Brendan Nyhan’s research while affiliated with Dartmouth College and other places

Introduction We present a unique multi-country, two-wave dataset of 42,417 survey responses drawn from nationally representative samples of citizens from the G-7 countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, and USA. This data note outlines the motivation and methodology of the survey instrument and describes the measures contained in the dataset. We highlight areas for future research. Methods We fielded an online survey over two waves (January 27 to February 26 [n = 24,303] and wave 2 from March 6 to May 12 [n = 18,114]) measuring a range of demographic, social, political, and psychological variables. Samples were nationally representative by age, education, gender, and subnational region. Each wave included of three experiments (one conjoint and two between-subjects) to facilitate randomised evaluation of behavioural health policies promoting the uptake of COVID-19 booster vaccinations. Results The dataset has produced two peer-reviewed publications at the time of writing ([Banerjee, S., John, P., Nyhan, B., Hunter, A., Koenig, R., Lee-Whiting, B., Loewen, P. J., McAndrews, J., & Savani, M. M. (2024). Thinking about default enrollment lowers vaccination intentions and public support in G7 countries. PNAS Nexus, 3(4), pgae093]; [Koenig, R., Savani, M. M., Lee-Whiting, B., McAndrews, J., Banerjee, S., Hunter, A., John, P., Loewen, P. J., & Nyhan, B. (2024). Public support for more stringent vaccine policies increases with vaccine effectiveness. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 1748]). A summary report is posted online (https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publications/overcoming-barriers-to-vaccination-by-empowering-citizens-to-make-deliberate-choices/). Additional research outputs are currently under preparation. Discussion Our dataset combines observational and experimental data on behavioural health policies, offering numerous insights. First, the dataset's extensive size and geographical diversity enables comparative analysis of public health issues involving social, political, and behavioural factors. Second, the dataset is suited to advanced statistical methods that can explore heterogeneity in the uptake of behavioural health policies, such as vaccine nudges. Third, the timing of the data collection, coinciding with the rise of the Omicron variant, provides valuable insights into why some previously vaccinated individuals might hesitate to receive additional doses, potentially improving our understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic and possible responses to pandemics and other public health emergencies in the future.

New research offers public-focused solutions, but elites and institutions cannot be ignored

We investigate the relationship between education and antisemitism using unique individual-level survey data on antisemitism from more than 100 countries. Our findings show that education is associated with greater favorability toward Jews, but the relationship between education and endorsement of antisemitic stereotypes and conspiracy theories varies between countries. In countries that actively supported recent statements condemning Holocaust denial and antisemitism at the United Nations—which we use as a proxy for country-level opposition to antisemitism in education and politics—greater education is associated with reduced endorsement of antisemitic stereotypes. By contrast, more educated people are more likely to endorse antisemitic stereotypes than less educated people in countries that declined to endorse those statements. These descriptive findings provide new evidence about the association between education and intolerance.

Policymakers often face a conundrum between being transparent about policies and ensuring that those policies are effective. This challenge is particularly relevant for behavioral nudges, which are not usually disclosed. Rather than avoiding transparency, we suggest that policy-makers encourage citizens to reflect on nudges to help them understand their own views and align those views with their behaviors. Using data from an online survey experiment with 24,303 respondents in the G7, we examine the impact of reflection on a hypothetical default nudge policy for COVID-19 booster appointments. Contrary to expectations, participants say they would be less likely to get the booster when automatically enrolled compared to a control condition. Similarly, encouraging citizens to think about the status quo (baseline) policy also reduces intentions for boosters. These interventions had no effect on approval of the policy. Further, encouraging people to think about automatic enrollment decreased approval of the policy and further decreased their intentions to get vaccinated. These findings suggest that reflection on a nudge can increase backlash from a nudge and also elicit policy disapproval, thereby aligning policy support with behavioral intentions.

Under what conditions do citizens support coercive public policies? Although recent research suggests that people prefer policies that preserve freedom of choice, such as behavioural nudges, many citizens accepted stringent policy interventions like fines and mandates to promote vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic—a pattern that may be linked to the unusually high effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. We conducted a large online survey experiment (N = 42,417) in the Group of Seven (G-7) countries investigating the relationship between a policy’s effectiveness and public support for stringent policies. Our results indicate that public support for stringent vaccination policies increases as vaccine effectiveness increases, but at a modest scale. This relationship flattens at higher levels of vaccine effectiveness. These results suggest that intervention effectiveness can be a significant predictor of support for coercive policies but only up to some threshold of effectiveness.

Fake news emerged as an apparent global problem during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Addressing it requires a multidisciplinary effort to define the nature and extent of the problem, detect fake news in real time, and mitigate its potentially harmful effects. This will require a better understanding of how the Internet spreads content, how people process news, and how the two interact. We review the state of knowledge in these areas and discuss two broad potential mitigation strategies: better enabling individuals to identify fake news, and intervention within the platforms to reduce the attention given to fake news. The cooperation of Internet platforms (especially Facebook, Google, and Twitter) with researchers will be critical to understanding the scale of the issue and the effectiveness of possible interventions.

Why are prominent news media retractions so rare? Using data from a survey experiment in which respondents view simulated Twitter newsfeeds, we demonstrate the dilemma facing news organizations that have published false information. Encouragingly, media retractions are effective at informing the public – they increase the accuracy of news consumers’ beliefs about the retracted reporting more than information from third parties questioning the original reporting or even the combination of the two. However, trust in the news outlet declines after a retraction, though this effect is small both substantively and in standardized terms relative to the increase in belief accuracy. This reputational damage persists even if the outlet issues a retraction before a third party questions the story. In a social media environment that frequently subjects reporting to intense scrutiny, the journalistic mission of news organizations to inform the public will increasingly conflict with organizational incentives to avoid admitting error.

Democratic governments vary in the extent to which they encourage citizens to reflect on the policies that they enact. This trade-off is particularly acute for behavioral nudges like setting default choices, which are often not made explicit to citizens. Using data from an online survey experiment administered to 24,303 respondents in the G7, this paper tests the effects of encouraging citizens to reflect on a hypothetical default nudge policy (automatic enrolment for COVID-19 booster appointments) on both vaccination intentions and policy support. Contrary to expectations, individuals report that they would be less likely to get the booster in the default nudge condition compared to a control condition in which citizens would initiate their own booster appointments. At the same time, individuals were more supportive of the default nudge policy than the control condition policy. However, encouraging people to reflect on the nudge eliminates the increase in policy approval it otherwise generates while strengthening the negative effect it has on vaccination intentions. These results suggest that reflection may increase backlash but can better align expressed policy approval with the behavioral effects the nudge generates.

Growing concern about dubious information online threatens the credibility of legitimate news. We examine two possible mechanisms for this effect on social media. First, people might view all news on social media as less credible. Second, questionable information elsewhere in a news feed might discredit legitimate news coverage. Findings from a preregistered experiment confirm that people see information on Facebook as less credible than identical information on news websites, though the effect is small, suggesting that observational data overstates this platform penalty. Prior exposure to low (versus high) credibility information on Facebook also reduces engagement with a target article, but not its perceived credibility. However, exploratory analyses show that the effects of prior exposure to low credibility information vary depending on the plausibility of the target article, decreasing the credibility of a less plausible article (a spillover effect) but increasing the credibility of a more plausible one (a contrast effect).