PREVIEW: What does it take to change a mind

April 2
10 mins

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Episode Description

1. 🚪 Broockman and Kalla, “Durably reducing transphobia: A field experiment on door-to-door canvassing” (the excellent paper that’s a great model for field experiments on this topic)
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad9713

    🧠 a. In general, Joshua Kalla and David Broockman’s work (joint and separate) is worth checking out, both on political persuasion and other topics (mostly connected to political attitudes one way or another).
    https://joshuakalla.com/research/
    https://polisci.berkeley.edu/people/person/david-edward-broockman

    🧪 b. I particularly recommend their work as great examples of using experiments in political science

    👂 c. Some of the remaining open questions about the role of listening in political persuasion conversations are discussed thoughtfully here.
    https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2421982122

2. ⚠️ The retracted paper we mentioned and a brief article about the retraction. Even more gory details about the retraction.

    📄 Paper:
    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1256151

    📰 Article:
    https://www.science.org/content/article/science-retracts-gay-marriage-paper-without-agreement-lead-author-lacour

    🔍 More details:
    https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06/06/same-sex-marriage-retraction-political-science-study-lacour-green-broockman-kalla/

    📚 a. The more senior coauthor on the retracted paper is quite prolific on persuasion specifically in the context of political campaigns and also recently in the context of AI; his other work has not been retracted as far as we know!
    https://donaldgreen.com

3. 📊 A comprehensive recent overview of the state of the research on persuasion, including what we don’t know and why some of the pieces don’t quite fit together still
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051120-110428

4. 🌱 Broader, more background review paper on where political preferences come from in the first place and what affects them. (We didn’t talk about this specifically, I just think it’s interesting and helpful — and reflects earlier thinking that shaped much of the more recent research.)
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.polisci.3.1.1

5. 💻 Experiment on reducing antisemitism, measured in terms of online browsing behavior after an intervention
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-experimental-political-science/article/combating-hateful-attitudes-and-online-browsing-behavior-the-case-of-antisemitism/05E860416F9D0B7EFEFA0AABDB88C33D

6. 📰 We may have cited him in other episodes, but Adam Berinsky’s work on combatting misinformation is always in the background whenever we talk about media, misinformation, social media, changing minds – anything along that theme – and is always worth a look.
https://berinsky.mit.edu/published-papers/#overlay-context=research


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