David G. Rand | Lightnews

David Rand

@dgrand.bsky.social

32K followers 1.7K following 290 posts

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/ .. more

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David G. Rand is the Erwin H. Schell Professor and Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Source: Wikipedia

Political science 25%

Sociology 23%

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David Rand @dgrand.bsky.social · Dec 16

🚨In Science🚨
Conspiracy beliefs famously resist correction, ya?
WRONG: We show brief convos w GPT4 reduce conspiracy beliefs by ~20%!
-Lasts over 2mo
-Works on entrenched beliefs
-Tailored AI response rebuts specific evidence offered by believers
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
1/
[X->BSky repost]

Reposted by David G. Rand

Ethan Porter @ethanvporter.bsky.social · 15h

Fact-checks improve accuracy. But can they penalize spreaders of misinfo? At @polbehavior.bsky.social, Jacob Ausubel, Annika Davies and I show that the answer is yes--sometimes. Unknown misinfo producers can be penalized, but well-known figures get off. Link: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The Reputational Penalty: How Fact-Checking Can Penalize Those Who Spread Misinformation - Political Behavior

Whether or not political leaders pay a price for spreading misinformation has profound implications for democracy. In this paper, we identify the conditions under which corrections of misinformation c...

link.springer.com

David Rand @dgrand.bsky.social · 17h

I'm trying to understand what this means and I haven't succeeded yet. Any chance you'd want to break to down more for us bskyers?

Reposted by David G. Rand

Jeff Greene @jeffgreene.bsky.social · 18h

Adults who were required to use #GenAI to answer LSAT questions did better than a no-AI control group, but the GenAI group also exhibited greater metacognitive inaccuracy. I'd like to see some conceptual replications before drawing firm conclusions. #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky

AI makes you smarter but none the wiser: The disconnect between performance and metacognition

Optimizing human–AI interaction requires users to reflect on their performance critically, yet little is known about generative AI systems’ effect on …

doi.org

Reposted by David G. Rand, Mohsen Mosleh

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 5d

"While high-quality content is posted more and receives more total engagement across platforms...a given author attracts higher levels of engagement when they post lower-quality content"

"pattern we find seems to be driven more by an underperformance of particularly popular high-quality outlets"

Divergent patterns of engagement with partisan and low-quality news across seven social media platforms | PNAS

In recent years, social media has become increasingly fragmented, as platforms evolve and new alternatives emerge. Yet most research studies a sing...

www.pnas.org

David Rand @dgrand.bsky.social · 20d

For me, the point of Multiverse analysis is when there are multiple ways of analyzing the data that all seem reasonable. So it's not that you just throw in any possible model and drown out the reasonable models in the specified ones, but rather that you show robustness among reasonable models

Reposted by David G. Rand

Behavior Change for Good Initiative @bcfginitiative.bsky.social · 20d

Directions of Polarization, Social Norms, and Trust in Societies—a workshop organized by Team Scientist @dgrand.bsky.social, BCFG collaborator Eugen Dimant & colleagues—is now open for registration.

Register before October 30th: sites.google.com/view/polariz...

Reposted by Anne Applebaum, Joanna Bryson, Jan W. Mueller , and 2 more Anne Applebaum, Joanna Bryson, Jan W. Mueller, David G. Rand, Susan Hyde

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Oct 9

Regrettably relevant research today

Disguised Repression: Targeting Opponents with Nonpolitical Crimes to Undermine Dissent
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Reposted by Jonathan Portes, Kori Schake, Anna O. Law , and 7 more Jonathan Portes, Kori Schake, Anna O. Law, Richard S.J. Tol, David G. Rand, Gordon Pennycook, Nathan Nunn, David L. Ortega, Amy W. Ando, Mark Rice

Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · Sep 22

Serious scholars have examined what happens when we change the number of H1-B visas issued.

Cities that get more H1-B immigrants subsequently see the wages of natives *rise* substantially.

Skilled immigrants bring new ideas, fill labor shortages and make us all more productive.

Reposted by David G. Rand

Mark Chin @mememedianmode.bsky.social · Sep 11

What is taught in schools matters for political behaviors.
"Curriculum, political participation, and career choice" in REStat.
doi.org/10.1162/rest...

Reposted by Brendan Nyhan, Fabio Giglietto

David Rand @dgrand.bsky.social · Aug 31

This is such a great idea/service!! Have Brendan-bot give you pre-submission comments on your paper!

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Aug 27

Just made a manuscript/PAP feedback GPT built from 150+ previous peer reviews - identifies problems and provides actionable feedback on the points that I raise most frequently
chatgpt.com/g/g-68af4d19...

Anyone can use - try it out! (Editors/authors: feel free to cut me out of the loop 😉.)

ChatGPT - Manuscript review assistant

A conversational AI system that listens, learns, and challenges

chatgpt.com

Reposted by David G. Rand

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Aug 28

Cong Rs & Ds "became more critical of the media between the 1960s & the 1990s and have polarized since. Rs...more negative about the media than at any time since 1939...elite criticism predicts subsequent declines in copartisans’ perceptions of journalists"
s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/assets.prod....

Reposted by David G. Rand

Dan Hirschman @asociologist.bsky.social · Aug 28

"Alternative realities are endogenously conspiratorial to resist evidence better."

Fascinating to see this kind of paper in the American Economic Review! www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

A Model of Populism as a Conspiracy Theory

(September 2025) - We model populism as the dissemination of a false "alternative reality," according to which the intellectual elite conspires against the populist for purely ideological reasons. If ...

www.aeaweb.org

Reposted by David G. Rand, Jennifer A. Richeson, Richard M. Carpiano

Nick Byrd, Ph.D. @byrdnick.com · Aug 28

More toxic #Twitter posts from US Members of #Congress (MCs) were more likely to be reposted by liberal users — especially toxic posts about #Republicans.

This and more among 13,000,000 users and 1,300,000 posts from 2009 to 2019.

doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

#socialmedia #politics

Reposted by David G. Rand

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Aug 27

ChatGPT - Manuscript review assistant

A conversational AI system that listens, learns, and challenges

chatgpt.com

Reposted by David G. Rand

Matt Grossmann @mattgrossmann.bsky.social · Aug 25

Legislators & staffers have a bias toward thinking the public is evenly divided on policy issues, rather than a conservative bias in perception; prior findings were based on policy questions where the liberal position was more popular
adamzelizer.com/wp-content/u...

adamzelizer.com

Reposted by David G. Rand, Greg Linden, David Gamage

Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · Aug 23

It seems like there is not enough of a policy response to the existence of self-driving cars, with 57M miles of data, Waymo’s autonomous vehicles experience 85% less serious injuries & 79% less injuries overall than cars with human drivers

2.4 million are injured & 40k killed in US accidents a year

Reposted by David G. Rand, Melanie C. Green

Taylor Lorenz @taylorlorenz.bsky.social · Aug 22

A comprehensive review of research on the topic shows that “educating students in responsible phone use is a more sustainable and wholistic attempt to address problematic usage rather than enacting whole-of-school banning policies.” journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Reposted by David G. Rand

Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · Aug 22

Here is a ‘blame-praise curve’ for the percentage of household chores done by husbands

People think husbands are blameworthy if they do 20%, but praiseworthy if they do 40% (!)

Perceived average is above 40%, so people think below average is still praiseworthy

[Thread]

Reposted by Gordon Pennycook

David Rand @dgrand.bsky.social · Aug 21

I'm excited about this new pre-print arguing that the right risk measure for AI persuasion is what a given model is *willing* to persuade people on, rather than focusing on how effective that persuasion is

FAR.AI @far.ai · Aug 21

1/ Many frontier AIs are willing to persuade on dangerous topics, according to our new benchmark: Attempt to Persuade Eval (APE).

Here’s Google’s most capable model, Gemini 2.5 Pro trying to convince a user to join a terrorist group👇

Reposted by David G. Rand, Gordon Pennycook, Tom Louwerse

FAR.AI @far.ai · Aug 21

Reposted by David G. Rand

John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · Aug 16

Cash transfer reduced AIDS incidence and AIDS-related mortality in Brazil.

Score one for team cash transfers.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Reposted by Lisa W. Fazio, Gordon Pennycook, Adam J. Berinsky , and 1 more Lisa W. Fazio, Gordon Pennycook, Adam J. Berinsky, Enrique Fatás

David Rand @dgrand.bsky.social · Aug 15

Apply for funding to work with me and Gord at Cornell!

Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · Aug 15

Interested in doing a postdoc with me & @dgrand.bsky.social? Consider applying to Cornell's Klarman Fellowship: as.cornell.edu/research/kla...

It involves a competitive internal application process, but it's 3 years of funding @$80k/year

Please email me/Dave if you're interested! Oct 15th deadline

Klarman Fellowships

The Klarman Fellowships in the College of Arts & Sciences provide postdoctoral opportunities to early-career scholars of outstanding talent, initiative and promise. Among the most selective of its kin...

as.cornell.edu

Reposted by David G. Rand, Nicholas A. Christakis, Gordon Hodson , and 4 more David G. Rand, Nicholas A. Christakis, Gordon Hodson, Hugo Mercier, Mark J. Brandt, Melanie C. Green, Dean Eckles

Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · Aug 15

Klarman Fellowships

as.cornell.edu

Reposted by David G. Rand

John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · Aug 15

"A zero-sum mindset is strongly associated with more support for government redistribution, race- and gender-based affirmative action, and more restrictive immigration policies."

Reposted by David G. Rand

Adam K. Fetterman @akfetterman.bsky.social · Aug 14

New paper accepted at Public Understanding of Science with Nick Evans:

"Shedding light on public perceptions of scientists who engage in wrongness admission amidst a failed replication"

tl;dr: Wrongness admission confers reputational benefits to scientists.

fettermanlab.weebly.com/uploads/8/1/...

fettermanlab.weebly.com

Reposted by David G. Rand, Catherine J. Frieman

Dan Silverman @dmsilverman.bsky.social · Aug 14

We did this whole debate with terrorism post-9/11.

I even ran a study testing it. In fact, no, providing accurate info about the extremely low personal risks posed by terrorism on U.S. soil led to people having much more accurate beliefs. Some even thanked us for the chance to learn in the debrief!

Reposted by David G. Rand, Laia Balcells, Robert C. Richards

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Aug 9

Would you want to invest in a country where the regime expropriates assets from its opponents?

In related news, "personalist regimes are characterized by lower total factor productivity and ... low private investment, poor public-goods provision, and conflict" www.nber.org/system/files...

Reposted by David G. Rand

Timothy Caulfield @caulfieldtim.bsky.social · Aug 6

Normalizing lies...👇

Repeated exposure effect on moral condemnation of fake news www.nature.com/articles/s41... @dgrand.bsky.social

"...frequently seen headlines receive lower moral condemnation"

"Without this condemnation, the publication & spreading of online misinformation may be more common."

Reposted by Norbert Schwarz, David G. Rand, Gordon Pennycook , and 2 more Norbert Schwarz, David G. Rand, Gordon Pennycook, Brendan Nyhan, Jon Green

Jenny Allen @jennyallen.bsky.social · Aug 6

New in TiCS w @dgrand.bsky.social @gordpennycook.bsky.social

It’s been ~10yrs since misinfo research exploded but our paradigms are stuck in the post-2016 “fake news” model

Time for new approaches:
o True/False → Content that misleads
o Belief → Behavior
o Eval interventions in ambiguous settings

Reposted by David G. Rand, Boris Holzer, Awais Aftab , and 5 more David G. Rand, Boris Holzer, Awais Aftab, Thucydides, Brian Weatherson, Patrick Präg, Johannes Breuer, Linards Udris

Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · Aug 6

We built the simplest possible social media platform. No algorithms. No ads. Just LLM agents posting and following.

It still became a polarization machine.

Then we tried six interventions to fix social media.

The results were… not what we expected.

arxiv.org/abs/2508.03385

Can We Fix Social Media? Testing Prosocial Interventions using Generative Social Simulation

Social media platforms have been widely linked to societal harms, including rising polarization and the erosion of constructive debate. Can these problems be mitigated through prosocial interventions?...

arxiv.org

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