My god.

Gotta love these judges: They are increasingly frustrated with the Trump administration and DOJ and are no longer giving them a presumption of good faith.

Good news for Chicago-- an injunction against the use of force by ICE.

What a mess.

You just can't make this timeline up.

🎉 New paper accepted at JPSP: ASC! Verena Heidrich, Felicitas Flade & I ask: When people meet others, which social lens do they use — age, gender, race? Our paper: “Face the Difference: Meta-contrast as an Affordance to Spontaneous Social Categorization.” osf.io/preprints/ps...

Hmmm. Anyone think we’ll now get the punditry class to engage in weeks long debate about the need for the right to moderate and move more to the center to improve its electoral chances? …Anyone??

What an incredible waste.

On election day, I wanna announce that I am recruiting social psych PhD students for my lab at UIC. My lab focuses on racial identities (esp Asian, Latino, MENA Americans) and intra-minority conflict/ coalition. So please tell your students to pick me! All details on my website: www.pbandjlab.com

Where America stands, one year after the election. A fascistic movement controls the government; they are building an authoritarian state; but they have not been able yet to extend authoritarian rule across society. A democracy no more, but not a consolidated autocratic regime yet. New piece:

Just bumping this -- I'll be recruiting a new graduate student this cycle, to start in fall 2026. So will my colleagues Karen Gasper and Reg Adams. I'm currently the area coordinator. Reach out if you have questions about Penn State Social Psychology -- WE ARE!

The Supreme Court Enabled Revenge Prosecutions Chief Justice John Roberts said sweeping immunity was necessary to avoid a president who would “prosecute his predecessors." In the year since, rather than preventing the weaponization of prosecutions, the court has unleashed it. Gift Article

Fall is so amazingly beautiful here in the Midwest.

Why should you 🫵🏿 care about SNAP? SNAP recipients saw: - Improved life expectancy - Lower chance of incarceration - Lowers chance of poverty - Lived in better neighborhoods - Higher human capital SNAP keeps our neighbors fed, communities safer, and kids educated. Also people are HUNGRY. DUH!

Such a good point here from @davekarpf.bsky.social: If Dems don't engage forcefully enough on Trump's terror raids, Trump/MAGA propaganda filters down to the "inattentive public" and risks persuading people this is normal and acceptable. Check out our full exchange: newrepublic.com/article/2025...

We are in an era of deadweight loss - this stuff just won't happen. Even a country committed to filling the gap cannot possibly do it by an order of magnitude overnight - they would need to do something like double every year for a decade. And we'd need a lot of countries to do the same.

ANES Data Release! electionstudies.org/data-center/... The 3-wave ANES panel is now available. It merges data from 3 election studies (2016-2020-2024), the first time the ANES has collected interviews of the same respondents across 3 presidential elections.

A checklist: "The Times editorial board has compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have studied this phenomenon." Gift link: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

New review from me on whether there are ideological differences in science denial. Although Dems/libs are much more likely to report they trust science than Reps/cons in the U.S., similar diffs do not emerge in most countries, and in some, it's the reverse. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Is social media dying? How much has Twitter changed as it became X? Which party now dominates the conversation? Using nationally representative ANES data from 2020 & 2024, I map how the U.S. social media landscape has transformed. Here are the key take-aways 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2510.25417

Oh my sweet summer child. That ship sailed some time ago.

Review of applications begins November 10 - please apply! apply.interfolio.com/172357

Excellent @leedrutman.bsky.social on how it is nearly impossible for moderation to matter much when electoral outcomes are almost perfectly polarized along one dimension - why we need to move toward a multi-party system leedrutman.substack.com/p/the-modera...

We're hiring! @univie.ac.at is seeking a TT Assistant Professor in the Psychology of Digitalization. If your work is about automation, AI, or immersive technology (e.g., VR) in the context of work and organizations (broadly defined), we’d love to hear from you. 👇

A frustrating (at least to me) amount of emotional labor is required of women in written communication to avoid coming off as cold, which means women lean into using exclamation marks.

I appreciated this. It seems very likely to me that more lives would be saved if the time spent on lockdown drills was instead devoted to teaching kids about (a) reaching out to kids who always sit alone at lunch, etc (b) reporting major concerns about potentially violent classmates to teachers

Our community has felt the impact of sweeping changes to the federal and contracting workforce. Many are navigating unemployment, rethinking career paths, and seeking new business strategies. Join the AAPOR Open Community Forum on the Current Challenges with Federal Research. buff.ly/h7mJcQz

To sum up the findings: Polls were more accurate in 2024 than 2016 and 2000, but showed small percentage overestimates of Democratic vote share.

A little too on the nose.

That’s $500 million lost per day

—>

A new Harvard study shows that 2025 protests are likely the most geographically widespread in US history.

I really think that we need to talk more about the fact that Republicans have basically quietly abolished the House of Representatives

Chicago will not quietly cooperate. Neither should you—>

Nine months ago I put most of my hope in major institutions continuing to hold fascism in check, but had little expectation that regular people with little to no power would step up and put themselves at risk. I had it exactly backward.

Pleased to share that the Kennedy School has been authorized to conduct a faculty search in American politics This is as an extraordinary opportunity for us - please share widely with your networks and consider applying academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15418

It flies under the radar because it is overwhelmed by the sheer repulsiveness of the physical destruction of the east wing, but there is no way that a president should be allowed to use private money to change public property. It circumvents the power of the purse.

A good time to make a donation to any local food banks.

He may as well tear the whole thing down and build a casino— the affront feels the same.

Seriously? RFK disbanded CDC’s IRB?! So not only do we have something close to concentration camps in the U.S., we’re about to do unethical experiments on humans as well.

The Moral Psychology Research Group (MPRG) is hosting an on-line conference 11/7-11/8: Any interested attendees are welcome! Speakers include Paul Bloom, Daryl Cameron, Joshua Greene, Melton Yecel, Abigail Cassario, and others (including me). For more details see sites.google.com/view/mprg/on...

the president using the office to punish americans that didnt vote for him should really be one of the biggest scandals in americas history

Useful reading—>

Are you a social psych person who studies things related to culture, social dynamics, contextually situated groups or just want to live in the southwest and eat amazing Mexican food? Apply to our position! We’re hiring at the asst prof level in psych utep.interviewexchange.com/jobofferdeta...

Unfortunately, reality is only apparent *after* elections.

All of this is so, so, so embarrassing to me as an American.

A genuinely believably large effect size!

Principled conservatives are increasingly drowned out by racists, sexists, etc. Surely the former exist, but the Republican party is no longer a reasonable home for them.