In a world increasingly defined by polarization and rapid technological change, Max Hui Bai stands at the intersection of psychology, politics, and innovation. As the Director of the Political Belief Lab, an independent research initiative, Max explores how values, identity, and social change shape our beliefs and how those beliefs, in turn, shape society. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Nature, and Wired, and has informed organizations like OpenAI and the White House. A former scientist at Stanford’s Polarization and Social Change Lab and Stanford Impact Labs, Max holds a PhD in social psychology from the University of Minnesota and is also the creator of The Publish or Perish Game, a creative satire of academic life that’s been embraced by scholars worldwide. In this interview, Max discusses his journey from academia to independent research, his insights into political polarization, and how new technologies like AI are reshaping the way we study and share social science.
Q: Can you tell us about the core motivations behind founding the Political Belief Lab and how your research aims to impact society?
A: I wanted to continue my academic work, but no longer follow a traditional university career path. Originally, I entered academia for the intellectual freedom to ask interesting questions and work on projects that mattered. That’s still true today. When I finished my postdoc, I realized there were alternative ways to do research. I was drawn to entrepreneurship and saw opportunities to create societal impact beyond the university system. I’d already started a game company and other projects, and running an independent lab felt like the best way to continue my research with greater flexibility.
Academic jobs were shrinking, funding cuts were widespread, and the tenure process had become increasingly bureaucratic. I knew I could produce high-quality research more efficiently outside a university, with the freedom to set my own agenda. Instead of spending time writing endless grant applications, I could self-fund my lab through my businesses and game sales.
The goal of my research hasn’t changed: I want to help create a more equitable and tolerant world. My work focuses on the psychological foundations of racism, prejudice, political ideology, and extremism, and how social factors shape the beliefs we hold about these issues.
Q: Your work spans social psychology, political polarization, and social change. How do you see these fields intersecting in today’s political climate?
A: Politics is essentially group behavior at scale, shaped by both beliefs and systems. Policies, laws, and conflicts all stem from our normative beliefs about how the world should work. Whether we think systems are fair or how they should change comes from our underlying psychological dispositions.
Years of research show that our political beliefs and behaviors are shaped by many factors—personality traits, openness to new experiences, levels of agreeableness, and even genetic predispositions. These factors interact with our environments—whether we grew up in abundance or scarcity, with authoritarian or permissive parents, and through lifelong interactions with caregivers, peers, and society.
Personality psychology and social psychology are deeply interconnected. Together, they help explain how individual differences and social contexts shape the political beliefs we ultimately adopt.
Learn More about The Publish or Perish Game here
Q: You’ve already been sharing your work on SSRN. How has the platform influenced your research dissemination and engagement with the academic community?
A: SSRN accelerates communication between scholars. I don’t have to wait years for a paper to go through peer review before others can see it. For time-sensitive topics, that speed is invaluable.
A good example is my research on AI persuasion, recently published in Nature Communications. The study was completed almost two years before it appeared in print. By posting the preprint early, it gained attention from OpenAI, the White House, journalists, and other scholars. In fast-moving areas like AI, the benefits of sharing early far outweigh the costs.
Q: Given your experience advising organizations like OpenAI and the White House, how do you think emerging technologies will shape the future of social science research?
A: There’s so much to say. Large language models already speed up my writing process. For example, I can draft a messy methods section and ask a model to clean it up. The same goes for results sections and discussion drafts, it helps me think through implications from multiple perspectives.
Beyond writing, we’re seeing exciting applications in research design. At Stanford, we experimented with using large language models as simulated participants. By assigning demographic profiles, say, a 30-year-old white man living in Tennessee, we can test experimental stimuli and get results surprisingly close to real human responses.
This doesn’t replace empirical research, but it’s a powerful tool for pilots: estimating effect sizes, determining sample sizes, debugging surveys, and writing code before running a real study. Generative AI also makes it easier to create experimental materials, graphics, videos, or scenarios that used to take weeks or require outside designers. Overall, it’s making social science research faster, cheaper, and more efficient.
Q: As someone who’s been involved in academia and entrepreneurship, what advice would you give early-career researchers on publishing and sharing their work effectively?
A: Start with the right research question. Like a product, your question determines the potential impact of the work. It’s fine to begin with smaller, manageable projects, but eventually, choose questions with big societal relevance; the “upper limit” of your impact is set at the ideation stage.
Pick something that genuinely excites you. High-impact work requires years of dedication to tasks many others overlook because they’re tedious or unglamorous. Passion is what carries you through the “extra miles.”
Some of my most meaningful work, not always the most cited, landed in top journals like JPSP because I went beyond what reviewers asked. The same principle applied to my game project, which became a viral phenomenon used as wedding gifts, in classrooms, and to connect families. Its success came from putting in extra effort to ensure quality, accuracy, and engagement, something no one else in the market was doing. And all these things cannot be done if I didn’t have that passion and willingness to go the extra mile in the beginning. Because without that, it’s hard to produce really good work that can have a real impact in the world.
Q: What are the biggest challenges you face in translating complex social science research into accessible insights for the public?
A: I’ve always disliked overly technical papers, even as a scientist. They alienate the public, make journalists’ jobs harder, and reduce the impact of the work. Early in my career, I set a goal: my papers should be understandable by a motivated high school student or at least a college freshman.
While methods and results sections may be dense, introductions and discussions should read like articles in The New York Times or The Economist. That requires effort and skill, but it’s worth it.
I also learned from my advisors how to communicate research on platforms like Twitter or BlueSky. Writing a clear, engaging post about your work is an underrated skill and one I think should be part of graduate training. Today, much of our field discourse happens on social media, and the ability to translate your research for a lay audience is essential.
Q: What future projects or research areas are you most excited about, and how do you plan to share these on platforms like SSRN?
A: I’m working on an early-stage project about improving communication skills, helping people process and repackage information more effectively.
We’re at a turning point, like the early industrial or internet revolutions. The AI revolution will create enormous wealth but also social challenges. Many conflicts between nations, organizations, or individuals stem from poor communication and negotiation.
As a social psychologist and game developer, I’m exploring a gamified tool to teach communication, empathy, and conflict resolution, something like a “Duolingo for communication skills.” It must be engaging enough for daily use and substantive enough to show real improvement, which makes it a tough challenge. But if successful, it could address some of society’s deepest problems.
Q: What role do you see preprint platforms playing in democratizing access to social science research?
A: Preprint servers already democratize access; anyone can search and read research for free. The next step is making this work visible to the broader public.
Right now, scientists know where to look, but non-experts rarely stumble upon preprints in fields like physics or astronomy. To truly democratize knowledge, preprint platforms need to think more like magazines or content hubs, bridging the gap between researchers and curious laypeople.
That shift would require new strategies, audiences, and resources, but it’s where the real opportunity lies.
Q: What features or tools of SSRN do you find most valuable for your research and outreach efforts?
A: I find the download and citation metrics especially useful to gauge impact. Posting on a trustworthy, stable platform also matters. SSRN feels like a reliable public archive, like a library. That reliability gives me confidence that my work won’t get lost.
You can see more work by Max Hui Bai on his SSRN Author page here