recent research

Trailing Kevin Lewis' trail of new research:

• Feeling powerful makes us more certain of - and less willing to doubt - our beliefs.
• A - perhaps - inethical persuasion technique: priming "trust."
• Are women innately more Bayesian than men? When playing the Danish lottery they are.
• Be warned American citizens: being in-action means being less objective. (As does any kind of threat perception.)
• The happier you are, the more irrelevant information you pick up.
• How much do we really prefer variety? Not so much when consumption is spaced out over time.
• Political polarization may be a good thing - if you're president.
• Making "wiser" citizens by de-personalizing policies.
• Looking at an American flag once (on a survey about politics) can make you more conservative - for up to eight months.
• And smelling gross things can make you dislike gays.
• Want to decrease racism? Have bigots mimic the actions of someone from another race. Or show them how people of that race vary.
• Having powerful friends makes us justify "the system." So does feeling the system is threatened. One way we do that is by believing the system is meritocratic.
• Make an honest citizen out of us: putting the compliance signature at the top of government forms cues us to lie less.
• Pheromones strike again: humans can smell anxiety.
• Getting citizens to the polls: sometimes it's as simple as invoking their identity as voters or giving them a little more information about the voting process.
• In case there was doubt, political campaigns do bring out the party faithful.
• One way to change someone's party affiliation: move them.
• Negative campaigns are de-mobilizing - but only for voters who've already decided to vote for the guy being slammed.
• Your social network will steer you to vote for the correct guy - but only if you don't have a partisan network.
• When it comes to how much citizens are politically active and feel their voice counts in local government, the size of their city matters.
• Social proof (the "everyone else is doing it" effect) may only work for campaign mobilization if the "everybody else" is a large enough number.
• Partisan news may not do much to increase or decrease voter turnout - but it does change when people decide to vote and how much they'll otherwise participate politically.
• Sometimes we choose just to choose.
• Google may not be making us dumber - but it is priming us to think of how to find information before thinking of the information itself.
• Fairness is desirable, yes? Not if you're a risk seeker.