Ben Tappin is an Assistant Professor of Psychological and Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics. He is also an affiliate of the Human Cooperation Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and currently holds an early career research fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust in which he is investigating the impact of “microtargeted” persuasive advertising on voters’ attitudes and behaviour in democracies.
Dr Tappin is interested in the nexus between technology, persuasive communication, and attitude and behaviour change, and his research has three broad streams:
1. Understanding the psychological processes involved in belief formation, persuasion, and attitude/behaviour change, asking questions like: why and when do people change their minds vs. not?
2. Evaluating the influence that communication from “elites” (such as politicians), campaigns, and other advocacy groups have on the public, asking questions like: what is the impact of these groups’ persuasion tactics (e.g., targeted advertising, A/B pre-testing of messages, different rhetorical strategies, etc.)?
3. Anticipating how new technologies might transform persuasive communication in the future, asking questions like: how persuasive are AI language models, and how persuasive could they become?