Deploying Behavioral Science on the Front Lines of Social Protest

08/01/23 • 97 min

What are the most effective collective actions that social protest movements can or should undertake in the context of deep societal conflict and polarization? CASBS fellows Eran Halperin (2022-23) & Robb Willer (2012-13, 2020-21) compare their cross-national research findings and explore Halperin's real-time applied work with the dramatic, ongoing protests in Israel.

ERAN HALPERIN links:
Psychology of Intergroup Conflict and Reconciliation Lab (PCIL)

Halperin on Google Scholar
aChord: Social Psychology for Social Change
ROBB WILLER links:

Willer's Stanford faculty page
Willer's personal web page
Polarization and Social Change Lab
Willer on Google Scholar
Article in JPSP, "The Activist's Dilemma" (2020)
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University
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ERAN HALPERIN links:
Psychology of Intergroup Conflict and Reconciliation Lab (PCIL)

Halperin on Google Scholar
aChord: Social Psychology for Social Change
ROBB WILLER links:

Previous Episode

Frederick Cooper's Illumination of History

Drawing upon a career of scholarship extending from studies of labor, citizenship, and the state in Africa to explorations of global empire, colonialism, and globalization, three-time CASBS fellow Frederick Cooper – in conversation with 2022-23 fellows Jean Beaman and Martin Williams – gives a master class on how critical and relational thinking serve historical inquiries that advance our understandings.

Frederick Cooper, CASBS fellow 1990-91, 1995-96, 2002-03
NYU faculty page
Wikipedia page

Fred Cooper books

Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference: Historical Perspectives (2018)

Citizenship Between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa, 1945-1960 (2014)

Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (2010)

Cooper Books in CASBS's Ralph W. Tyler Collection:
Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (2005)

Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (1996)

Confronting Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor, and the Capitalist World System in Africa and Latin America (1993)

Fred Cooper article referenced in the episode
"What is the Concept of Globalization Good for? An African Historian's Perspective" (2001)

Jean Beaman faculty page

Martin Williams faculty page

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University

Follow the CASBS webcast series,Social Science for a World in Crisis

Next Episode

Jonathan Jansen's Power of Craft

While you're listening to this episode, 2016-17 CASBS fellow Jonathan Jansen likely will write another few thousand words. As a scholar of education & leader of education institutions, Jansen is South Africa's most towering figure. To call him prolific is a gross understatement. He writes a steady stream of books & more books. As a public intellectual he writes a separate steady stream of columns & essays. And he's written a family memoir too. We bring 2022-23 CASBS fellow Zimitri Erasmus, a social anthropologist who is working on a book on writing praxis, in conversation with Jansen to unlock some secrets & insights into his most powerful & liberating weapon for engaging the world – writing.
JONATHAN JANSEN
on Google Scholar
Jansen website
Mentioned in the episode
Corrupted: A Study of Chronic Dysfunction in South African Universities (2023)
Song for Sarah: Lessons from my Mother (2017)
Jansen and CASBS
"Loving and Blacking" (symposium, 2017)
"Higher Ed at the Crossroads" (webcast, 2020)