effective governance. Previous work has viewed the central driver of segregation to be political homophily, the tendency to associate with others who have similar views. Here we propose that, in addition to homophily, people's social tie decisions are driven by political acrophily, the tendency to associate with others who have more extreme political views (rather than more moderate). We examined this using a paradigm in which participants share emotions and attitudes on political policies, observe others' responses and choose which others to affiliate with. In four studies (N = 1,235), both liberal and conservative participants' social tie decisions reflected the presence of acrophily. We found that participants who viewed peers who expressed more extreme views as more prototypical of their political group also tended to engage in greater acrophily. These studies identify a previously overlooked tendency in tie formation.

Interventions reducing affective polarization do not necessarily improve anti-democratic attitudes.

There is widespread concern that rising affective polarization-particularly dislike for outpartisans-exacerbates Americans' anti-democratic attitudes. Accordingly, scholars and practitioners alike have invested great effort in developing depolarization interventions that reduce affective polarization. Critically, however, it remains unclear whether these interventions reduce anti-democratic attitudes, or only change sentiments towards outpartisans. Here we address this question with experimental tests (total n = 8,385) of three previously established depolarization interventions: correcting misperceptions of outpartisans, priming inter-partisan friendships and observing warm cross-partisan interactions between political leaders. While these depolarization interventions reliably reduced affective polarization, we do not find compelling evidence that these interventions reduced support for undemocratic candidates, support for partisan violence or prioritizing partisan ends over democratic means. Thus, future efforts to strengthen pro-democratic attitudes may do better if they target these outcomes directly. More broadly, these findings call into question the previously assumed causal effect of affective polarization on anti-democratic attitudes.