David Rand
@dgrand.bsky.social
Prof at Cornell studying how human-AI dialogues can correct inaccurate beliefs, why people share falsehoods, and ways to reduce political polarization and promote cooperation. Computational social science + cognitive psychology. https://www.DaveRand.org/
🚨JOIN the Civic Discourse Mediator Competition🚨 In 1st week of August, create & test a prompt-based AI mediator that helps people have more thoughtful, productive conversations about important public issues. Win $400! Get started here: forms.gle/HkbhEk4hELQE...
Boy this was a long road, but glad it's finally out! @dgrand.bsky.social @robbwiller.bsky.social @arechar.bsky.social (along with Michael N. Stagnaro, James N. Druckman, not tagable)
Nature Human Behaviour@nathumbehav.nature.com · last mo.Representativeness and response validity across nine opt-in online samples
Representativeness and response validity across nine opt-in online samples
Representativeness and response validity across nine opt-in online samples
Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 22 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02438-zStagnaro et al. compare nine opt-in participant samples on measures of response validity, representativeness and professionalism. They find substantial variation across samples and offer guidance for choosing samples based on the research question.
dlvr.it
Congrats to an amazing team for award for THIS paper☝️ See news.cornell.edu/stories/2026... Thx for your much terrific & needed work, @arechar.bsky.social @dgrand.bsky.social @gordpennycook.bsky.social @adamberinsky.bsky.social @ziv-e.bsky.social @kvg.bsky.social @robert-m-ross.bsky.social et al 🙏
Rand, Pennycook awarded for broad study of misinformation | Cornell Chronicle
The Behavioral Science & Policy Association (BSPA) has chosen a study led by Cornell researchers as its publication of the year.
news.cornell.edu
We are thrilled to announce @dgrand.bsky.social as one of our keynote speakers for #TSRConf 2026! David is a professor at Cornell University, where his research draws on computational social science and cognitive science to understand how people form beliefs and decide what to share online.
Humanity's ability to know, reason, judge, and act well is the foundation of science, democracy, crisis response, & management of AI itself. AI poses serious risks to that foundation. New paper on epistemic risks by 30 experts calls for attention and proposes solutions. Link in thread.
When does punishing free riders help groups cooperate, and when does it backfire? A Science Magazine paper by Team Scientists @dgrand.bsky.social, Duncan Watts, Abdullah Almaatouq & co-author suggests the answer depends heavily on context. https://bit.ly/4uqUZm0
Integrative experiments identify how punishment affects welfare in public goods games
Despite decades of research, the conditions under which punishment promotes cooperation remain unclear. Through an integrative experiment varying 14 design parameters of public goods games across 360 experimental conditions (147,618 decisions from 7100 ...
doi.org
The Wall Street Journal had a conversation with @dgrand.bsky.social, a professor at Cornell University and co-author of the three papers, about how debunkbots can talk people out of believing conspiracy theories and what humans can learn from the endeavor. (WSJ-unlocked) www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-d...
How AI Talks People Out of Conspiracy Theories—and What We Can Learn From That
Research shows that the key is to clearly explain relevant facts. That isn’t always easy to do.
wsj.com
There has been a LOT of research on misinformation over the last decade. In a new paper (for Annual Review of Psychology), @dgrand.bsky.social and I attempt to distill the key points of consensus, highlight major disagreements, and point to future directions. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
<p>Consensus, Disagreements, and Open Questions in the Psychology of Misinformation</p>
Research on misinformation has expanded rapidly over the past decade. This review examines areas of consensus and contention within the literature on misinforma
papers.ssrn.com
New in Nature: LLMs give "the party line" in the languages of authoritarian regimes. This works when they control the media, which feeds pretraining data. We show more state control over the media means less critical LLMs. 6 studies spanning 38 languages & 13 models. Details ↓
Three BIG shifting dynamics: • Algorithms are dominating. • AI content generation is breaking the link between platforms and human content creation. • Public posting is decreasing dramatically, with conversations moving to non-public facing channels. Read more:
Petter Törnberg@pettertornberg.com · 3mo agoSocial media is no longer social. Most of it is passive viewing of videos and pictures from people we've never met. But we're still studying social media like it's 2010. We've entered the post-social media era — and research needs to catch up. osf.io/preprints/so... preprint w/ Richard Rogers
New study finds that correcting false health claims directly is as effective or more effective than trying to discredit the source, even if they lack expertise. iaap-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Corrections outperform expertise‐based interventions for countering misinformation from alternative medicine sources
Given that health-based misinformation can cause serious harm, designing effective interventions is paramount. Recently, misinformation interventions that target a source's relevant expertise have sh....
iaap-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
New working paper: Rethinking Misinformation Interventions. The field has spent years searching for the one intervention that will solve misinformation. This search is the wrong approach — and our disappointment says more about our expectations than our tools. (1/5) osf.io/preprints/so...
OSF
osf.io
Very excited to share that I'll be joining Social and Decision Sciences @cmu.edu as an assistant professor in the Fall! So grateful to everyone who has supported me, particularly my amazing advisors @dgrand.bsky.social & Rahul Bhui, family, & friends!
New paper with Gabriela Czarnek, @dgrand.bsky.social and @adamberinsky.bsky.social out in Political Behavior! Link: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
After the Takeover: Rebuilding Trust in Public Media Through Institutional Reform - Political Behavior
We examine the dynamics of citizens’ trust in public media during government-led efforts to implement major media reforms in a highly polarized context using two cross-sectional experiments. After Pol...
link.springer.com
DebunkBot is live on BlueSky! Tag @debunkbot.bsky.social in reply to any post to get the facts
DebunkBot is live on BlueSky! Tag @debunkbot.bsky.social in reply to any post to get the facts
Congratulations to @tomcostello.bsky.social @gordpennycook.bsky.social & @dgrand.bsky.social for winning the @aaas.org Newcomb Prize for this outstanding and important communication research on using AI to challenge conspiracy beliefs. @mason4c.bsky.social @docsforclimate.bsky.social
Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI
Conspiracy theory beliefs are notoriously persistent. Influential hypotheses propose that they fulfill important psychological needs, thus resisting counterevidence. Yet previous failures in correctin...
science.org
The sky is not falling; high-quality platforms (Prolific, Verasight, CR Connect) have low rates of apparent bots. osf.io/preprints/ps... But also not zero; vigilance is very much needed!
🚨 My first solo preprint is out! I study Grok's fact-checking on X and show: 📌 Professional fact-checkers are a major source of Grok. 📌 Grok becomes more accurate as more articles from fact-checkers become available. 🔗 ssrn.com/abstract=626...
Check out this recent @nature.com paper reporting a field experiment on X. It shows X's algorithm boosts conservative content and downranks traditional media—shifting users’ views on key issues. Switching to chronological doesn’t reverse the effect. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature
Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared...
nature.com
This is consistent with earlier psychometric work that suggests 5-7 is the best response scale options, but good to see that the finding holds up in contemporary research. Also, good to see that labeling scales whether anchored or not has little impact on findings. academic.oup.com/ijpor/articl...
Do You Agree? Do You Strongly Agree? The Effect of the Number of Response Categories on Response Processes and Verification of Substantive Hypotheses
Abstract. This study investigates how the number and labeling of response categories in survey scales affect respondent behavior, psychometric properties,
academic.oup.com
New paper in Current Directions in Psych Science: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... After countless arguments about what tasks ppl should/should not offload to AI, we instead argue that genAI can be used *augment* research protocols in novel ways. I.e. use AI to make better psych experiments!
Come join our academic family!
Tom Costello@tomcostello.bsky.social · 5mo agoI'm hiring a postdoc at @cmu.edu (w/ far.ai & @dgrand.bsky.social + @gordpennycook.bsky.social)! How do LLMs shape human beliefs — and what do we do about it? AI safety meets behavioral science. Open to technical and social science backgrounds.
Honored (and genuinely, wildly grateful and -- even more than I am grateful -- surprised) to share that our paper "Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI" received the @aaas.org Newcomb-Cleveland Prize (for the "most outstanding" paper in @science.org last year).
New @scalinglaws.bsky.social episode: @noupside.bsky.social and I talk to @dgrand.bsky.social about his research showing AI chatbots can shift people's political beliefs. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/scal...
Scaling Laws: The Persuasion Machine: David Rand on How LLMs Can Reshape Political Beliefs
lawfaremedia.org
APE update: we retested recent frontier models on whether they still comply with requests to persuade on extreme harm (terrorism, sexual abuse). GPT-5.1 & Claude Opus 4.5 → near zero compliance. But Gemini 3 Pro complies 85% with no jailbreak needed. 🧵
Interesting new paper in Political Psychology from @benmtappin.bsky.social and Ryan McKay investigating party cues onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
