Social scientists can help collect globally representative training data, embed social insights into model design for AI safety, and strengthen human feedback methods. Great work is happening, but we still need much more social science-computer science cross-talk.

Building denser, more interconnected communities might not just boost wellbeing—it could also help heal political divides.

We encourage future research to explore this possibility further.

Many thanks to coauthors @kurtjgray.bsky.social and Kevin Lewis!

Full open-access paper here: rdcu.be/ePGvH

Second, all main results are correlational. Our experimental manipulation produced only a series of indirect effects culminating in lower partisan animosity.

We hope these results inspire future interventions to test whether fostering denser social networks can reduce partisan animosity.

Open questions remain. First, warmth toward opponents was consistently tied to regional network density, but results for individual density were mixed.

These relationships were robust across political parties and regional population sizes.

And interestingly, they didn't depend on the political makeup of someone’s network. Even if your close others share your party, denser networks still predicted more openness to opponents.

This regional pattern replicated across:

📊Our own participants
📊A second nationally representative dataset (139,389 people, 3,032 counties)

People living in communities with denser social networks consistently reported less partisan animosity.

Next, we zoomed out to the county level. Using data from the Social Capital Atlas and Project Implicit, we found that counties with denser social networks showed lower partisan animosity—even after accounting for population, politics, demographics, and inequality.

We first asked a representative sample of Americans how well their 7 closest contacts know each other.

Those in denser social networks showed more openness (and indirectly, more warmth) toward political opponents through stronger feelings of unity with close & distant others.

We find that people embedded in denser social networks—where your close friends and family know each other—feel more unity not just with loved ones, but also with distant fellow Americans.

Your everyday sense of “we’re in this together” may extend to the national level.

New piece with @helenldevine.bsky.social and @kurtjgray.bsky.social👇

www.moralunderstandingnewsletter.com/p/1-in-5-dog...

We hope WorldValuesBench supports building LLMs that are safer, fairer, and more culturally aware.

Led by Wenlong Zhao with Debanjan Mondal, Niket Tandon,
@kurtjgray.bsky.social, and Yuling Gu

Code: github.com/Demon702/Wor...

Paper: aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-ma...

The World Values Survey is one of the most widely used datasets on global values:
🌏 94,728 participants across 64 countries in the latest wave
📊 Representative national samples
🗣️ Primarily face-to-face interviews
❓ 200+ value questions spanning social, political, economic, and moral domains

What makes WorldValuesBench different?
🎯 Fine-grained demographics: 42 attributes (age, gender, country, urban/rural, etc.)
🌐 Breadth of values: social norms, trust, economics, religion, politics, and more
📊 Scale: 20M examples for evaluation
📏 Distributions rather than averages of human values

LLMs are already shaping advice, education, and policy around the world. To be safe and serve global users, it's important they reflect cultural variation in values rather than a single “global average” or disproportionately Western views.

Huge thanks to brilliant coauthors @helenldevine.bsky.social and @kurtjgray.bsky.social!

Preprint available here: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Data, code, and preregs here: osf.io/d94b8/

Dogs are amazing companions.

But when love for dogs surpasses love for people, it can come at a cost: less concern for others and deeper social disconnection.

For many, dogs aren’t just valued as much as people—they’re valued more.

This can have real impacts: Owners chose to give more to animal charities than those helping people, including a children's hospital and food bank. 🐶>🏥🥫

Even children in need can come second to dogs.

Dog owners were more likely than non-owners to prioritize dogs, but even non-owners scored high on these measures.

This suggests that seeing dogs as soulmates is widespread. 🐶💞

The same trend appears locally:

US counties with lower birth rates have more pet stores and higher pet industry earnings, even after controlling for population and GDP.