Alex Coppock
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aecoppock.bsky.social
Alex Coppock
@aecoppock.bsky.social
6.6K followers 1.5K following 580 posts
Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University
alexandercoppock.com
Persuasion in Parallel: https://alexandercoppock.com/coppock_2022.html
Research Design: Declaration, Diagnosis, and Redesign: book.declaredesign.org
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Alex Coppock
kwcollins.bsky.social
Interesting paper, especially interesting it's coming from researchers at Anthropic arxiv.org/pdf/2601.20245
How AI Impacts Skill Formation Judy Hanwen Shen∗ Alex Tamkin† February 3, 2026 Abstract AI assistance produces significant productivity gains across professional domains, particularly for novice workers. Yet how this assistance affects the development of skills required to effectively supervise AI remains unclear. Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition in the process. We conduct randomized experiments to study how developers gained mastery of a new asynchronous programming library with and without the assistance of AI. We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average. Participants who fully delegated coding tasks showed some productivity improvements, but at the cost of learning the library. We identify six distinct AI interaction patterns, three of which involve cognitive engagement and preserve learning outcomes even when participants receive AI assistance. Our findings suggest that AI-enhanced productivity is not a shortcut to competence and AI assistance should be carefully adopted into workflows to preserve skill formation – particularly in safety-critical domains.
February 3, 2026 at 7:58 PM
Reposted by Alex Coppock
thomasjwood.bsky.social
Among the most vivid declines in the American people's trust -- their diminished trust in other people.

Data from @gallup.com's Social Series.
February 2, 2026 at 3:09 AM
aecoppock.bsky.social
🎺 Call for proposals 🎺

1️⃣ replicate an existing experiment
2️⃣ run a novel experiment

on repdata.com

3️⃣ coauthor with Mary McGrath and me to meta-analyze the replications and existing studies
4️⃣ publish your study

details: alexandercoppock.com/replication_...
applications open Feb 1

please repost!
Call for Proposals: Data Collection for Replication+Novel Political Science Survey Experiments Alexander Coppock and Mary McGrath January 27, 2026 We invite proposals for a survey experiment replication+novel design competition. Se- lected replication+novel design survey experiments will be conducted on large samples of American respondents, quota sampled to match U.S. Census margins and filtered for quality and attention by the survey sample provider Rep Data (repdata.com). Each proposal consists of two parts: (1) a replication study of an existing, previously published survey experiment, and (2) a novel experimental design on a topic of the authors’ choosing. The replication studies and reanalyses of the existing studies will be combined into a meta-paper to be co-authored by all authors of accepted proposals along with the princi- pal investigators (Coppock and McGrath). As a condition for acceptance, authors commit to sharing the data and producing a write-up of the findings from their novel design for submission to a scholarly journal, and public posting of a working paper pre-publication.
January 27, 2026 at 10:16 PM
Reposted by Alex Coppock
drewstommes.bsky.social
After years in academia, I’m exploring data science and research roles in industry.

I'm a quant. social scientist (PhD Yale ’24, NYU) focused on causal inference, experiments, and large-scale data.

Feel free to get in touch or share; all leads appreciated. dwstommes@gmail.com
January 27, 2026 at 6:45 PM
Reposted by Alex Coppock
gmcclendon.bsky.social
JOIN us for this year’s Rebecca Morton conference on experimental political science at NYU! March 6-7. We have a great line up of papers and posters!

Program (scroll down) here: wp.nyu.edu/cesspolitica...

Register (no fee) here: nyu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
Annual NYU CESS Experimental Political Science Conference
wp.nyu.edu
January 27, 2026 at 4:57 PM
Reposted by Alex Coppock
guygrossman.bsky.social
Many of us separate between "family photos", social media (e.g., FB/Insta), and political opinions (BS/Threads). Today is a good time to post on "family" social media so our Trump-voting family and friends understand how mad we are, and to puncture their information bubble.
January 25, 2026 at 3:31 PM
Reposted by Alex Coppock
experimentsapsa.bsky.social
The section is searching for new editors for @jepsjournal.bsky.social ! Please check out the call here, and circulate widely: connect.apsanet.org/s42/editor-s...
Editor Search
connect.apsanet.org
January 21, 2026 at 5:29 PM
Reposted by Alex Coppock
kwcollins.bsky.social
I need everyone in the political communications world who found the moral foundations reframing approach promising (which includes me) to read this paper

It doesn't replicate in new research. It just doesn't work.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
The Poverty of Moral Foundation Messaging
Prominent scholars have argued that reframing political positions and issues in terms of moral foundations that appeal to conservatives or liberals can attract more individual-level support for tho...
www.tandfonline.com
January 8, 2026 at 3:53 PM
Reposted by Alex Coppock
sumitra.bsky.social
new vox dev piece on our recent RCT to counter misinformation in classrooms in india:
January 7, 2026 at 1:58 PM
aecoppock.bsky.social
RIP. Learned so much from this community.

Here's my best-performing SO question.

stackoverflow.com/questions/28...
January 4, 2026 at 9:18 PM
Reposted by Alex Coppock
gmcclendon.bsky.social
Coauthors Liz Sperber, O’Brien Kaaba and I have published 3 papers about youth civic ed and political participation, based on a WhatsApp experiment and a prior in-person pilot conducted in collaboration w/ Caritas Zambia CCMG Zambia @poverty-action.bsky.social and United Council of Churches Zambia
bjpols.bsky.social British Journal of Political Science @bjpols.bsky.social · Dec 29
NEW -

Reducing Gender Gaps in Political Participation with Efficacy Promotion: Evidence from a Civic Education Experiment in Zambia - https://cup.org/4q7MBpt

- @gmcclendon.bsky.social, Elizabeth Sperb & O’Brien Kaaba

#OpenAccess
BJPolS abstract discussing women's participation in politics, civic education, and gender gaps in political efficacy and interest.
December 29, 2025 at 9:43 PM
aecoppock.bsky.social
signal boost!
sumitra.bsky.social Sumitra Badrinathan @sumitra.bsky.social · Dec 16
hi polisci friends!

has anyone here recently run a conjoint experiment on surveyCTO? our programmer is having problems and could use some advice, ty!!
December 16, 2025 at 5:27 PM
aecoppock.bsky.social
Thanks to the authors for compiling this information; this view on our science is truly fascinating.

2023: 40% design-based, 40% model-based, 20% other, among quantitative studies aimed at "explanation" which I understand to mean causal inference.

Where we will be in 2043?
Figure 4: Trends in the use of design-based methods among explanatory empirical quanti-tative papers
December 2, 2025 at 9:54 PM
aecoppock.bsky.social
amazing technical feat and confirmation of a long-standing but tough-to-demonstrate prediction that exposure to online partisan animosity causes decreases in out-party warmth.

Haters gonna hate, sure, but more hate makes them hate more!
msaveski.bsky.social Martin Saveski @msaveski.bsky.social · Dec 1
New paper in Science:

In a platform-independent field experiment, we show that reranking content expressing antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity in social media feeds alters affective polarization.

🧵
Today, social media platforms hold the sole power to study the effects of feed-ranking algorithms. We developed a platform-independent method that reranks participants’ feeds in real time and used this method to conduct a preregistered 10-day field experiment with 1256 participants on X during the 2024 US presidential campaign. Our experiment used a large language model to rerank posts that expressed antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity (AAPA). Decreasing or increasing AAPA exposure shifted out-party partisan animosity by more than 2 points on a 100-point feeling thermometer, with no detectable differences across party lines, providing causal evidence that exposure to AAPA content alters affective polarization. This work establishes a method to study feed algorithms without requiring platform cooperation, enabling independent evaluation of ranking interventions in naturalistic settings.
December 1, 2025 at 6:46 PM
aecoppock.bsky.social
This paper is great up through table 4 -- very nice RCT evidence that free gym increases exercise and course completion.

At table 5, they start controlling for post-treatment variables and drawing unsupported conclusions about mechanisms.

Remove to improve!
mattgrossmann.bsky.social Matt Grossmann @mattgrossmann.bsky.social · Nov 24
University students who were provided with a free gym card (in a randomized experiment) exercised more and had a significant improvement in academic performance. The treated students were also less likely to drop out of classes
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....
University of Chicago Press Journals: Cookie absent
www.journals.uchicago.edu
November 24, 2025 at 9:47 PM
aecoppock.bsky.social
Here's hoping for dozens and dozens of experimental estimates of the effects of anti-corruption messages on vote choice.

We now have enough studies of populist messages for a meta-analysis (papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....); maybe soon we'll be able to do the same for anti-corruption?
November 20, 2025 at 8:15 PM
aecoppock.bsky.social
(prohibition) persuasion in parallel

Had fun reconstructing the data from this 90-year old persuasion experiment that shows that "wet" and "dry" college students update their attitudes in the direction of counterattitudinal persuasive information.

paper: doi.org/10.1080/0022...
plot of reconstructed data The Speech of man is one of the most obvious of his social activi- tics. O u r educational systems lean heavily on the presumption that speech is a vital tool in the stimulation of individual development. T h e lawyer and theologian carry on their work almost entirely through the use of speech. The zealous protection of the right of freedom of speech in democratic societies may be said to be based on the premise that where men do not enjoy freedom of speech they .soon become slaves. Millions of dollars are spent annually by advertisers with a naive faith in the power of the word to convince men and move them to action. The use of speech by man is a psy- chological phenomenon unique in the world of subjects for scientific rtudy. Yet in spite of all these facts, one finds surprisingly few re- ports in the scientific literature of objective measurements of the actual effects of the use of speech on the social environment. the table that provides the stats
November 19, 2025 at 10:16 PM
aecoppock.bsky.social
Audit experimenters of Bluesky... did you know there's a creator on TikTok who is calling churches, synagogues, and mosques asking if they have baby formula for her two month old?

This is a "one condition" study (no causal inference) but hoo boy the descriptives...

www.tiktok.com/@nikalie.mon...
Islamic Center of Charlotte in Charlotte NC. Would help feed a starving baby no hesitation 🥰🥰🥰 #fyp #fypシ #fypシ゚viral #testingyourchurch #church #faith #religion #baby #hungrybabytest #viral #viralvid...
TikTok video by Nikalie 🌈
www.tiktok.com
November 13, 2025 at 3:23 PM
aecoppock.bsky.social
caylen.bsky.social caylen @caylen.bsky.social · Nov 13
a “Space Force”, if you will
dieworkwear.bsky.social derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · Nov 13
we need a department of kerning
November 13, 2025 at 3:17 PM
aecoppock.bsky.social
I'm one of those academics who measure message persuasiveness via survey experiment. I think it's absolutely the right method for doing so.

I think the response to this good point from @anatosaurus.bsky.social is not to abandon survey exps but instead to measure "getting heard" (attention) also.
At first glance, Pollingism espouses a so-simple-a-child-gets-it truth: ask people what matters to them and repeat it back. It often gets short-handed as “say popular things” and, by extension, eschew unpopular ones. However, this notion is built off of assumptions that do not bear out in the real world. Let’s start with an irrefutable claim: a message that nobody hears cannot persuade them. Nor can it get them to act in opposition to the present regime, vote in an election, or select a specific candidate. For years, we have heard entirely accurate lamentations that Democrats are failing to reach people. To be sure, the right’s far better media system merits every alarm bell, not merely for electoral outcomes but also for our hopes of a functional society, free of lies about everything from vaccines to wind turbines to the dining habits of newcomers. But even setting that imbalance aside, Pollingism’s message creation plus testing model fails to consider, let alone optimize for, how we would get a message to be heard. Presently, the dominant approaches to campaign message crafting and evaluation involve (1) randomized-controlled trial (RCT) testing of messages and/or ads, and (2) issue-based polling to figure out which topics voters rate most vital and therefore merit airtime. But these tools cannot tell us what would break through in the cacophony of political noise to which voters are subjected.
November 5, 2025 at 6:13 PM
aecoppock.bsky.social
lol at the MPSA shade in the last line of the FAQ
Will the deadline be extended a week, like other conferences? No!
November 5, 2025 at 4:52 PM
aecoppock.bsky.social
Maybe your texts tell you to "BE A VOTER" like mine.

It all started because of a PNAS paper that claimed that the noun form it increased voter turnout (relative to the verb form ) by 11 to 14 percentage points.

It keeps not replicating, obviously.

Most recently doi.org/10.1017/bpp....
November 4, 2025 at 6:25 PM
aecoppock.bsky.social
Doing meta-reanalysis means my coauthors and I are constantly asking for data.

This month we heard back from 21 of 32 author teams on first email, all responses "yes" or "soon." (nice!)

Innovation: asking authors to post data publicly rather than privately with us via email (4 did, more will!)
October 30, 2025 at 4:26 PM
aecoppock.bsky.social
chat's personalized flattery is getting out of hand
chat really told me: Excellent — that’s exactly what Hadley would do next.
October 29, 2025 at 3:46 PM
aecoppock.bsky.social
rarely have we needed the "suggestive" results from a "factors associated with" design to have the possibility that X affects Y "suggested" to us
dingdingpeng.the100.ci Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · Oct 28
This is an excellent point that generalizes.
Researchers often defend suboptimal practices by referring to future studies with better designs.

But: Why would anybody run those studies when you can just throw a bunch of variables into a regression and make sweeping "preliminary" claims?
October 28, 2025 at 12:29 PM