Influence and Technology Lab

About

Why do we believe some things but not others? Why do we share information about ourselves and the groups we belong to, or groups we dislike? What are the effects of propaganda during wartime? How do communication technologies shape how we feel, think, and behave? What makes interventions to address policy challenges effective? And how do we measure these things, with what kind of data?

These are some of the overarching questions that the Influence and Technology Lab seeks to answer. To do so, we rely on the most advanced methods in the social and computational sciences, by building on methodological and theoretical frameworks from computer science, psychology, and area studies. The lab has a strong cross-cultural focus, collecting data and conducting experiments in many countries around the world and combining methodological rigour with an in-depth understanding of the societies under study.

The Lab sits between the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology and the Department of Communication Science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. It is funded primarily by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) and a Vidi grant from the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

We are grateful to collaborate with colleagues from (among others) the University of Cambridge, VU Amsterdam, the London School of Economics, Oxford University, Harvard University, MIT, New York University, Autonoma University of Barcelona, the Kyiv School of Economics, ETH Zurich, Leiden University, Ca’Foscari University of Venice, Sapienza University of Rome, IMT Lucca, Uppsala University, and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.

Contact

Email: Jon Roozenbeek, jjr51@cam.ac.uk.