Robb Willer

Robb Willer is Professor of Sociology and (by courtesy) Psychology and Organizational Behavior at Stanford University, where he directs the Politics and Social Change Lab and the AI for Public Benefit Lab and co-directs the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. 

A sociologist and social psychologist, he studies how political communication, social norms, institutions, and emerging technologies shape democratic life. His work focuses on strengthening democracy, understanding social change, and developing AI tools that benefit the public. Working across sociology, social psychology, political science, organizational behavior, and cognitive science, Willer combines experimental and computational methods to identify interventions that can improve political discourse, civic engagement, and collective well-being. His work has informed debates on democratic reform, social movements, persuasion, and the governance of AI, and he has collaborated with a range of public, philanthropic, civic, and political organizations to translate research into practice. 

Can AI Predict the Results of Social Science Experiments?

Stanford's AI for Public Benefit Lab was awarded a fast grant for AI-enabled research in 2026 to build a "social science simulator": an AI model trained on tens of thousands of real responses from past survey experiments so it can forecast how people are likely to respond in a new study. The goal of this project, led by Robb Willer, is to create a free tool for previewing a study’s likely results before running it with real people, so researchers can save time, cut costs, and focus on the ideas worth testing.