Open political dialogue is regarded as foundational to democratic health and our social fabric. Here, we study political dialogue by examining with whom we prefer to talk about politics and why. In so doing, we develop and test hypotheses about what random encounters (e.g., meeting similar versus dissimilar others, meeting friends or colleagues) foster political dialogue, pose and test conjectures about what features of extended networks facilitate political debate, and present a new unique factorial survey experiment to answer our questions. We incorporated this factorial survey experiment within the NEtherlands Longitudinal Lifecourse Study 2022 (NELLS) and presented to a large sample of Dutch citizens – including Dutch ethnic majority members as well as minoritized Dutch with a Turkish or Moroccan heritage – a choice to engage in political talk or not. Hierarchical linear models reveal that relationship strength, rather than identity similarity (e.g., gender, ethnic), is the primary driver of opting for political dialogue. However, in encounters lacking prior relationship history, gender similarity increases the willingness to engage, and similar political views do relate to engaging in substantive debate modeled dichotomously. Ethnic diversity within extended networks fosters political discussion, while network size has a nonlinear association – medium-sized networks are more conducive to dialogue than very small or very large ones. These findings contribute to debates on political polarization by highlighting the relational conditions that encourage political exchange. • Political conversations are key to democratic health and our social fabric. • We hypothesize that dyadic similarity, tie strength, network size, and network diversity facilitate political conversation. • We study political conversations through a unique survey experiment. • Political conversations are more likely among strong ties, medium-sized extended networks, and with more ethnic diversity. • These findings have implications for our understanding of choice homophily, extended network structure, and polarization.

The dual role and mechanism of insoluble humic substances governing the fate of Cu in sediments: Rapid accumulation and long-term stabilization.

While many social biases are considered taboo, bias against political outgroups is increasingly explicit, ubiquitous, and tolerated. We contend that expressing political bias can reduce third-party perceptions of socially unacceptable biases-a phenomenon we call political plausible deniability. By diverting attributions away from biases based on race, gender, or sexual orientation, individuals can express bias yet ostensibly align with social norms. Pretests indicate people intuitively understand the concept of a socially acceptable bias, with political bias rated most acceptable among 15 biases. Across 13 preregistered survey experiments, we find that third parties are less likely to perceive racism, sexism, and (sometimes) heterosexism when an actor expresses an antiliberal statement toward a Black, female, or gay target. These effects emerge across open-ended (Studies 1a-c) and Likert-type (Studies 2a-c, 3a-c, 4a-c) responses, which we replicate in a conjoint experiment (Study 5). Participants' political leanings did not moderate effects. Finally, in 12 exploratory studies, we further illuminate political plausible deniability, for example, by examining anticonservative biases, comparing political with other (nonpolitical) biases, and exploring the role of intersecting target identities. Our research exposes an inconspicuous way that political bias may shape social perception, with implications for understanding how prejudice operates in everyday life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Cash transfers and migration: Evidence from an online survey experiment

ABSTRACT Street-level bureaucrats(SLBs) are required to navigate a labyrinth of multiple values conflicts in public service. Based on dual-principal-agent theory and using a survey experiment (N = 1669) conducted in China, this study explores how vertical values conflicts experienced by SLBs as dual-role agents and horizontal workplace social capital available to them as organizational members influence SLBs’ voicing. Findings reveal that prioritizing professional rather than individual value positively influences SLBs’ willingness to voice, but this effect is dampened by state’s values. Among three types of workplace social capital, bonding social capital increases willingness to voice among SLBs who prioritize state’s values.

ABSTRACT A survey experiment on US elected local policymakers allows us to test how incumbents strategically use infrastructure projects in their electoral campaigns. Each local official is presented with a scenario in which they are asked to imagine that they are going to run for office again and that a new infrastructure project has just been approved in their district. We manipulate the type of project and whether it is delivered by the local government, private actors, or a mixture of the two. We find that the mode of delivery influences credit‐claiming behavior: respondents are more likely to claim credit for projects where the government is involved in delivery, even while respondents' expectations of the projects' ultimate benefit to the community are similar across delivery mode. This electoral connection to the mode of delivery illustrates the potential for bias in project delivery that could compromise the efficient use of public revenue.

This study examines how partisan identities shape citizens’ perceptions of democratic and undemocratic behavior by politicians. Drawing on theories of partisan-motivated reasoning, we argue that partisan identities serve as powerful directional goals that unconsciously bias how citizens evaluate political behaviors against democratic principles. Crucially, we theorize that affective polarization amplifies these partisan rationalization biases by strengthening in-party attachment and out-party animosity. Through a survey experiment in South Korea, we find that citizens systematically rationalize their democratic perceptions based on partisan affiliation, perceiving both regular and undemocratic behaviors by co-partisan politicians as more democratic than similar behaviors by out-partisan politicians. Remarkably, citizens even view undemocratic behaviors by co-partisan politicians as more democratic than regular behaviors by out-partisan politicians. Furthermore, we demonstrate that affective polarization significantly amplifies these partisan rationalization biases. Citizens with higher levels of affective polarization are more susceptible to partisan rationalization of democratic perceptions and show stronger perceptual biases compared to those with lower affective polarization. These findings help explain how partisan rationalization and affective polarization can distort citizens’ perceptions of democracy, potentially undermining their ability to serve as a check against democratic backsliding.

The underutilization of home and community-based services (HCBS) among older adults with hearing loss (HL) in rural China exacerbates health disparities. This study employed a mixed-methods design, combining an analysis of the nationally representative CHARLS database ( n = 10,745) with a community-based survey experiment in Guangzhou ( n = 267), to examine HCBS utilization, its determinants, and care preferences. Nationally, only 18.22% of rural older adults with HL reported using HCBS, which is lower than the level in urban areas. Health-related HCBS were the most popular choice, and offspring support, number of children, pension and medical insurance were significantly associated with HCBS utilization. Experimental results further showed that participants showed stronger preferences for interventions emphasizing family welfare and demand-side financial subsidies, indicating strong intergenerational considerations in care decisions. These findings suggest that effective HCBS expansion should integrate intergenerational incentives and targeted subsidies with a family-centered focus on health-related services.

ABSTRACT U.S. public opinion has traditionally supported Israel in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. However, in recent years, support for Israel has declined, especially among younger left-leaning Americans. At the same time, Israel has received unprecedented criticism from international human rights organizations and left-wing Jewish-American organizations for its treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories, particularly with respect to its military campaigns in Gaza. Has critical information from these sources helped shape U.S. public opinion of the conflict? We conduct a survey experiment analyzing the extent to which information from Human Rights Watch and Jewish Voice for Peace impacts views of who is to blame for the 2021 Israel-Gaza conflict. We find individuals who are treated with criticism of Israel from Jewish Voice for Peace or are informed of the death toll of the 2021 Israel-Gaza conflict (which killed far more Palestinians than Israelis) to be more likely to blame Israel for the violence and to support U.S. foreign policy taking a more pro-Palestinian stance. The effects of the treatment are stronger amongst Democrats and independents than Republicans. These results demonstrate that critical cues from Jewish-American organizations and death-toll information negatively impact U.S. public opinion toward Israel.

As gray-zone conflict emerges as the global norm for strategic engagement, plausible and implausible deniability are increasingly critical to competition. The general view is that states use deniability—obscuring which actors took which actions—to limit the extent of accountability for their aggression in the international system. Using survey experiments among US military cadets, we examine how two strategies of deniability common to the gray zone—cyber operations and the use of proxy organizations—influence willingness to respond with force. Scholars have debated whether these strategies are escalatory. We instead argue that the use of deniability strategies makes escalation more likely but also lowers the intensity of the escalation that occurs. Understanding how deniability operates in the gray zone will be increasingly significant as states continue to shift from traditional combat to an environment of strategic competition in the gray zone.

Universities have become key arenas in national debates over the boundaries of free expression. Using preregistered online survey experiments with a nationally representative sample of 3065 US college students, this study examines how individuals navigate the tension between free speech and harm prevention, an issue sharpened by recent campus protests over Gaza. We test how variation in the severity of speech and the identity of its target (white, Black, Jewish, Muslim, or transgender individuals) shapes judgments about appropriate institutional responses. Our preregistered analyses show that students generally oppose punishing objectionable speech unless it is perceived as highly harmful and that identical statements directed at minority groups elicit stronger punitive responses than those targeting white individuals. Exploratory analyses reveal that these patterns reflect distinct normative principles: Most students adopt a particularist stance, favoring greater protection for marginalized groups, while a sizable minority adhere to a universalist view emphasizing equal treatment regardless of identity. These principles predict attitudes across contexts, but adherence weakens when individuals hold strong views on the issue at hand. Our findings show that campus conflicts over speech boundaries reflect not only disagreement about norms but also unequal application of these norms across groups and issues.

Abstract Without explicit cues that specify the AI-authorship, how would individuals evaluate AI-generated news? This study examines this question by focusing on user-level characteristics, encompassing cognitive dispositions, attitudinal orientations, and evaluative competencies. Our survey experiment randomly assigned participants to read a news article—for which the AI authorship was not disclosed—on one of three topics (banking, politics, and entertainment). Results highlight the double-edged roles of people’s actively open-minded thinking, media literacy, and fake news awareness: on one hand, these factors are associated with a more in-depth processing of AI-generated news, suggesting their positive impact on promoting a critical evaluation of AI-generated news; on the other hand, however, these cognitive factors are positively associated with AI-news’s perceived quality or credibility, indicating that readers with these cognitive capacities may simultaneously overestimate the trustworthiness of AI-generated news. These findings call for the media literacy education to go beyond teaching readers to spot misinformation or look for AI disclaimers; instead, it’s urgent to help people establish clear expectations for what human-generated journalism looks like.

ABSTRACT We investigate the political fallout from economic reform programs and whether incumbent governments can soften the impact using social protection or scapegoating strategies. We test our arguments through a survey experiment in Pakistan and an analysis of World Values Surveys. The Pakistani experiment confirms that emphasizing the negative consequences of reform lowers incumbent support, while attempts to mitigate this backlash are ineffective. The cross-country data show that populations enduring harsher reform programs report lower satisfaction with national leaders. These findings inform economic voting theories in developing countries and policies regarding political backlash from IMF-backed adjustments.

Abstract Rural Americans constitute a politically consequential yet theoretically understudied identity group. This study reconceptualizes descriptive representation to include place-based identities and demonstrates its influence on policy support and political trust. Using a preregistered, original survey experiment of rural respondents, we assess whether rural Americans exhibit greater support for laws and perceive it as more beneficial to rural communities when proposed by state representatives who share their rural identity. Our findings strongly support this hypothesis: rural Americans express higher levels of support for laws that were introduced by descriptively representative lawmakers and are more likely to believe such policies benefit rural areas. Moreover, respondents demonstrate higher levels of trust in rural lawmakers even in the absence of additional information about them. These results illustrate that, for rural Americans, place-based identity is deeply influential in shaping their political perceptions.

ABSTRACT Assessing support for political violence in the United States remains a major point of focus. However, generating reliable population-level estimates of support for political violence has proven difficult. In this study, we fielded a split-ballot survey experiment comparing two measures of support for political violence. Specifically, we examine support for abstract and unspecified forms of political violence, as well as the willingness to engage in concrete actions, such as damaging property, to support political goals. As expected, we find greater support for abstract political violence than for a personal willingness to engage in political violence. In our multivariable analyses, we found that younger people were more likely to endorse both expressions of political violence. Regarding political ideology and party identification, we found a complex set of results. While the results related to ideology suggest people who identify as “very liberal” were more likely to endorse both expressions of political violence, party identification showed that independents, not Democrats or Republicans, were more likely to endorse both expressions of political violence. As such, we argue that alienation from conventional political parties is an important feature that deserves more attention.

ABSTRACT This study examines how AI humanization influences citizen experience in public service delivery by integrating the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) and Emotion as Social Information (EASI) theory. Focusing on AI chatbots as a research context, we explore how humanized responses shape perceived warmth and competence and whether effects differ between programmed and non-programmed services through a survey experiment with four vignette-based scenarios. Findings underscore the importance of context-sensitive and carefully calibrated AI design and functioning choices. By linking SCM’s content dimensions with EASI’s affective and inferential mechanisms, the study provides a social-psychological lens to understand citizen–government interactions in AI-driven public administration and provides practical guidance for designing AI-enabled services that remain citizen-friendly while safeguarding core public values.

The Constitution empowers states to manage elections, yet this aspect of federalism poses formidable challenges with overlapping geographic and partisan divisions. We first provide descriptive evidence that, even though nonpartisan election officials use similar methods to protect ballot-counting across the country, Republican voters nationwide report low levels of trust in the elections run by the blue state of California, just as Democrats are less trusting of elections in the red state of Texas. Could a public information campaign providing factual messages from election officials help to restore trust across party lines? We report the results of novel survey experiments that expose respondents in one state to messages produced by election officials in another state. Republicans, Democrats, and Independents all become more trusting once they are exposed to information about other states’ election protections. Our findings suggest that a robust public information campaign by state election officials could mitigate polarized trust in election integrity.

Accurate reporting of new findings is essential for an informed public, yet limited science literacy among journalists often results in misinterpretation of research, with costly societal and economic consequences. We developed a concise educational video that aimed to enhance journalists' science literacy through explaining important checkpoints for sound research reporting (funding, sample, statistics, causal claims, and visuals). The impact of this video was tested in a survey experiment with 260 German journalists. Treated participants produced correct headlines for 64% of study-based news stories versus 36% in the control group (a 28-percentage-point rise, P < 0.001). They also became more skeptical when evaluating existing articles, flagging more potential mistakes. An exploratory follow-up using 268 real-world articles suggests a reduction in factual mistakes by treated journalists. Our findings highlight that a brief, low-cost intervention can measurably improve the scientific accuracy of journalism, offering a scalable strategy for news organizations and training programs.

ABSTRACT Politicians increasingly encounter stressors such as political harassment and the demands of reconciling public responsibilities with familial obligations. While prior research has linked these challenges to voluntary exits from politics, it remains unclear whether they disproportionately demotivate those directly affected. This article examines how elected officials perceive and respond to such political stressors through a mixed-methods design, combining a survey experiment with qualitative interviews. We surveyed 2,415 Norwegian representatives – primarily at the local level – randomly assigning them to one of three conditions: a harassment, a work-life balance prime, or a control group. Women, young politicians, second-term incumbents, parents of young children, and individuals with prior experience of harassment were more likely to view both political harassment and work-life balance as salient stressors, revealing a shared vulnerability profile across distinct challenges. Exposure to the harassment prime increased political motivation, particularly among those without prior exposure, suggesting a galvanizing effect. Further, the work-life balance prime did not reduce motivation, despite its widespread recognition as a challenge. Drawing on appraisal theory and qualitative interview data, we argue that reminders of extraordinary (e.g. harassment) versus routine stressors (e.g. work-life balance) may evoke distinct emotional responses that shape political motivation in divergent ways.

Foreign policy making involves balancing ethical values and instrumental concerns. Do politicians and citizens differ in how they weigh these factors when directly confronted with this trade-off? Focusing on attitudes toward arms exports, we argue that citizens, but not politicians, tend to prioritize human rights concerns over the political and economic benefits for their own states. We tested these arguments in four survey experiments among citizens and parliamentarians in the United Kingdom and Germany. We presented participants with fictitious arms deals and varied the human rights records of recipient regimes as well as the benefits of arms deals to assess how these factors influence attitudes toward arms exports. While we find substantial effects of both human rights violations and benefits on support for arms exports, their interaction remains insignificant across all samples. Hence, our findings yield no evidence for an elite-public gap in weighing ethical and instrumental concerns in foreign policy attitudes.