#116: Change Beliefs, Change Opinions? with Yamil Velez

Yamil Velez is an assistant professor of political science at Columbia University, where he studies what makes political opinions hard to shift. He’s been using innovative new methods to test important ideas about how people arrive at their views and what it takes to change them. We talk about the relationship between beliefs and opinions, why correcting misinformation doesn’t necessarily move opinions, and what happens when persuasive messages are tailored to the specific reasons people hold their views. Yamil shares his work using large language models to generate personalized arguments, showing that people will update their beliefs pretty readily—but only some of those belief changes actually translate into attitude change. Along the way, we explore what this means for persuasion, polarization, and the future of using AI to study (and maybe influence) public opinion. For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: Learn more about Opinion Science at and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

You can listen to #116: Change Beliefs, Change Opinions? with Yamil Velez online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

#116: Change Beliefs, Change Opinions? with Yamil Velez is an episode from Opinion Science by Andy Luttrell.

This episode is 59:04 long.

This episode was published on May 4, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Opinion Science when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.