Scott Clifford

@scottclifford.bsky.social

1.5K followers 650 following 49 posts

Professor of Political Science.
http://scottaclifford.com/

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Political science 37%

Sociology 20%

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Scott Clifford @scottclifford.bsky.social · 2d

Thankfully, no!

Scott Clifford @scottclifford.bsky.social · 2d

JEPS has been pretty steady. Arguably much less gain for experiments with relatively clean and simple data. So any change will likely be concentrated in specific types of research.

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, Alexander Wuttke, Rebecca Sear , and 3 more Dorothy Bishop, Alexander Wuttke, Rebecca Sear, Andrew K Przybylski, Scott Clifford, Paul Nightingale

Darren Dahly @statsepi.bsky.social · 4d

A hope for 2026 is that this perspective piece with @wiringthebrain.bsky.social & @deevybee.bsky.social will serve as a template for others who are similarly frustrated with with exaggerated claims and double speak around so much of research. It's ok to point out that the emperor has no clothes!

Cell Press @cellpress.bsky.social · Nov 13

The link between the gut #microbiome and autism is not backed by science, researchers say.

Read the full opinion piece in @cp-neuron.bsky.social: spkl.io/63322AbxpA

@wiringthebrain.bsky.social, @statsepi.bsky.social, & @deevybee.bsky.social

First page of Opinion piece: "Conceptual and methodological flaws undermine claims of a link between the gut microbiome and autism"

Reposted by Scott Clifford

Cambridge University Press Political Science & IR @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org · 5d

This book examines how moral rhetoric is a crucial – and potentially unifying – part of how we experience democratic representation.

Shared Morals: The Role of Moral Rhetoric in Party Politics by @jaeheejung.bsky.social, Coming Soon

https://cup.org/4pCplQa

#Politics #PoliSci 🗺️

Shared Morals

Cambridge Core - Comparative Politics - Shared Morals

cup.org

Reposted by David Lazer, Scott Clifford

Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 20d

Perhaps others have seen it already, but I found this pre-print (first posted in September) deeply troubling, raising concerns about how LLMs used for classification tasks in research open new researcher-degrees-of-freedom, which they call "LLM-hacking" (akin to p-hacking)

arxiv.org/pdf/2509.08825

arxiv.org

John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 22d

Clear evidence that at universities conservatives don't face higher obstacles than liberals to establish student groups + invite outside speakers.

"These results fail to offer support for the view that conservative students encounter more difficulty in efforts to access campus resources."

Reposted by Brendan Nyhan, Scott Clifford, Georg Weizsäcker

Andrew Little @anthlittle.bsky.social · 23d

New paper with Salvo Nunnari which aims to detect (partisan) motivated reasoning (MR) using experimental designs based on information order. This provides a flexible way to detect deviations from Bayesian updating which can be explained by MR.

osf.io/preprints/so...

Scott Clifford @scottclifford.bsky.social · 27d

Yes!! And I'll add some evidence that these agree-disagree type questions seem to be *creating* some conspiracy beliefs.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Do Survey Questions Spread Conspiracy Beliefs? | Journal of Experimental Political Science | Cambridge Core

Do Survey Questions Spread Conspiracy Beliefs? - Volume 10 Issue 2

www.cambridge.org

Reposted by Scott Clifford

PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 28d

Central attitudes in political belief systems are more resistant to change than peripheral attitudes, but not necessarily less amenable to persuasive attempts: https://osf.io/6a8ue

Reposted by Efrén O. Pérez, Scott Clifford, David Darmofal

Yamil Ricardo Velez @yamilrvelez.bsky.social · Dec 12

This paper was a blast to work on. The challenge: present party positions across many issues, in real time, using language voters actually use. 🧵 on why we went with a more involved retrieval-based approach and where I think these tools are headed.

Semra Sevi @semrasevi.bsky.social · Dec 8

🚨Excited to share our new paper published in PNAS (joint with @yamilrvelez.bsky.social and Don Green)! AI can enhance political knowledge and provide balanced information about politics with proper guardrails and vetted sources (e.g., party platforms).

www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Reposted by Scott Clifford

Toni Rodon @tonirodon.bsky.social · Dec 8

Partisan voters can reward candidates who stick to the party line even on unpopular issues. Under uncertainty, voters infer that ideologically rigid candidates are also more likely to back the party's other, more popular positions academic.oup.com/sf/advance-a...

Why moderate voters choose extreme candidates: voter uncertainty as a driver of elite polarization

Abstract. Representative democracy depends on elected officials reflecting voters’ policy preferences. Yet, US elected officials are more ideologically ext

academic.oup.com

Reposted by Will Jennings, Efrén O. Pérez, Scott Clifford , and 1 more Will Jennings, Efrén O. Pérez, Scott Clifford, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Drew Engelhardt @amengel.bsky.social · Dec 4

We really need to stop asking items like this using agree-disagree scales or comparable formats. These estimates aren't informative.

academic.oup.com/poq/article/...

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Reposted by Scott Clifford

Political Analysis @polanalysis.bsky.social · Dec 4

They find that survey professionalism is common, but there is limited evidence that survey professionals lower data quality. Professionals do not systematically differ from non-professionals and don’t exhibit more response instability. Read the paper here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Survey Professionalism: New Evidence from Web Browsing Data | Political Analysis | Cambridge Core

Survey Professionalism: New Evidence from Web Browsing Data

www.cambridge.org

Reposted by Scott Clifford

Political Analysis @polanalysis.bsky.social · Dec 4

Currently in FirstView: In “Survey Professionalism: New Evidence from Web Browsing Data,” Bernhard Clemm von Hohenberg, @tiagoventura.bsky.social, Tiago Ventura, @jonathannagler.bsky.social, @ericka.bric.digital, & Magdalena Wojcieszak provide evidence on survey professionalism across three samples.

Reposted by Cyrus Samii, Jacob Montgomery, Paul E. Johnson , and 4 more Cyrus Samii, Jacob Montgomery, Paul E. Johnson, Scott Clifford, Andrew L. Whitehead, William Myers, David Darmofal

Matt Graham @mattgraham.bsky.social · Dec 4

Survey experiments' popularity in political science is getting attention. What is good and bad about them? How can one maximize their benefits and mitigate their downsides?

Greg Huber and I wrote up our thoughts:
Paywalled: doi.org/10.1016/bs.h...
Free: m-graham.com/papers/Huber...

Reposted by Mark J. Brandt, Scott Clifford, Tom van der Meer , and 4 more Mark J. Brandt, Scott Clifford, Tom van der Meer, Samuel Workman, Nazita Lajevardi, Joost van Spanje, David Darmofal

Dave @daveamp.bsky.social · Dec 2

Political Scientists: I am the chair of the committee that is picking the next editor of @polbehavior.bsky.social. If you are interested, I'd be happy to chat about it (and I know the current editors would be too).

You can find the call for proposals here:

Political Behavior

NOTE FROM THE EDITORS OF POLITICAL BEHAVIOR: We have recently transitioned from Editorial Manager to SNAPP. The submission process for SNAPP requires ...

link.springer.com

Reposted by Brendan Nyhan, Scott Clifford, Alessandro Rigolon

David Broockman @dbroockman.bsky.social · Nov 25

NEW PAPER w/ @cselmendorf.bsky.social & @jkalla.bsky.social:

An under-appreciated reason why voters oppose dense new housing, especially in less-dense neighborhoods: they think it looks ugly and want to prevent that, even in other neighborhoods.

Some of what we think is NIMBYism might not be!

Reposted by Hugo Mercier, Scott Clifford, Erika Franklin Fowler , and 2 more Hugo Mercier, Scott Clifford, Erika Franklin Fowler, Alessandro Nai, David Darmofal

Yamil Ricardo Velez @yamilrvelez.bsky.social · Nov 24

As @seanjwestwood.bsky.social's terrifying new PNAS article demonstrates, LLMs can now pass almost every attention check, mirror personas, stay consistent across pages, and systematically bias responses in the aggregate.

So here’s a different angle: verify physical presence, not text.

Reposted by Linda J. Skitka, Efrén O. Pérez, Calvin K. Lai , and 2 more Linda J. Skitka, Efrén O. Pérez, Calvin K. Lai, Scott Clifford, Michael W. Kraus

tagerai.bsky.social @tagerai.bsky.social · Nov 19

A thread on our recent paper (w/Raihan Alam @raihanalam) in PNAS on why punishment often fails and what it means for crime, cooperation, democracy, and the rule of law. I’m super excited for it, it’s the lab’s most extensive experimental work to date. Check it out! 1/
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

www.pnas.org

Reposted by Mark J. Brandt, Scott Clifford

Drew Engelhardt @amengel.bsky.social · Nov 19

Do any meta-analyses or other reflection pieces exist that catalog the sorts of mechanisms specifically, and outcomes generally, studied as consequences of providing white Americans information on their declining population share?

Reposted by Cas Mudde, Will Jennings, Scott Clifford , and 8 more Cas Mudde, Will Jennings, Scott Clifford, Markus Wagner, Tom van der Meer, Matthijs Rooduijn, Sebastian Karcher, Juanjo Medina, Stuart J. Turnbull‐Dugarte, Joost van Spanje, Bonnie N. Field

Roderik Rekker @roderikrekker.bsky.social · Nov 16

(1/10) 🚨Preprint alert!🚨

In this article, I challenge claims of a generational rise of conservative men. In the media and recent academic publications, the so-called ‘youth gender gap’ has been interpreted as a generational phenomenon.

doi.org/10.31234/osf...

OSF

doi.org

Scott Clifford @scottclifford.bsky.social · Nov 12

I still hear reviewer 2 saying "yes but in this case..."

Reposted by Scott Clifford, Kate Starbird

William J. Brady @williambrady.bsky.social · Nov 11

✨New preprint! Why do people express outrage online? In 4 studies we develop a taxonomy of online outrage motives, test what motives people report, what they infer for in- vs. out-partisans, and how motive inferences shape downstream intergroup consequences. Led by @felix-chenwei.bsky.social 🧵👇

Reposted by Scott Clifford, Johanna Rickne

Damien Bol @damienbol.bsky.social · Nov 5

New WP on political violence in democracies with the fantastic @dianebolet.bsky.social and @bjarneck.bsky.social. Sadly very topical, but with some positive results

osf.io/preprints/so...

1/

The image shows the paper's title and abstract.

Reposted by Scott Clifford

Good Authority @goodauth.bsky.social · Oct 31

Very few Americans support actual political violence.

Many more support intimidation.

Almost no one thinks it’s appropriate to kill your political opponents, but many more would dox them.

Read the latest: goodauthority.org/news/very-fe...

Very few Americans support actual political violence. Many more support intimidation.

Almost no one thinks it’s appropriate to kill your political opponents, but many more would dox them.

goodauthority.org

Reposted by David Lazer, Brendan Nyhan, Jon Green , and 2 more David Lazer, Brendan Nyhan, Jon Green, Scott Clifford, Ben Worthy

Matt Graham @mattgraham.bsky.social · Oct 27

After a huge post-election flip in economic perceptions, I thought Democrats and Republicans might be lying to pollsters to send a partisan message — but I was wrong!

New in the Journal of Experimental Political Science (open access): doi.org/10.1017/XPS....

Reposted by Scott Clifford

British Journal of Political Science @bjpols.bsky.social · Oct 14

#OpenAccess from August 2025 -

Cleaning up Politics: Anti-Corruption Appeals in Electoral Campaigns - cup.org/4msGB8X

"Surprisingly, a clean disciplinary record does not substantively enhance a candidate’s anticorruption appeal..."

- Sofia Vera

BJPolS abstract discussing the impact of anti-corruption policies in electoral politics with a focus on recent elections around the globe.

Reposted by Scott Clifford

Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · Sep 18

A cautiously optimistic result on AI and disinformation.

A week before 2024 UK elections 13% of all voters used AI to ask about political topics. A randomized trial found this may be good: using AI led to similar gains in true knowledge as doing web research, regardless of model & prompt used.

Reposted by Jacob Montgomery, Scott Clifford, Eric Hehman , and 1 more Jacob Montgomery, Scott Clifford, Eric Hehman, Nathan P. Kalmoe

xavier roberts-gaal @xrg.bsky.social · Sep 15

We often hear from reviewers: "what about demand effects?" So we developed a method to eliminate them. Something weird happened during testing: We couldn’t detect demand effects in the first place! (1/8)

Summary of design and results from our three studies. (A: Design) Each study used a similar experimental design, measuring both positive and negative demand in an online experiment, with three commonly-used task types (dictator game, vignette, intervention). Our experiments had ns ≈ 250 per cell. (B: Results) Observed demand effects were statistically indistinguishable from zero. The plot shows means and 95% confidence intervals for standardized mean differences derived from frequentist analyses of each experiment and an inverse variance-weighted fixed-effect estimator pooling all experiments (solid bars). Prior measurements of experimenter demand from a previous dictator game experiment (de Quidt et al., 2018; standardized mean difference from regression coefficient) and a meta-analysis primarily including small-sample, in-person studies (Coles et al., 2025; Hedge’s g statistic) are also shown for comparison (striped bars). The main text includes Bayesian analyses that quantify our uncertainty.

Reposted by Mark J. Brandt, Alexander Wuttke, Scott Clifford , and 2 more Mark J. Brandt, Alexander Wuttke, Scott Clifford, Alessandro Nai, Roman Senninger

Kristina Bakkær Simonsen @kristinabsimonsen.bsky.social · Sep 15

📣 MORAL APPEALS IN POLITICAL COMMUNICATION 📣
New version of @twidmann.bsky.social and my working paper answering:
* Have moral appeals increased over time?
* Is the tendency to moralize ideologically patterned?
* Are some topics consistently more moralized than others?
osf.io/preprints/os...

OSF

osf.io

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