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How common are “survey professionals” - people who take dozens of online surveys for pay - across online panels, and do they harm data quality?

Our paper, FirstView at @politicalanalysis.bsky.social, tackles this question using browsing data from three U.S. samples (Facebook, YouGov, and Lucid):

Evaluating real-world effects of one-off fake news exposure - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Evaluating real-world effects of one-off fake news exposure

"We echo previous calls to temper our discussions of misinformation and avoid jumping to overblown conclusions about the effects of misinformation"

"Combining an urgent analysis with masterful breadth, Susan Stokes’s book The Backsliders focuses on the contemporary challenge of global democratic erosion, a notable and expanding trend."

Read the #ScienceBooks Review: https://scim.ag/3WhckhQ

Just posted an updated/revised version of this “Statistical Methods in Public Policy Research” chapter, now under review post-R&R 🤞

I'm kinda partial and unbiased here, but I really really like this piece!

HTML/PDF: stats.andrewheiss.com/snoopy-spring/
SocArXiv: doi.org/10.31235/osf...

Top 10 American Fears of 2024 (Chapman Survey) Horizontal bar chart ranking the top fears of Americans (percentage “afraid” or “very afraid”): 1. Corrupt government officials (65.2%, top fear for years). 2. Loved ones becoming seriously ill (58.4%). 3. Cyberterrorism (58.3%). 4. Loved ones dying (57.8%). 5. Russia using nuclear weapons (55.8%). 6. Not having enough money for the future (55.7%). 7. U.S. becoming involved in another world war (55.0%). 8. North Korea using nuclear weapons (55.0%). 9. Terrorist attack (52.7%). 10. Biological warfare (52.5%). Red bars display percentages; small arrows indicate change from 2023 rankings.

Top Public Worries in the U.S. (Yale & GMU poll, May 2025) Stacked bar chart of worries among U.S. adults. Categories ranked by share “very worried”: • Government corruption (54% very worried, top issue). • Other leading concerns: cost of living (48%), the economy (47%), state of democracy (44%), disruption of federal services (44%), cultural/social divisions (36%), treatment of immigrants (35%), global warming (29%), crime (26%). • Lower worries include job security (17%), health (16%), and being targeted because of identity/beliefs (15%). Green shades show “very/somewhat worried,” yellow/orange shades show “not very/not at all worried.

Perceptions of Federal Government Problems (AP-NORC poll) Bar chart showing the percentage of U.S. adults who consider various issues in the federal government to be a major problem, minor problem, or not a problem. • Corruption: Overall 70% major, 22% minor, 7% not a problem. Higher among Republicans (78%) than Democrats (63%). • Inefficiency: 65% major overall, with Republicans (81%) much higher than Democrats (55%). • Red tape (bureaucracy): 59% major overall, with Republicans (73%) higher than Democrats (47%). • Civil servants unwilling to implement president’s agenda: More partisan split—Republicans 56% major problem, Democrats 20% major problem; overall 34% major, 36% minor, 28% not a problem. Title: “Majority of the public believe corruption, inefficiency, and red tape are major problems in the federal government.

Word Cloud of How People Describe American Government (Berkeley Democracy Policy Lab) Large central word: “Corrupt.” Other prominent words: Broken, Chaotic, Dysfunctional, Shit, Clueless, Divided, Inefficient, Crooked, Hijacked, Justice, Woke, Bloated, Untrustworthy, Hopeless, Frustrated, Disastrous, Messy, Sneaky, Turmoil, Delusional. Smaller scattered words include both negative and neutral terms such as Crap, Important, Poder, Resilient, Unfocused, Needs Help. Visual emphasizes “Corrupt” as the dominant public perception.

I’m starting to notice a trend in the polling data…

—Top Public Worry: Corruption

—Biggest problem in Fed Gov: Corruption

—Top fear: Corruption

—What one word would you use to describe American government?: “Corrupt”

It’s almost like voters are trying to tell us something.

New in PNAS with @seanjwestwood.bsky.social and @ylelkes.bsky.social: Why depolarization is hard: Evaluating attempts to decrease partisan animosity in America

@prl.bsky.social @pnas.org

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Finding the fingerprints of generative AI in psychology publications: https://osf.io/3hx76

A small subset of 100 short story continuations generated by GPT-4 given the first part of Give It Up, a short story by Franz Kafka.

Researchers asked AI to generate 100 short stories from the same prompt and found the same plot elements showing up again like echoes, even across different LLMs. The collective creativity of online content is at risk, the authors say. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Just out at JOP (www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10....) : Why do so few working-class people hold office? It's not lack of interest. Noam Lupu and I ran 10 surveys in 8 countries and found no evidence of a social class gap in how often qualified people consider running.

"Unsuccessful Candidates Are More Concerned About Electoral Fairness than Election Winners" by Roman Senninger, Martin Baekgaard, and Henrik Seeberg.
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Do high workloads force bureaucrats to discriminate?

In a published paper at the @thejop.bsky.social, I challenge the dominant explanation of discrimination in public service delivery. Surprisingly, I find that bureaucrats are able to handle substantial workloads without discriminating.

Brextinction? How cohort replacement has transformed support for Brexit Public support for Brexit has declined since the 2016 referendum. We argue that part of this decline is due to cohort replacement where many older voters (who support Brexit) have passed away, while ...

Brextinction!

From our student @fresejoris.bsky.social and colleagues @juhoharkonen.bsky.social @simonhix.bsky.social

ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Is the world turning conspiracist?

Contrary to this widespread belief, research by Uscinski et al in the US and Europe, approaching the question in different ways, fails to observe systematic evidence for an increase in conspiracism:

buff.ly/hFQ31qu

Republican Members of Congress are no longer coming from elite institutions of higher education. Elite-educated legislators are more liberal. Important manifestation of the education divide between the parties & context for the current higher ed wars
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🚨 Recognize these symptoms of democratic backsliding before it's too late:

1) Extreme polarization
2) Executive control of legislature
3) Quiet incremental tests of democratic norms and limits

muse.jhu.edu/article...

Old-fashioned military coups and blatant election-day fraud are becoming mercifully rarer these days, but other, subtler forms of democratic regression are a growing problem that demands more attention.

muse.jhu.edu/article...

1/ How does migration affect political attitudes? Using 380k obs from 104 sending & 28 receiving countries, @filipkostelka.bsky.social, Nicolas Sauger & I find some migrants’ attitudes align with locals, while others exceed origin-host context, reshaping ideological space.
👉 doi.org/10.1111/ajps...

Abstract of the research article "The sound of party competition: how applause reflects unity, disagreement, and the electoral cycle in parliaments" by Andreas Küpfer, Jochen Müller and Christian Stecker. Published online first in West European Politics.

Figure 1, displaying the occurences of different types of reactions in the German Bundestag between 1976 and 2020.

Figure 3, displaying the heatmap of predicted applause per 1000 words based on a Poission regression model.

Figure 5, displaying expected applause for interaction terms government and opposition.

💥Online first:

"The sound of party competition: how applause reflects unity, disagreement, and the electoral cycle in parliaments"

by @ankuepfer.bsky.social @jocmuel.bsky.social & @pluggedchris.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1080/0140...

Incredible parallels in this Berinsky &
@gabelenz.bsky.social paper. Politicians didn't stand up to Joe McCarthy in large part because they incorrectly inferred McCarthy/ism was extremely popular. Not standing up to McCarthy was a kind of 1950s Popularism

gated academic.oup.com/poq/article/...

🇺🇸 Can watching dialogue across party lines reduce polarisation?

➡️ L-O Ankori-Karlinsky, @robert_a_blair, J. Gottlieb & @smooreberg show that a documentary of an intergroup workshop reduces polarisation and boosts faith in democracy www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

American Journal of Political Science | MPSA Journal | Wiley Online Library How do voters respond to economic crises: Do they turn against the incumbent, reward a certain political camp, polarize to the extremes, or perhaps continue to vote much like before? Analyzing extens....

Economic crises tend to favour the right. Voters tend to assign greater importance to issues owned by the right. When center-right parties preside over a crisis, voters often drift further rightward to nationalist parties rather than defect to the left onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

"the financial advantage enjoyed by incumbents at all levels of government has declined 25-50% over the last decade. This decline, however, is driven entirely by individual donors, & esp. small-dollar donors; in contrast, the advantage among corporate PACs has remained stable—or even increased."

An ERP-study on the extent to which partisanship conditions the early processing of politicians’ faces Partisanship has been associated with various cognitive biases. These findings are primarily based on self-reports and task performance and less on measures of neural activity. We reviewed the lite...

1/4
My first dissertation paper is now out with @bnbakker.bsky.social &
@gijsschumacher.bsky.social! Do our brains quickly encode partisan bias when simply viewing politicians’ faces?

The paper: doi.org/10.1080/1747...
Journalistic article by Psypost: www.psypost.org/early-brain-...

Now on FirstView!

"Our study is divided into detailed examinations of the utility of GPT for various datacollection tasks. In these examples, GPT’s applications demonstrate its versatility in handling increasingly complex information tasks"

doi.org/10.1017/S104...

#polisky #AI #academisky

It's challenging to motivate young adult civic engagement. William O'Brochta uses experimental and qualitative evidence to show that emphasizing social benefits of engagement can help.

Check it out! doi.org/10.1017/S104...

#polisky #academisky

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

Check out this recent article in @cpsjournal.bsky.social‬:“How Great is the Current Danger to Democracy? Assessing the Risk With Historical Data” by Daniel Treisman: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
#polisky

Undermining the Fourth Estate: Elite Attacks on
Media Credibility

https://dx.doi.org/10.33774/apsa-2025-hvrpr?rft_dat=source%3Ddrss

#polisky

🚨New Publication🚨

Using the entire #Canadian Election Study (1965–2021), I examine voter turnout by class, education, & income over time & test whether the offerings of political parties impact these relationships.

Available #OpenAccess in @cjps-rcsp.bsky.social
#polisky

doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Is there an echo in here? Is the echo damaging? The causes and effects of political homogeneity in online networks: https://osf.io/qy63c