In this episode Laura interviews Jan Gerrit Voelkel, who is a Ph.D. Student in Sociology at Stanford University.
Jan’s research studies intergroup and interpersonal relationships with two guiding research questions. First, what causes people’s willingness to harm others and defend inequalities? And second, how can personal or societal change be achieved that increases equality and/or reduces harm?
Jan has developed interventions that increase support for policies that aim to reduce economic inequality or increase opportunity for immigrants. Jan has also led the Strengthening Democracy Challenge, a mega-study that tested 25 crowdsourced interventions for reducing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity.
Jan’s academic page: https://sociology.stanford.edu/people/jan-gerrit-voelkel
Jan’s twitter: https://twitter.com/jgvoelkel
Project: https://www.strengtheningdemocracychallenge.org/
Lab twitter: https://twitter.com/pascl_stanford
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