This is a great data visualisation.
It clearly shows why policy interventions that support/subsidise driving tend to not just miss an opportunity to reduce inequality, they are likely to entrench inequality, because those in the most deprived areas will derive the least benefit.
Survey research is often interpreted as showing that belief in conspiracy theories can be surprisingly widespread, including belief in conspiracy theories that would be astonishing if true. For example, in The Atlantic we learn that “12 million Americans believe lizard people run our country”
Environmental Research Communications LETTER Political elites' partisan beliefs about climate change OPEN ACCESS Alexander C Furnas'*®, Timothy M LaPira? O and Salil D Benegal' © Addressing climate change requires political elites to share a basic set of facts about climate science, yet political elites in the United States are divided in their views about climate change. We document this using the first large-scale survey of over 3,500 U.S. political elites-including elected officials, staffers, regulators, lobbyists, and policy professionals—to assess the partisan divide in beliefs about climate change held by political elites. We show near-unanimous agreement among the Democratic elite on the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring, primarily caused by humans, and widely recognized by scientists. In contrast, substantial minorities of Republican elites reject these scientific facts, with fewer than half affirming anthropogenic climate change and nearly one-third endorsing a climate-related conspiracy theory. Comparing elites to the general public, we find that political elites are more aligned with climate science, but partisan gaps among elites are as wide as those observed in mass opinion. Regression analyses show partisan identity explains far more variation in elite climate beliefs than ideology, trust in science, or broader conspiratorial predispositions. These findings suggest that partisan polarization among elites reflects not only strategic electoral behavior but also privately held attitudes.
I've got a new paper out today with @timlapira.bsky.social and @salilb.bsky.social in ERC showing that party ID strongly structures political elites' beliefs about climate change. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
Wow, and wow again.
Clean energy candidates have beaten a concerted campaign by Turning Point USA and captured a board majority at the Salt River Project, Arizona's 2nd-largest utility
Lots of us pitched in on this fight, not knowing if a win was possible. It was!
www.ariseia.org/news/clean-e...
This post is part of a longer thread and we really wanted to make sure it got attention from our community. Many thank you's to Paige Amormino (@amormino.bsky.social) for putting together this action guide to help scholars advocate for the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences!
The NSF 2027 budget has noted that they will close out the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Program (SBE). This is not a good thing. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/FY-202...
FEMA Official Says He Teleported to Waffle House. Experts Are Dubious. Gregg Phillips, who is in charge of responding to fires and floods, says the hand of God suddenly and mysteriously moved him to a 24-hour breakfast spot in Rome, Ga.
Folks, I give you the New York Times
a new article from Nature called: "Investigating the analytical robustness of the social and behavioural sciences." highlighted section says: "Of the reanalyses conducted, 74% reached the same conclusion as the original investigation, 24% yielded no effects or inconclusive results and 2% reported the opposite effect."
my hot take is that this is a *fantastic* result & reason for optimism:
we are losing so much talent, progress, and hope for no good reason www.vox.com/future-perfe...
I have literally watched something like 5 hours of this DOGE bro testimony. I'm completely obsessed, it's weirdly captivating. The circular arguments, the disdain from everyone involved, a true pleasure to watch
Follow 404 Media on Instagram (www.instagram.com/404mediaco/) for more like this
Yuppppp
We have a new paper out on how the AI boom is creating a scientific monoculture! Everything AI.
"The task for social science is to ensure that, in navigating this moment, we do not become artificial ourselves."
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Led by the brilliant @cecilietraberg.bsky.social
The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access • Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.
A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right.
Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.
This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.
Journalism is not in fact better when it integrate betting markets.
This new paper offers practical solutions for pluralistic ignorance (when people assume their opinon is unpopular when many others share it):
-in loose cultures, share accurate information
-in tight ones, lowering the costs of speaking up can spark social change.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
One on left is a black dog and above it the words “Reality”. Below it is “I chased a squirrel” One the right is a black dog and above it says “LinkedIn”. Below it says, Proud to announce that I effectively executed a rapid-response squirrel displacement strategy to mitigate potential yard intrusions. Humbled by the unwavering support of my family and local stakeholders. This experience reinforced the importance of vigilance, ownership, and continuous improvement. Looking forward to scaling this impact in future engagements.
😂
Bari’s sole, career-defining trick is to repackage bog-standard elite opinion as something “edgy” and “heterodox.”
There is an audience for that product, and the audience has a lot of spare cash. (You will never go broke telling rich people what they want to hear.)
But it’s a NICHE audience.
It probably won't shock you to learn the US regressed on greenhouse gases last year, with emissions up 2.4% after 2 years of decline and even growing faster than GDP. We're moving in the wrong direction.
rhg.com/research/us-...
Journalists often go on hand-fed ride-alongs with agents.
Seldom, though, do they get into the cars of everyday people protecting their communities from those same agents.
We just did exactly that, in ICE-occupied Minneapolis:
via Minneapolis photographer Chris Juhn on Facebook
Survey experiments have become a popular methodology among social scientists. Has it been effective?
In POQ, Rauf et al. study the efficacy of 100 survey experiments. Their results show that a majority of hypotheses were not supported.
Read now: doi.org/10.1093/poq/...
We're hiring at the Associate Professor level in Social Psychology! Join us in our vibrant and wonderful department and area. Contact Markus Brauer, search committee chair, for details (markus.brauer@wisc.edu). Job ad here: shorturl.at/nnvv8
Three Surprises From Attempting To Replicate Recent Studies in Top Psychology Journals Amanda Metskas December 4, 2025 How has the replication rate of psychology studies changed in recent years? Are we still experiencing a “replication crisis,” where only 40-60% of results replicate when the study is conducted again?
"Replication rates are higher than experts predicted and p-hacking is much less common than we expected!"
replications.clearerthinking.org/three-surpri...
I say it a lot, but if you want to make an immediate impact get involved in local politics, especially if you're in a smaller community. Attend a planning board meeting. Run for town meeting. Meet with town employees. You can *actually* change things and make your community better.
