2026 David G. Rand: Psychology Researcher – H-Index, Publications & Awards

Discipline name	D-Index	World Ranking	Current World Ranking	National Ranking	Current National Ranking	Publications	Citations
Psychology	91	907	794	576	494	262	44075

Overview

David G. Rand is affiliated with MIT in the United States and has contributed extensively to the social sciences with a focus on misinformation, social media, politics, and cognitive processes. Their research spans several intersecting fields including sociology and political science, communication, cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and statistical and nonlinear physics.

Throughout their career, David G. Rand has published notably in the main areas of:

Misinformation and Its Impacts
Social Media and Politics
Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection
Social and Intergroup Psychology
Media Influence and Politics
Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence

Their frequent publication venues reflect a breadth of interdisciplinary engagement and include:

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
PNAS Nexus
Nature Human Behaviour
Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review
Nature Communications

David G. Rand's collaboration network involves regular co-authors such as Gordon Pennycook, Adam J. Berinsky, Mohsen Mosleh, Cameron Martel, and Antonio A. Arechar, indicating a strong engagement with peers focused on social and behavioral sciences.

Among their recent publications are several influential works reflecting ongoing research themes:

"Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response," 2020, Nature Human Behaviour
"Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media: Experimental Evidence for a Scalable Accuracy-Nudge Intervention," 2020, Psychological Science
"The Psychology of Fake News," 2021, Trends in Cognitive Sciences
"Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online," 2021, Nature
"Political sectarianism in America," 2020, Science

Their extensive body of work within social sciences includes 193 publications, featuring an emphasis on 129 works in sociology and political science, supplemented by contributions to communication (39), cognitive neuroscience (27), artificial intelligence (22), and statistical and nonlinear physics (16).

David G. Rand's research outputs emphasize empirically grounded interventions and theoretical insights at the intersection of social behavior, misinformation, and the dynamics of online communication. The scientist's collaborations and publication record portray a multidisciplinary approach to understanding social phenomena in digital and real-world contexts.

Best Publications

Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response.

Jay J. Van Bavel;Katherine Baicker;Paulo S. Boggio;Valerio Capraro

5562
Citations
The online laboratory: conducting experiments in a real labor market

John Joseph Horton;David Gertler Rand;Richard Jay Zeckhauser

4025
Citations
Structural topic models for open ended survey responses

Margaret E. Roberts;Brandon M. Stewart;Dustin Tingley;Christopher Lucas

2152
Citations
Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media: Experimental Evidence for a Scalable Accuracy-Nudge Intervention.

Gordon Pennycook;Jonathon McPhetres;Jonathon McPhetres;Yunhao Zhang;Jackson G. Lu

1833
Citations
Lazy, not biased: Susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning.

Gordon Pennycook;David G. Rand

1781
Citations
Spontaneous giving and calculated greed

David G. Rand;David G. Rand;Joshua D. Greene;Martin A. Nowak

1756
Citations
Statistical physics of human cooperation

Matjaž Perc;Jillian J. Jordan;David G. Rand;Zhen Wang

1473
Citations
Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news.

Gordon Pennycook;Tyrone D. Cannon;David G. Rand

1420
Citations
ReviewFeature ReviewHuman cooperation

David G. Rand;Martin A. Nowak

1349
Citations
Social heuristics shape intuitive cooperation

David G. Rand;Alexander Peysakhovich;Alexander Peysakhovich;Gordon T. Kraft-Todd;George E. Newman

1048
Citations
The Psychology of Fake News

Gordon Pennycook;David G. Rand

988
Citations
Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online.

Gordon Pennycook;Ziv Epstein;Mohsen Mosleh;Mohsen Mosleh;Antonio A. Arechar

928
Citations
Fighting misinformation on social media using crowdsourced judgments of news source quality

Gordon Pennycook;David G. Rand

909
Citations
Who falls for fake news? The roles of bullshit receptivity, overclaiming, familiarity, and analytic thinking.

Gordon Pennycook;David G. Rand

909
Citations
Winners don’t punish

Anna Dreber;David G. Rand;Drew Fudenberg;Martin A. Nowak

893
Citations
Positive Interactions Promote Public Cooperation

David G. Rand;Anna Dreber;Anna Dreber;Tore Ellingsen;Drew Fudenberg

870
Citations
The promise of Mechanical Turk: How online labor markets can help theorists run behavioral experiments

David G. Rand

856
Citations
Political sectarianism in America

Eli J. Finkel;Christopher A. Bail;Mina Cikara;Peter H. Ditto

798
Citations
Dynamic social networks promote cooperation in experiments with humans

David G. Rand;Samuel Arbesman;Nicholas A. Christakis

786
Citations
The Implied Truth Effect: Attaching Warnings to a Subset of Fake News Headlines Increases Perceived Accuracy of Headlines Without Warnings

Gordon Pennycook;Adam Bear;Evan T. Collins;David Gertler Rand

777
Citations
Divine intuition: cognitive style influences belief in God.

Amitai Shenhav;David G. Rand;Joshua D. Greene

713
Citations
Fake news, fast and slow: Deliberation reduces belief in false (but not true) news headlines.

Bence Bago;David G. Rand;Gordon Pennycook

548
Citations
Cooperation, Fast and Slow: Meta-Analytic Evidence for a Theory of Social Heuristics and Self-Interested Deliberation

David G. Rand

526
Citations
Humans display a ‘cooperative phenotype’ that is domain general and temporally stable

Alexander Peysakhovich;Martin A. Nowak;David G. Rand

448
Citations
Why We Cooperate

Jillian J. Jordan;Alexander Peysakhovich;David G. Rand

5
Citations

Frequent Co-Authors

Gordon Pennycook Cornell University

Joshua D. Greene Harvard University

Jonathan D. Cohen Princeton University

Michael I. Norton Harvard University

Amitai Shenhav Brown University

Justin R. Garcia Indiana University

Shaul Shalvi University of Amsterdam

Bruno Verschuere University of Amsterdam

Yarrow Dunham Yale University

Deborah A. Small University of Pennsylvania

External Links

Wikipedia of David G. Rand Personal website of David G. Rand

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