Behavior Change for Good Initiative

A new article by Team Scientists Hengchen Dai, Silvia Saccardo, Kevin Volpp & collaborators synthesizes research on improving health outcomes by redesigning patient & clinician decision environments.

https://bit.ly/4tTHbQ7

A new Nature paper co-led by Team Scientist Barnabas Szaszi had 457 researchers reanalyze 100 social and behavioral science studies. Most reanalyses reached the original conclusion — but reanalysts fully agreed with each other on only 34% of studies.
https://bit.ly/4fABu5X

Large language models display a "parahuman" susceptibility to classic persuasion techniques.
A new PNAS News paper by Co-Director Angela Duckworth, Team Scientists Dr. Robert Cialdini & Christophe Van den Bulte, and collaborators finds that across 126,000 conversations, persuasion principles increased LLM compliance with objectionable requests.
https://bit.ly/4uqTk00

Persuading large language models to comply with objectionable requests | PNAS Are large language models (LLMs) susceptible to the same persuasive appeals as humans? We tested whether classic persuasion principles (authority, ...

Team Scientist podcast roundup:
Greg Walton on Hidden Brain: https://bit.ly/3Rh2X2F

Abby Sussman on Speaking of Psychology https://bit.ly/43ipOgP

Richard Thaler on Choiceology https://bit.ly/4nO5bTm

Do You Feel Loved? - Hidden Brain Media What’s the difference between being loved and feeling loved?

Learn more about Paschal Sheeran, a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill and Team Scientist whose research explores how people translate intentions into action and what helps them achieve health behavior change.

Visit his website: https://psheeran.web.unc.edu/

A megastudy by Team Scientist Jan G. Voelkel and collaborators tested 12 brief digital mental health programs in 7,505 adults with depression. Nearly all improved how people felt immediately, and 2 significantly reduced depression a month later.

https://go.nature.com/4bV10AJ

New research by Team Scientist Ayelet Fishbach and collaborators finds that giving to fewer people, rather than more, signals stronger social connection to each recipient, and makes gifts more valued and more likely to be reciprocated.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2026.104478

Research in Science by Team Scientist Dave Rand and collaborators found that Large Language Models are more persuasive when they pack their replies with facts.

However, LLMs optimized for persuasion were less accurate — generating more claims, but fewer reliable ones.

The levers of political persuasion with conversational artificial intelligence There are widespread fears that conversational artificial intelligence (AI) could soon exert unprecedented influence over human beliefs. In this work, in three large-scale experiments (N = 76,977 responses from 42,357 people), we deployed 19 large ...

In a Nature study, Team Scientists Barnabas Szaszi, Gideon Nave, Michael Inzlicht and collaborators attempted replications of 274 findings from social and behavioral science journals. 55.1% were successfully replicated.

Investigating the replicability of the social and behavioural sciences - Nature A large-scale study on the replicability of claims from social and behavioural science journals reports that about half of the results replicate in the same patterns as the original study.

A megastudy in Nature Climate Change by Team Scientists Jan G. Voelkel, Robb Willer, and collaborators tested 10 different persuasive passages about climate change among 13,544 Americans. Emphasizing scientific consensus most strongly increased belief in climate change.

A registered report megastudy on the persuasiveness of the most-cited climate messages - Nature Climate Change How to effectively communicate climate change to the public has long been studied and debated. Through a registered report megastudy, researchers tested the ten most-cited climate change messaging strategies published, finding that many had significant, but small, effects on climate change attitudes...

Tomorrow and Friday, the National Academies is hosting a virtual Workshop on Enhancing Scientific Integrity in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Don’t miss what is sure to be an unforgettable set of conversations including NIH Director Bhattacharya in conversation with Team Scientist Emily Oster.

Free & open to the public.

Register: https://bit.ly/3OAVVVk