It's alive! 🎉 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗔𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘆𝘀𝘁'𝘀 𝗚𝘂𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗖𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗘𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁 is out -- an introduction to causal inference in practice. The first two chapters are available for free here: theissbendixen.com/dag-book/ More below 👇

if you're really curious about the true state of reality, click below for the latest from @matthewmatix.bsky.social @scicomguy.bsky.social @srhastraea.bsky.social @lingtax.bsky.social @robert-m-ross.bsky.social @eddieclarke.bsky.social, Martin, and me reported in the @aunz.theconversation.com

Glad to see this finally out! Grateful to have been part of such a large collaborative effort: ✨️ Effects of Psychological Distance on Mental Abstraction: A Registered Report of Four Tests of Construal-Level Theory 📚 Out now in AMPPS journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

You ever try the 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes test' and wonder, how is that any of them?!

We have a new preprint that underscores some key claims here: even if one *can* design an agent that gets through a survey fine, it doesn't follow that such agents are undetectable or common. We find that they are far from common! Preprint link in thread👇

Three concrete recommendations that we make in our manuscript (osf.io/preprints/me...) on Acknowledgment sections: 1. Include ORCID numbers in parentheses after names of individuals in Acknowledgments. This will disambiguate their identities so that scholarly databases can index them.

Important reminder why survey results examining the % of people who believe in conspiracies should not directly be interpreted as the % of people who believe in conspiracies. Respondents don't all answer seriously, so the news that 12 million people believe in lizard people is not accurate.

Survey research is often interpreted as showing that belief in conspiracy theories can be surprisingly widespread, including belief in conspiracy theories that would be astonishing if true. For example, in The Atlantic we learn that “12 million Americans believe lizard people run our country”

Curious about how psychological theories are built, tested, and refined in practice? This summer, the Theory Methods Society is launching the very first edition of the summer school Theory Building in Psychology at the University of Amsterdam (July 6–10, 2026). theorymethodssociety.org

My book is now published! 🌏🎶🧪
 You can download it for free at academic.oup.com/book/62353 - I’d be grateful if you do! I also published an accessible summary with audio/video today in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41... Try reading that first, then give the whole book a read if you like it!

📢 Post-doc position – Toulouse (France) 🇫🇷 A post-doctoral position (12 months) is open at CNRS in Toulouse to work with me on the relationship between signal detection theory, conspiracy beliefs, and perceptions of corruption... 🔗 emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/CDD/U... Feel free to share!

Thrilled to share our new paper introducing “validity potential” versus “realised validity” as a key distinction for psychological measurement, with @davidmkaplanx.bsky.social, Alexander Gillett, @suttonprofessor.bsky.social, and @robert-m-ross.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Published today: One of the biggest #science #communication studies to date. We asked 71,922 people in 68 countries how they #engage with information about #science and combined the data with several country-level factors: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #OpenAccess

In a new paper, my colleagues and I set out to demonstrate how method biases can create spurious findings in relationship science, by using a seemingly meaningless scale (e.g., "My relationship has very good Saturn") to predict relationship outcomes. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

My collaborator Alessandro Sparacio is leading a new multisite study examining the effectiveness of self-administered mindfulness meditation for stress reduction. More details here: www.linkedin.com/posts/alessa...

Those experiencing delusions were more likely to jump to conclusions on certain tasks. 🤔 But the *strength* of delusional beliefs did not correlate with propensity to jump to conclusions. Open access link below. #logic #psychiatry #criticalThinking #cogSci #decisionScience

APS's journal AMPPS has accepted its first manuscript through a collaboration with a nonprofit that offers decentralized, community-driven peer review. @dsbarra.bsky.social 

oh wow! lovely to see people engaging with my research 😃 www.bps.org.uk/research-dig...

Is there a relationship between delusional ideation and a jumping to conclusions cognitive bias? Our new meta-analysis led by Rose Doherty (wisely not on social media) syntheses evidence from 42 studies and finds... nothing! First publication from her PhD research 🎉

Our recently published paper in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review on #reasoning styles and #belief in God is now featured by @psychonomicsociety.bsky.social! Thanks, Jonathan Caballero, for the interesting article. 📄 Read the paper here: doi.org/10.3758/s134...

Mysterious ways our reasoning styles relate to belief in God. #psynomPBR paper by @omidghasemi.bsky.social @onurcanyilmaz.bsky.social @jennyterry.bsky.social @robert-m-ross.bsky.social. Post by J Caballero

I had hoped AI could unlock the secrets of the universe. Sadly, I was wrong...

Why do scientists disagree with each other? This new study from @justinsulik.bsky.social et al. surveys psychologists to find that scientific divides are associated with differences in researcher cognitive traits. @mi3lab.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Just in time for Easter lighthouse.mq.edu.au/article/apri...

new preprint available! Trust from Mistrust: When is Trust Rationally Justified? Co-authors @michalk.bsky.social @stevebland.bsky.social @robert-m-ross.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/ps... Drawing on insights from Nietzsche's Human All-too-human, we develop a framework for wisely placing trust 🧵

Wendy Higgins (@wchiggins.bsky.social), who developed all these projects that interrogated the validity of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test, has just been awarded her PhD and joined BlueSky! Follow her for more cutting-edge research on measurement and meta-science!

Dr Wendy Higgins, who developed several brilliant projects that interrogated the validity of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test, has been awarded her PhD and joined BlueSky! Follow her for cutting-edge research on measurement and meta-science as she begins the next stage of her academic carer! 😀

Is Publons defunct? It got bought by Clarivate Analytics several years ago (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publons). When I dig around on their webpage attempting to access it I go round in circles. I was thinking of mentioning it in a metascience paper as an example of an attempt to reward peer review.

I’ve seen philosophers citing work on the RMET. Might be a good time to stop doing that.

Yes, constantly

Reading the Mind in the Eyes test... Ugh. Uninterpretable is an understatement - check thread with links for why this test should never be in your social cognition battery. Ever.

worst fight I ever got into in grad school was me borderline losing my shit completely at autism dev researchers about this kind of thing

Really dig this paper and kudos to the authors on a methodologically rigorous, transparent evaluation of a widely used measure of social cognition across nine (!) existing datasets. Well worth checking out

If there was a March Madness for measure I most loathe, this would wear the crown

Have you every found yourself wondering whether the most widely used measures of social cognitive ability measure what they are supposed to measure?

🚨New Paper Klaxon 🚨 Belief in Belief: Even Atheists in Secular Countries Show Intuitive Preferences Favoring Religious Belief. Now out at PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Here's a quick 🧵 on what we did and found!👇 1/ 11 🧪 #atheism #religion #culture #evolution

You know how Dennett wrote about *belief in belief* in Breaking the Spell? Well we found it! Maybe. Evidence that even atheists in secular spots tend to intuitively prefer faith over #atheism, using the Knobe effect. Updated preprint here, and a thread below. Enjoy! 🧪 osf.io/preprints/ps...

Reiterating "that RMET scores are unsubstantiated, and thus uninterpretable" & again recommending "that researchers stop using the RMET as a measure of social cognitive ability and re-evaluate existing research findings based on RMET scores" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... autism-relevant

Out now in Nature Human Behaviour: Our 68-country #survey on public attitudes to #science 📣 It shows: People still #trust scientists and support an active role of scientists in society and policy-making. #OpenAccess available here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... @natureportfolio.bsky.social (1/13)

read some good news on January 20 2025 theconversation.com/most-of-us-t...

Our global study on the state of trust in scientists is now out in Nature Human Behaviour! 🥳 With a team of 241 researchers, we surveyed 71,922 people in 68 countries, providing the largest dataset on trust in scientists post-pandemic 👇🧵https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-02090-5

🧵1/2 Two new podcasts on morphology instruction! On the Teaching Literacy Podcast, we dive into the research on morphology instruction, talk about when and how to teach morphology, and discuss misconceptions about mispronunciation correction and Heart Words: open.spotify.com/episode/3vnc...

new paper just dropped, led by Samantha Stanley and with a great team including @colognaviktoria.bsky.social @neillevy.bsky.social @robert-m-ross.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

“Social-science journals have a key role to play: they must prioritize transparency to improve the credibility and verifiability of published research” www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

We're upping our game at Religion, Brain & Behavior! New editorial: "Religion, Brain & Behavior adopts stricter transparency standards". www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

New blogpost: deevybee.blogspot.com/2024/11/why-...

Response to commentaries on our recently published multisite study that failed to find evidence for cognitive dissonance theory (led by @willemsleegers.bsky.social and @vaidis.bsky.social) journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

A new poll comes out—do people really believe it? In a new chapter I organize the techniques researchers use to assure that respondents believe their answers. In short, bells & whistles only get us a little closer to everyday conceptions of what it means to "believe." tinyurl.com/BeliefTechniques