In preregistered UK experiments, post-training and prompting increased measured conversational persuasiveness by up to 51% and 27% relative, and higher persuasion was associated with lower factual accuracy.

SocioLens project,

Claim LD10-HQ-C02 (v1.0)

Provenance and status

Claim type: Estimate
Publication status: Eligible for publication, with a qualifier
Verification state: Checked against the primary source. Who checked this claim is not recorded for it; claim checks so far were AI-led, and no person has checked claims against their sources.
Does not license: 51-point opinion shifts, behaviour or population influence
Limitations: Paid opt-in exposure; relative metrics; UK only
Source (as cited): Hackenburg et al., Science 2025 / arXiv full text
Source type: Peer-reviewed journal article (recorded as “Peer-reviewed article + full-text preprint”)
Institutional position: Academic + UK AISI
Maturity of the evidence: Rapidly maturing evidence
Recorded date: 25 September 2026
Currentness / correction: This is the current version. No correction or concern is recorded on its sources.

Sources this version cites

Hackenburg et al., Science 2025 / arXiv full text (Peer-reviewed journal article)
Read the original

Version

This is the current version, v1.0. Earlier versions stay available, and their records never change.

Versions: v1.0 · current

Raw record: every recorded field, with its coded values

All 25 canonical Claim fields, verbatim, with the coded values derived from them. The plain-language labels above are read from these.

Claim type (coded): ESTIMATE (as printed: “ESTIMATE”)
Publication status (coded): ELIGIBLE (QUALIFIED) (as printed: “ELIGIBLE WITH QUALIFIER”)
Verification state (coded): CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY
Source type (coded): PEER_REVIEWED_JOURNAL_ARTICLE
Maturity (coded): RAPIDLY_MATURING

#	Canonical field	Canonical value (verbatim)	Normalized (Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2)
1	CLAIM ID	LD10-HQ-C02	—
2	PUBLIC-FACING CLAIM	In preregistered UK experiments, post-training and prompting increased measured conversational persuasiveness by up to 51% and 27% relative, and higher persuasion was associated with lower factual accuracy.	—
3	CLAIM TYPE	ESTIMATE	base_types: ESTIMATE
4	RESEARCH STRAND	A — Controlled persuasion	—
5	MATURITY	RAPIDLY MATURING	states: RAPIDLY_MATURING
6	SOURCE	Hackenburg et al., Science 2025 / arXiv full text	source_ids: SRC-LD10-HACKENBURG-SCIENCE-2025
7	SOURCE TYPE	Peer-reviewed article + full-text preprint	classes: PEER_REVIEWED_JOURNAL_ARTICLE
8	INSTITUTIONAL POSITION	Academic + UK AISI	—
9	SCOPE	UK adults; 707 political issues; 2024–25	—
10	DESIGN	Three preregistered RCTs	—
11	SAMPLE / DATASET	76,977 responses from 42,357 people; 466,769 claims	—
12	MODEL / TOOL / VERSION	19 LLMs incl. GPT-4o/GPT-4.5	—
13	COMPARATOR	Prompt/post-training variants and controls	—
14	MAIN RESULT	Up to +51% relative post-training and +27% prompting; accuracy trade-off	—
15	INFERENTIAL TARGET	Design levers affecting immediate attitude change	—
16	DOES NOT LICENSE	51-point opinion shifts, behaviour or population influence	—
17	VERIFICATION STATE	CONTENT VERIFIED	state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY · verified_by: UNKNOWN
18	LIMITATIONS	Paid opt-in exposure; relative metrics; UK only	—
19	CONTRADICTORY / SUPPORTING SOURCES	Consistent with 2026 throughput findings	—
20	GEOGRAPHY / LANGUAGE	UK / English	—
21	DISTRIBUTIONAL LEDGER	Actors able to post-train/prompt systems may gain persuasive capacity	—
22	R01 / FIELD-MAP LINKS	D7, D4b, L-C, R-1	—
23	WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS CLAIM?	Replication reversing lever ranking or field behavioural validation	—
24	PUBLICATION STATUS	ELIGIBLE WITH QUALIFIER	state: ELIGIBLE · qualifiers: QUALIFIED
25	RECORDED DATE	2026-09-25	—

Field 22 references resolved against Field Map v0.2: D7 (DOMAIN); D4b (SUB_AREA); L-C (LENS); R-1 (LENS)

The sources as recorded, with their record IDs and coded source types:

Pinned Sources (field 6, version-specific)

“Hackenburg et al., Science 2025 / arXiv full text” → Hackenburg et al., Science 2025 / arXiv full text (SRC-LD10-HACKENBURG-SCIENCE-2025--v1.0) — Hackenburg et al., Science 2025 / arXiv full text; class PEER_REVIEWED_JOURNAL_ARTICLE (explicit public provenance pin)

Cited by Living Debate versions

Cite this page

SocioLens project. (2026, September 25). In preregistered UK experiments, post-training and prompting increased measured conversational persuasiveness by up to 51% and 27% relative, and higher persuasion was associated with lower factual accuracy [Claim LD10-HQ-C02, version v1.0]. SocioLens. https://sociolens-web.pages.dev/claims/ld10-hq-c02/v1.0/

@misc{sociolens_ld10_hq_c02_v1_0,
  author = {{SocioLens project}},
  title = {In preregistered UK experiments, post-training and prompting increased measured conversational persuasiveness by up to 51\% and 27\% relative, and higher persuasion was associated with lower factual accuracy.},
  year = {2026},
  date = {2026-09-25},
  howpublished = {\url{https://sociolens-web.pages.dev/claims/ld10-hq-c02/v1.0/}},
  note = {Claim LD10-HQ-C02, version v1.0}
}

The link points to this version, whose record never changes. For a finding, cite the original study as well: SocioLens summarizes research and does not replace it.

Research-of-record provenance

Materialized by sociolens-materializer 0.6.0 at 2026-09-28T20:00:00.000Z; normalization contract SocioLens — Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2 — Pre-Spike Materialization Contract (v1.0.2). Content seal SHA-256 d7164941482886f28e4161623c25e143919f06e536de68092863ca8b2cad2363.

Frozen Drive-derived inputs

R07 — LD-10 Canonical Claim Ledger v1.0 — LOCKED (v1.0) — Drive ID 1f9tgGnqv80_UyhW0kCgcnTgWNPlx-DYM; revision: NOT_EXPOSED_BY_DRIVE_TEXT_EXPORT; Drive modified ; block “ENTRY 02 — LD10-HQ-C02 ” SHA-256 9c3ab6975511cc102519dad42641fcd1002fa1a6fccb9848a322670168a714a8; SocioLens — Programme Status & Authority Register v0.6 status “CURRENT.”; frozen fixture fixtures/frozen/r07-ld10-claim-ledger-v1.0-canonical.

Builder decisions (not Drive data)

VERSION = v1.0 — basis: Claim version taken from the canonical ledger artifact version (R07 — LD-10 Canonical Claim Ledger v1.0); Implementation Architecture Selection §5 logical_id/version convention.
CURRENT_POINTER = true — basis: SocioLens — Programme Status & Authority Register v0.6 status for "R07 — LD-10 Canonical Claim Ledger v1.0 — LOCKED": "CURRENT."
FIELD_6_SOURCE_REFERENCE = SRC-LD10-HACKENBURG-SCIENCE-2025--v1.0 — basis: field 6 of ENTRY 02 — LD10-HQ-C02 cites "Hackenburg et al., Science 2025 / arXiv full text"; the frozen field-6 segment of this ClaimVersion's ledger block (fixtures/frozen/r07-ld10-claim-ledger-v1.0-canonical); Drive-derived identity authority (Issue #53 Source inventory, factory-hq decision HQ-ESC-sociolens-ld10-t5-20261011T050405Z-01 ruling 3 inventory S2): R07 Batch 01 lines 18, 20, 21, 47, 49, 50; ledger C02 fields 6/7/8; KEY EVIDENCE line 927 of the locked LD-10 Living Debate.
SOURCE_PROVENANCE_PIN = SRC-LD10-HACKENBURG-SCIENCE-2025--v1.0 — basis: Issue #5 proof rendering (Architecture Proof Protocol v0.1 AP-08 / Amendment v1.2 §6): explicit version-pinned public provenance of this ClaimVersion — the pinned field-6 Source record "Hackenburg et al., Science 2025 / arXiv full text"; Drive-derived identity authority (Issue #53 Source inventory, factory-hq decision HQ-ESC-sociolens-ld10-t5-20261011T050405Z-01 ruling 3 inventory S2): R07 Batch 01 lines 18, 20, 21, 47, 49, 50; ledger C02 fields 6/7/8; KEY EVIDENCE line 927 of the locked LD-10 Living Debate.