Congratulations to lab member Dr. Anandita Sabherwal and BSPL alumn Gregg Sparkman for their new publication in PNAS! Their work posits the following concern - As government and industry backslide on environmental, health, and technology solutions, how can the public be motivated to continue acting on these issues? 

This paper examines how people respond when different societal actors send competing signals. Rather than studying a single source of influence in isolation, we investigate how scientists, the public, government, and industry jointly shape attitudes and behavior.

Across two conjoint experiments spanning more than 40,000 decisions, a behavioral experiment, and a social media field study involving more than 50,000 users, this work finds that scientists and the public are consistently more influential than government and industry in shaping people's attitudes, choices, donations, and willingness to speak out across environmental, health, and technology issues.

Perhaps the most encouraging finding is that when scientists and the public jointly endorse action, they continue to mobilize people even when government and industry oppose it. These results suggest that institutional backsliding does not necessarily lead to public paralysis. Scientific expertise and public support remain powerful forces for collective action.

Amazing job BSPL!