Steve Rathje, Ph.D. - New York University

Topic: “The Paradox of Virality”

I will present the results from a variety of interconnected studies about intergroup conflict, the spread of (mis)information, and how these topics interact with digital technologies such as social media. First, I will present research showing how social identity motives — particularly out-group negativity — explain why content is widely shared (or goes “viral”) on social media. Then, I will present research showing that widely shared content is often not widely liked — a phenomenon I call the “paradox of virality.” I will discuss the results of a study showing how accuracy and social identity motivations causally shape the belief and spread of (mis)information. I will also present the results of a large-scale digital field experiment that tests the long-term effects of exposure to misinformation and divisive content by having participants unfollow several polarizing social media accounts and misinformation sources for one month. Finally, I will present current and future research directions demonstrating how we can explore these questions on a global scale using multi-site “global studies" and how we can enhance our methods for testing these questions using large-language models.

Steve is a postdoctoral researcher in Psychology at New York University and received his PhD from the University of Cambridge, where he was a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Previously, he studied Psychology and Symbolic Systems at Stanford University. Steve studies intergroup conflict, the spread of (mis)information, and how these topics interact with digital technologies, such as social media and artificial intelligence. To study these topics, he uses tools from computational social science, experimental psychology, as well as multi-site “global studies.” He has published in journals such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Nature Human Behavior, Science Advances, Psychological Science, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Annual Review of Psychology, Perspectives on Psychological Science, PNAS Nexus, Nature Communications, Current Opinion in Psychology, and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. His research has been covered by outlets such as the New York Times, BBC, NBC, CBS 60 Minutes, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and the Freakonomics podcast. He has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Templeton World Charity Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding, and more. He was recently named an APS “Rising Star,” and his thesis was the winner of the Psychology of Technology Dissertation Award and a finalist for the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) Dissertation Award. Steve is also interested in science communication and has written popular science articles about his research for outlets such as the Washington Post, the Guardian, the LA Times, the Boston Globe, and Psychology Today.