#117: Happiness As a Tool for Behavior Change with Liz Dunn & Jiaying Zhao

Rhia Catapano studies what happens when people think of an opinion in terms of what they support versus what they oppose. It turns out that this simple difference carries important implications. Even if we're talking about the same basic opinion, something shifts when it's about support than opposition. In our conversation, Rhia shares her findings and what it means for people who want to communicate more effectively.At the top of the show, I discuss Issue 1 in Ohio from 2023. Most of the background details for that were drawn from this NYT article.Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScienceLearn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Demi Oba is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School. He studies the nature of communication. In our conversation, Demi shares some recent research on the different types of "hedges" people make when expressing uncertainty in a claim. These types of uncertainty matter for how persuasive a person can be. In fact, sometimes, being the right kind of uncertain can be more influential than expressing confidence.Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScienceLearn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Jae-Hee Jung is an assistant professor at Rice University, where she studies party politics, political behavior, and political psychology in Western democracies. Her research focuses on the strategic use of moral rhetoric (i.e., appeals to fundamental notions of right and wrong) and how it shapes political competition and voter psychology.We talk about her work analyzing political manifestos, the psychological mechanisms like pride that mobilize a party's base, and the surprising finding that inclusive moral messaging can actually build sympathy across the aisle without causing a partisan backlash. Along the way, we see how framing policies around core principles rather than simple costs and benefits changes the way voters connect with political parties over the long haul.Dr. Jung's new book is Shared Morals: The Role of Moral Rhetoric in Party Politics.Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScienceLearn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Elizabeth Dunn and Jiaying Zhao are professors at the University of British Columbia, where they study social psychology and climate behavioral science, respectively. Together, they explore the intersection of human happiness and environmental action, challenging the traditional "guilt and shame" narratives that dominate climate communication. We talk about their new book: Leave the Lights On: How Joyful Decisions Can Save Our Species, which explores how you can address climate change by taking actions that make you feel happy. We see how reframing environmental choices around joy can create a more effective, contagious movement for behavior change. Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScienceLearn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Yamil Velez is an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University, where he studies what makes political opinions hard to shift. He’s been using innovative new methods to test important ideas about how people arrive at their views and what it takes to change them. We talk about the relationship between beliefs and opinions, why correcting misinformation doesn’t necessarily move opinions, and what happens when persuasive messages are tailored to the specific reasons people hold their views. Yamil shares his work using large language models to generate personalized arguments, showing that people will update their beliefs pretty readily—but only some of those belief changes actually translate into attitude change. Along the way, we explore what this means for persuasion, polarization, and the future of using AI to study (and maybe influence) public opinion. Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScienceLearn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Sylvia Perry is a social psychologist and Associate Professor at Northwestern University, where she directs the Social Cognition and Social Identity Lab. She studies the psychological mechanisms that shape how people recognize and confront their own biases, as well as how those biases are transmitted across generations.We talk about her research on racial socialization, specifically focusing on how white parents navigate—or frequently avoid—conversations about race with their children. Sylvia shares insights from her research on facilitating parent-child discussions about race and racism. We discuss why color-conscious messaging is more effective than "colorblind" approaches at reducing children’s implicit biases and how addressing subtle microaggressions can be more impactful for a child’s development than discussing overt prejudice alone.Along the way, we explore the privilege underlying the freedom to opt out of these difficult conversations and offer practical takeaways for parents looking to foster empathy and a sense of fairness in their own homes.Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScienceLearn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Alex Kustov studies public opinion about immigration—why it’s so durable, why it becomes so politically explosive, and what (if anything) can make it more popular. We talk about the surprisingly stable foundations of immigration attitudes, why only a small fraction of people are categorically opposed, and how partisanship shapes the debate. Alex also explains what he calls the “altruist’s dilemma”: why people who are genuinely altruistic can still be skeptical of immigration, and how policies that are demonstrably beneficial to receiving communities can shift that skepticism. Along the way, we explore what it would mean to design immigration policy not just to be good, but to be visibly and intuitively good to the public.Dr. Kustov's recent book is In Our Interest: How Democracies Can Make Immigration Popular. He also writes the Substack Popular By Design.The episode's introduction is from Episode 57: Media, Norms, and Social Change with Sohad Murrar.Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScienceLearn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

I'm excited to share a preview of a new podcast I think you’d enjoy: Mind Games.What if you could hypnotize yourself into a better you? Or.... secretly hypnotize others into giving you anything you want? That’s the promise of NLP. Mind Games is an investigation into the world of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology that has quietly shaped industries, institutions, and belief systems around the world.Part science experiment, part investigation, part true crime thriller, Mind Games tells the story of NLP and its crazy cast of disciples, including the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune, took it to Fortune 500 boardrooms, and whose gruesome murder trial did little to stop its rise.Find Mind Games on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. New episodes out Tuesdays.Listen here: swap.fm/l/listen-to-mind-gamesJoin me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScienceLearn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Steven Rathje is a postdoc at New York University and an incoming assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He studies the psychology of technology, which includes how people engage with a variety of digital tools, especially those with social implications. We talk about his work on what makes content go viral online and the consequences of AI chatbots that are more agreeable than maybe they ought to be. Along the way, we see how basic principles of psychology govern social life in these digital spaces, too.A few things that come up:Lack of change in conspiracy beliefs over time (Uscinski et al., 2022)The psychology of virality (Rathje & Van Bavel, 2025)Testing the effects of AI sycophancy (Rathje et al., 2025)Join me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScienceLearn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.

Greg Murphy studies the psychology of concepts. How do we use language to understand things, and how do we sort the world into categories? In our conversation, we consider what makes a category, why we love them, and where they steer us wrong.Dr. Murphy released a book on this topic a few years ago: Categories We Live ByHow We Classify Everyone and EverythingJoin me over at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/OpinionScienceLearn more about Opinion Science and catch up on all the episodes at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/.