Opinion Science
Psychology & Relationships
About
A show about the psychology of opinions, where they come from, and how they change. Interviews with experts and deep dives into areas of research uncover the basic psychology of persuasion, communication, and public opinion. Hosted by social psychologist, Andy Luttrell.
Episodes
- #116: Change Beliefs, Change Opinions? with Yamil Velez
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 thei…
- #115: Raising Color-Conscious Kids with Sylvia Perry
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…
- #114: Making Immigration Popular with Alex Kustov
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,…
- Introducing Mind Games
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 Ga…
- #113: Psychology in the Age of AI with Steve Rathje
Steven Rathje is a postdoc at New York University and an incoming assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He studies the psychology of technology , which includes how people engage with a variety of digital tools, especially tho…
- #112: Thinking Categorically with Greg Murphy
Greg Murphy studies the psychology of concepts. How do we use language to understand things, and how do we sort the world into categories? In our conversation, we consider what makes a category, why we love them, and where they steer us wr…
- #111: You Don't Know What You Like with Paul Eastwick & Eli Finkel
Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel are two social psychologists who study the gears and levers of romantic relationships. What do people find attractive in a partner? How do relationships evolve over time? And critically, do romantic movies get…
- #110: The Value of Entertainment with Sara Grady
Sara Grady studies the function of entertainment—why we watch, play, and listen to the media that fill our lives. She's an assistant professor of Communication at Ohio State University. In our conversation, we explore what entertainment ac…
- #109: The Realities of Political Persuasion with David Broockman
David Broockman is a political scientist at UC Berkeley who digs into one of democracy’s core questions: can political messages really change minds? He’s spent his career running careful studies of persuasion, from door-to-door conversatio…
- SciComm Summer #26: Lulu Miller on Leading with Story
Lulu Miller has done a lot of things and done them very well. She is currently the co-host of Radiolab and its family-friendly spinoff, Terrestrials . She also co-created Invisibilia with Alix Spiegel and wrote the beautiful book, Why Fish…
- SciComm Summer #25: Sarah McAnulty on Art and Community in Science Communication
Sarah McAnulty is a squid biologist and a science communicator. She's come up with all sorts of creative ways to bring science to the people, especially through local community engagement initiatives. Learn more about Skype a Scientist: ht…
- SciComm Summer #24: Joe Palca on NPR Science Reporting
Joe Palca reported on science for NPR for years. He found his sweet spot, capturing people's interest and filling them in on curious new findings in just a few minutes. His path to this job wasn't all that direct, and in our conversation,…
- SciComm Summer #23: Alison Fragale on Giving Keynote Talks
Alison Fragale is an organizational psychologist who gives keynote talks and leads workshops outside academia. She talks frankly about what it takes to book speaking engagements, design powerful talks that make a difference, and juggle a s…
- SciComm Summer #22: Alex Dainis on Producing Online Videos
Alex Dainis is a freelance science communicator and video producer. She's been making science videos on YouTube for years, including recent work for the American Chemical Society. In 2024, she was received an Award for Excellence in Scienc…
- SciComm Summer #21: Joel Bervell on Short Form Video
Joel Bervell recently graduated from medical school, which is when he gained fame as an influencer helping the public navigate good medical science. He’s out there breaking down myths about medicine, particularly shining a light on racial…
- SciComm Summer #20: Adam Cole on Making "Howtown"
Kicking off the 3rd season of Hot SciComm Summer is Adam Cole. Adam started at NPR’s Science Desk in 2011 where he started making short videos and radio pieces. In 2014, he launched the YouTube channel Skunk Bear with NPR, which was a venu…
- Introducing "SciComm Summer"...Season 3!
You didn't think #HotSciCommSummer was done, did you? Join me for a whole new season of Hot SciComm summer, a special laid-back podcast series featuring writers, podcast producers, video producers, speakers, and more. Get ready to hear fro…
- #108: Characters Matter with Matt Grizzard
Matt Grizzard is a communication scholar who studies how people relate to characters in entertainment media as a sign of how much they enjoy one story versus another. A guiding framework behind this work is " affective disposition theory .…
- #107: Showing Open-Mindedness with Mohamed Hussein
Mohamed Hussein studies how the psychology of persuasion and politics interact. He is an assistant professor of marketing at Columbia Business School. On the podcast, we talk about his work on "receptiveness," or people's openness to heari…
- #106: Moral Outrage with Kurt Gray
Kurt Gray studies our moral minds and how we grapple with everyday ethics. In his new book, Outraged , he explores the deep psychology of human nature and what it means for how we navigate politically divisive times. In our conversation, w…
- #105: Targeted Messaging Online with Sandra Matz
Sandra Matz is a computational social scientist at Columbia Business School. She uses big data to understand people and what motivates them to act. And she has a new book out! It's Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Cha…
- #104: Posters as Persuasion with Angelina Lippert (ft. Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.)
Angelina Lippert is the Executive Director and Curator at Poster House in New York City. She is an expert when it comes to the use of posters as a tool for mass communication and persuasion. We talk about what a poster is, the history of p…
- #103: Taking Extreme Action with Joe Siev
Joe Siev studies extreme political behavior and its appeal. He's a postdoctoral fellow at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. In our conversation, we talk about his research linking people's sense of ambivalence wi…
- #102: Protest with Colin Wayne Leach
*If you downloaded this episode early, the wrong file was uploaded. Sorry! We're all good now. Colin Wayne Leach is a social psychologist who also wears a bunch of other social science hats. He approaches the social world by appreciating i…
- #101: Studying Persuasion with Rich Petty
Dr. Richard Petty is a professor of psychology at Ohio State University. He's probably best known for co-developing the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of persuasion (but he's done a lot of other stuff, too). He was also my advisor in g…
- #100: A Unified Model of Persuasion
In the 1980s, two social psychologists--Rich Petty and John Cacioppo--devised a new way to make sense of persuasion: the Elaboration Likelihood Model . Their work came on the heels of an era in psychology when people were fed up with persu…
- #99 The Power of Random Roommates with Sarah Gaither and Analia Albuja
Drs. Sarah Gaither and Analia Albuja study racial identity and how we can overcome racial biases. They just published an important new study on the effects of random roommate assignments on students’ ability to develop diverse social netwo…
- #98: Deep Canvassing with Dave Fleischer
Dave Fleischer is a political organizer who led the team that pioneered “deep canvassing,” which is a particularly effective form of face-to-face persuasion. It was developed on the ground, but when political scientists put it to a rigorou…
- #97: Opinions and Reputations with Christian Wheeler
Christian Wheeler studies the intersection of opinions, communication, and personal identity. He’s a professor of management and marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In our conversation, we talk about the quirks of teachi…
- #96: Anti-Science Views with Aviva Philipp-Muller
Aviva Philipp-Muller studies why people might pass on science. She’s an Assistant Professor of marketing at the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University. We talked about her research on people’s openness to science in consumer…
- #95: Marketing Across Cultures with Aaron Barnes
Aaron Barnes is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Louisville College of Business. He studies how persuasion, branding, and consumer–brand relationships differ between cultures. In our conversation, we talk about Aaro…
- #94: Bringing Behavioral Science to Government with David Halpern
David Halpern is the President & Founding Director of the Behavioral Insights Team . It started as a "nudge unit" in the British government but has gone on to become its own company with offices around the world. We talked to David in 2021…
- #93: A Life in Behavioral Science with Daniel Kahneman
Daniel Kahneman was a titan in social science. He transformed our understanding of decision-making, he taught a generation about social psychology, he won a Nobel prize. It's hard to overstate his influence. He passed away last week, and t…
- #92: Can We Fix Social Media? with Andy Guess
Andy Guess studies how social media platforms shape people’s political views. He’s an assistant professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. Last summer, he was part of a big team that released four papers on their ana…
- #91: Being a Social Science Maverick with Sendhil Mullainathan
Sendhil Mullainathan does a lot of things, and he does them well. He’s a professor of Computation and Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. I originally talked to Sendhil for our podcast series, They T…
- "...Ridiculous" Ep. 5: The Future!
To look into the future of Behavioral Economics, we talked to three young researchers who are pushing the field further. A new generation of researchers is striving to understand decision-making in the developing world, how brains process…
- "...Ridiculous" Ep. 4: Behavioral Economics Goes Mainstream
Eventually, Behavioral Economics emerged as an influential perspective. It’s become mainstream in Economics, and it’s helped inform programs and policies that affect real people every day. This is the fourth episode of a special series cal…
- "...Ridiculous" Ep. 3: Children of Unlikely Parents
Behavioral Economics was using psychology to understand economics, but what did economists and psychologists think about their unexpected marriage? Slowly, this fledgling field weathered a flurry of criticism from both sides as it doggedly…
- "...Ridiculous" Ep. 2: Importing Psychology
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky were two psychologists with big ideas about how people made decisions. Their careful research launched a brand new way of understanding people’s choices, and it helped fan the flames of Behavioral Economics…
- "...Ridiculous" Ep. 1: Beyond Anomalies
For years, neoclassical economists have made an unusual assumption—that people are rational decision-makers. But a few social scientists have dared to challenge that assumption. They’ve collected observations, analyzed data, and presented…
- Introducing: "They Thought We Were Ridiculous: The Unlikely Story of Behavioral Economics"
Coming February 26th! I team up with the guys at Behavioral Grooves to produce a 5-part podcast series on behavioral economics . We tell the story of how some young social scientists took issue with assumptions that economists were making…
- #90: How Prejudice Works with Jack Dovidio
Jack Dovidio 's work is at the heart of how we currently understand the psychology of prejudice. He's spent his career considering where prejudice comes from, how people express it, how it biases people's judgments and behaviors, and what…
- #89: Opinions of our Partners with Jim McNulty
Jim McNulty is a professor of psychology at Florida State University. He studies close relationships, and in this episode, we talk about his research on "automatic partner attitudes." When someone sees their romantic partner, their feeling…
- BONUS: "Best" of Opinion Science (2023)
Happy New Year! For the first time in the show's history, this episode's a day late. Sorry, dear listeners. So it's 2024, and what better way to kick off the new year than to dive into some nostalgia for 2023 already? As has become traditi…
- #88: Studying Happiness with Liz Dunn
Elizabeth Dunn studies the psychology of happiness. One of her major research areas has looked at generosity's effects on well-being. We're happier when we spend money on other people. But studying happiness has its challenges, especially…
- #87: How Juries Decide with Mikaela Spruill
Mikaela Spruill studies juries and the legal system’s role in sustaining social inequalities. She’s a postdoctoral fellow in criminal justice with SPARQ at Stanford University. In our conversation, Mikaela shares the benefits and drawbacks…
- #86: Framing Political Issues with James Druckman
James Druckman studies how political messages can shape people's opinions. He is maybe best known for his work on framing issues as a strategic communication strategy. He also has a recent paper on " a framework for the study of persuasion…
- #85: Having Curious Conversations with Mónica Guzmán
Mónica Guzmán wants us to have better conversation with the people we disagree with. She's the Senior Fellow for Public Practice at Braver Angels , and in 2022, she released her book, "I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly…
- #84: Moral Lessons in Media with Lindsay Hahn
Lindsay Hahn studies how entertainment media convey moral messages, especially among children. She's an assistant professor of communication at the University at Buffalo, where she leads the Media Psychology and Morality Lab . We talk abou…
- #83: The Fundamental Nature of Opinion with Russ Fazio
Russ Fazio has spent his career getting to the bottom of how opinions work. From his first study as a college student in 1974 to a leading expert in basically everything, his work has had a deep impact on the field of social psychology (an…