Opinion Science

Elizabeth Dunn and Jiaying Zhao are professors at the University of British Columbia, where they study social psychology and climate behavioral science, respectively. Together, they explore the intersection of human happiness and environmental action, challenging the traditional "guilt and shame" narratives that dominate climate communication. We talk about their new book: Leave the Lights On: How Joyful Decisions Can Save Our Species, which explores how you can address climate change by taking actions that make you feel happy. We see how reframing environmental choices around joy can create a more effective, contagious movement for behavior change. 
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Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Yamil Velez is an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University, where he studies what makes political opinions hard to shift. He’s been using innovative new methods to test important ideas about how people arrive at their views and what it takes to change them. We talk about the relationship between beliefs and opinions, why correcting misinformation doesn’t necessarily move opinions, and what happens when persuasive messages are tailored to the specific reasons people hold their views. 
Yamil shares his work using large language models to generate personalized arguments, showing that people will update their beliefs pretty readily—but only some of those belief changes actually translate into attitude change. Along the way, we explore what this means for persuasion, polarization, and the future of using AI to study (and maybe influence) public opinion. 
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Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Sylvia Perry is a social psychologist and Associate Professor at Northwestern University, where she directs the Social Cognition and Social Identity Lab. She studies the psychological mechanisms that shape how people recognize and confront their own biases, as well as how those biases are transmitted across generations.
We talk about her research on racial socialization, specifically focusing on how white parents navigate—or frequently avoid—conversations about race with their children. Sylvia shares insights from her research on facilitating parent-child discussions about race and racism. We discuss why color-conscious messaging is more effective than "colorblind" approaches at reducing children’s implicit biases and how addressing subtle microaggressions can be more impactful for a child’s development than discussing overt prejudice alone.
Along the way, we explore the privilege underlying the freedom to opt out of these difficult conversations and offer practical takeaways for parents looking to foster empathy and a sense of fairness in their own homes.
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Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Alex Kustov studies public opinion about immigration—why it’s so durable, why it becomes so politically explosive, and what (if anything) can make it more popular. We talk about the surprisingly stable foundations of immigration attitudes, why only a small fraction of people are categorically opposed, and how partisanship shapes the debate. Alex also explains what he calls the “altruist’s dilemma”: why people who are genuinely altruistic can still be skeptical of immigration, and how policies that are demonstrably beneficial to receiving communities can shift that skepticism. Along the way, we explore what it would mean to design immigration policy not just to be good, but to be visibly and intuitively good to the public.
Dr. Kustov's recent book is In Our Interest: How Democracies Can Make Immigration Popular. He also writes the Substack Popular By Design.
The episode's introduction is from Episode 57: Media, Norms, and Social Change with Sohad Murrar.
Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScience
Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

I'm excited to share a preview of a new podcast I think you’d enjoy: Mind Games.
What if you could hypnotize yourself into a better you? Or.... secretly hypnotize others into giving you anything you want? That’s the promise of NLP. Mind Games is an investigation into the world of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology that has quietly shaped industries, institutions, and belief systems around the world.
Part science experiment, part investigation, part true crime thriller, Mind Games tells the story of NLP and its crazy cast of disciples, including the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune, took it to Fortune 500 boardrooms, and whose gruesome murder trial did little to stop its rise.
Find Mind Games on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. New episodes out Tuesdays.
Listen here: swap.fm/l/listen-to-mind-games
Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScience
Learn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.