How accurate are people when predicting whether they will vote? These self-predictions are used by political scientists to proxy for political motivation, and by public opinion researcher to predict election outcomes. Phone surveys from three elections, including one survey experiment, are...

Can randomized experiments at the individual level help assess the persuasive effects of campaign tactics? In the contemporary U.S., vote choice is not observable, so one promising research design involves randomizing appeals and then using a survey to measure vote intentions. Here, we analyze...

Can independent groups change voters' beliefs about an incumbent's positions? And, does reframing how candidates' are perceived by changing beliefs about their positions influence actual vote choices? Past laboratory and observational research suggests that candidate reframing is difficult and...

Public opinion researchers, campaigns, and political scientists often rely on self-predicted vote to measure political engagement, allocate resources, and forecast turnout. Despite its importance, little research has examined the accuracy of self-predicted vote responses. Seven pre-election...

How accurate are responses to questions about intentions to vote in an upcoming election? Questions of this type are studied in a range of work in political science to understand the effects of other factors on political engagement, as well as in public opinion research. We analyze six phone...

Ballot initiatives are consequential and common, with total spending on initiative campaigns in the US rivaling that of Presidential campaigns. Observational studies using regression approaches on observational data have alternately found that initiative campaign spending cannot affect...

Behavioral decision research has profoundly changed our understanding of decision-making. Recent research has begun to explore how behavioral insights can influence behavior in the world, at scale. This work often involves field experiments studying outcomes over short time windows. We study a...

Modern campaigns develop databases of detailed information about citizens to inform electoral strategy and to guide tactical efforts. Despite sensational reports about the value of individual consumer data, the most valuable information campaigns acquire comes from the behaviors and direct...

Behavioral science is increasingly being used to develop interventions to influence important behaviors throughout society. We explore three ways that time interacts with psychological processes to affect the impact of behavioral interventions. The first is how and when there would be a lag...

We examine a new intervention to overcome gender biases in hiring, promotion, and job assignments: an "evaluation nudge," in which people are evaluated jointly rather than separately regarding their future performance. Evaluators are more likely to focus on individual performance in joint than...