Joshua Weidmann

Welcome! I am a pre-doctoral fellow at Harvard University's Department of Economics supervised by David Y. Yang. I also work with Noam Yuchtman and Jesse Shapiro. I am interested in political economy. My current projects focus on harnessing technological innovations like artificial intelligence (AI) for social science research as well as on mass preferences over political representation.

I hold an MA in Politics and Public Administration from the University of Konstanz and an MSc in Political Sociology from the London School of Economics (LSE).

Work in Progress

1. "Dialing Up the Empathy: Using AI Chatbots to Conduct Qualitative Interviews in Mass Surveys" (with Michael M. Bechtel, Aaron Cannon, and Michael Hess). [Preregistration] [Abstract]
   
   The availability of artificial intelligence (AI) may enable researchers to study preference formation qualitatively through unstructured question formats that used to be too costly for inclusion in mass surveys. We experimentally assess whether AI chatbots and their empathic capabilities affect answers to sensitive and non-sensitive questions in qualitative conversations. Our design randomly assigns respondents to a series of pre-set, open-ended questions, a weakly empathic chatbot interviewer, or a highly empathetic chatbot. We evaluate chatbot performance with respect to the informational value of survey responses, perceived empathy and rapport, and price per complete. Our applications include political science (vote choice) and consumer research (drivers of purchasing behavior) questions. Since qualitative interviews promise to increase respondents’ willingness to provide truthful responses to sensitive questions that are particularly prone to social desirability bias, we also investigate attitudes toward abortion and hiring discrimination. The results shed light on whether AI chatbots are a more useful tool to qualitatively explore the determinants of preferences and overcoming social desirability problems compared to using fixed, open-ended questions determined by the researcher.
    
2. "Preferences for Democratic Representation in Eight Democracies" (with Michael M. Bechtel, Simon Lüchinger, and Lukas Schmid). [Preregistration] [Abstract]
   
   How averse are publics to deviations from representational equality — the idea that legislatures should reflect the sociopolitical composition of the country? Using survey experiments fielded in eight democracies (Australia, Canada, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Turkey, and the U.S.), we test how citizens (N=13,856) respond to varying levels of legislative misrepresentation across ideological, geographic, and gender dimensions. We find little evidence that proportionality per se drives democratic satisfaction. Instead, citizens favor over-representation of their own ideological camp and region, reflecting self-centered preferences. In contrast, both women and men support female over-representation. These patterns appear rooted in beliefs about unequal policy influence. Our findings show that citizens closely link descriptive and substantive representation, and they help identify the conditions under which the composition of parliaments erode trust in democratic institutions.
    

Talks

• 2024: EPSA