Dave Fleischer is a political organizer who led the team that pioneered “deep canvassing,” which is a particularly effective form of face-to-face persuasion. It was developed on the ground, but when political scientists put it to a rigorous test, they found that these brief conversations with voters were having a lasting impact (Broockman & Kalla, 2016).

On this episode, Dave shares his background in political campaigns and walks us through an actual example of deep canvassing that made a real difference to someone’s attitudes toward transgender people.

If you want to know more, check out Dave’s Substack, where he’s written a lot of great articles about his team’s approach to persuasion.

Also, doing my due diligence, I’ll link to the movie I mentioned in the intro--“Salesman” (1969)--if you want to dive into classic American cinéma verité.

For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episodes/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Christian Wheeler studies the intersection of opinions, communication, and personal identity. He’s a professor of management and marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In our conversation, we talk about the quirks of teaching in a business school, the promise of improv exercises for learning life skills, and his new research on the reputational benefits (or not) of being good at self-control and willing to listen to people with diverse viewpoints (Hussein & Wheeler, 2024).

For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episodes/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Aviva Philipp-Muller studies why people might pass on science. She’s an Assistant Professor of marketing at the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University. We talked about her research on people’s openness to science in consumer products and how they’re marketed. She also shared her perspective on how anti-science views are an issue of persuasion.

Things that come up in this episode:

• The public science lecture circuit in 19th-century America (Finnegan, 2016; 2021)
• The use of science in advertising consumer products (Philipp-Muller et al., 2023)
• Why people are anti-science and what we can do about it (Philipp-Muller et al., 2022)
• Aviva’s YouTube Channel
• The “Nights with Science” ad from 1863: https://www.ohiohistory.org/science-lectures/

For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episodes/

Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.