Folco Panizza

📣 THIS THURSDAY THROUGH SATURDAY is the 2024 Norms and Behavioral Change Conference (October 17-19), hosted by the Center for Social Norms & Behavioral Dynamics @Penn! 📋VIEW THE PROGRAM HERE: web.sas.upenn.edu/nobec2024/prog… 🔍For further information, visit web.sas.upenn.edu/nobec2024/

💥@PNASNexus Special Feature: Polarization & Trust💥 In 2023, we hosted a workshop (co-organized with @DG_Rand @ylelkes @kati_kish) at @MIT. As a result, @MicheleJGelfand, Erik Kimbrough & I led a Special Feature at Nexus comprised of those talks. Short🧵with all contributions:

Research Report 5: 𝐌𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐩𝐥𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐦 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐔𝐒 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 by: @FolcoPanizza @eugen_dimant @bemusement Alex Vostroknutov (@ChapmanU @MaastrichtU @Penn) 🔗doi.org/10.1093/pnasne…

Can we use nudges to reduce hate speech and/or promote civil discourse on social media? Drawing inspiration from mega-studies, we tested the relative effectiveness of seven theoretically grounded nudges on the same population, using a platform that accurately reproduces the Facebook newsfeed. We found two results that we believe are quite interesting: 1) None of the nudges significantly reduced overall engagement (all reactions combined) with harmful speech. 2) A nudge highlighting the injunctive norm increased engagement with harmless speech. Exploratory analyses suggest that the null effects on harmful posts are likely due to opposing factors: a reduction in certain forms of engagement (e.g., commenting) and an increase in others (e.g., angry reactions). It seems that some nudges, especially those based on personal and social norms, may have socially positive effects by making people more likely to ignore harmful content and more likely to respond with angry reactions. However, this point warrants further investigation, as it stems from non-preregistered analyses. The paper has been just published in @PNASNexus. Here’s the link: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/arti… A big thank you to the two co-first authors: @TatianaCeladin and @FolcoPanizza

No way out. Images and texts “made in AI,” evil bots, fake news everywhere. We all inform ourselves on the web, and the web is a minefield of #misinformation. What if there was a toolbox we could use as needed? Read more on #OpenIMT👉shorturl.at/mnj7z @FolcoPanizza

I was reading 2023 Nobel laureate Katalin Kariko's book, Breaking Through. She was brutally honest about the academic system in US. And, here is an example section from her book.

Two weeks left. Apply for our PhD program in Economics at IMT: 8 fully-funded scholarships, 3 to 4 years. Deadline June 19th. Find out more here: lnkd.in/eWFYVDFB Our faculty and students work on a broad branch of topics, from International Trade to Behavioral Economics🗓️

Our data reveal insights into Americans' perceptions of politics. Key policy implications: respondents recognize sharp differences between parties and report them consistently using our approach, and views within political groups can be more divided than expected.

4/ Interestingly, opinions within a party can be quite fragmented. For example, Republicans show varied views on marijuana legalization and gun violence policies.

📢 New Preprint Alert! 📢 Interested in the relationship between political polarization and social norms but always wondered how to measure the existing pluralism in our societies?

🔥New preprint🔥 We've conducted a large, preregistered experiment aimed at comparing the effectiveness of seven message-based nudges designed to combat hate speech on social media. Participants scrolled through 14 posts containing various degrees of hate speech on a platform that faithfully replicated the Facebook newsfeed. Before entering the platform, participants were exposed to a specific message. We compared the behavior of these participants with that of a control group who was not shown any message. We found that: (i) a nudge making descriptive norms salient increases total engagement with relatively harmless posts (ii) a nudge making injunctive norms salient increases likes to relatively harmless posts (iii) a nudge making reputation salient increases the substance and coherence of comments to harmful posts Effect sizes were often relatively large. For example, the descriptive norm message increased engagement with harmless posts by 68%. These results suggest that message-based nudges activating normative considerations could help create a more positive and inclusive online environment. Full paper: osf.io/preprints/psya… with: @TatianaCeladin & @FolcoPanizza

Breaking News! Code UFB!!! In a year of mind-blowing extremes, yet another new record high global sea surface temperature was set yesterday, at 21.17°C. "So long, and thanks for all the fish!"

>> ARTICLE SPOTLIGHT << This week we showcase a longitudinal experimental study by @FolcoPanizza, et al. on how to reduce vaccine hesitancy in the United Kingdom. #trialanderror #openscience #openaccess #failureinscience

How do different incentives reduce scientific misinformation online? New PERITIA @MisinfoReview article by @martinicarlo @FolcoPanizza, Piero Ronzani, Tiffany Morisseau, Simone Mattavelli out now! misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/how-di…

Presenting the performance of previous participants increases discernment of science-related news. Although difficult to scale, economic incentives work best to increase accuracy. New work published at Harvard @Kennedy_School Misinformation Review. misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/how-di…