This is the scandal. Trump isn’t targeting dangerous people. He’s targeting peaceful immigrants. Almost exclusively.

1st paper in thread. The 2nd & my last submitted paper of 2025 is my big theory paper that took over a year to write. Some of you have generously invited me to speak about it but very few have seen the paper. I propose what I call Racial Contrast Theory, to examine Black-Asian relations osf.io/easwg

NEW: Earlier this month, I spent the day with the Luhmanns — a family rooted in theologically conservative Christianity. In the morning, the homeschooled teenage sons tracked ICE. In the afternoon, the mother aided an immigrant mother whose partner was deported. religionnews.com/2025/11/25/h...

Postdoctoral Researcher Positions!

The Office (US) characters as academics, a thread. Creed Bratton: got a TT job by mail in 1964, without an interview. somehow hasn't retired yet. Invented some method used by the entire field. Completely nuts but still friendly 1/n

40% of Democrats are religiously unaffiliated (Republicans are half as likely to be unaffiliated). Across measures, Republicans report more religiousness. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/11/20/religiousness-varies-a-lot-by-race-among-democrats-relatively-little-among-republicans/

Hadley Wickham made a GenZ version of dplyr 😂 hadley.github.io/genzplyr/

👋Don't forget to submit your research for the SPSP PUI Invited Talk Series! This initiative is a great way to highlight outstanding scholarship at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions. 📌Deadline: December 2 👉Apply here: ow.ly/szRj50XuKnH

🚨 Trump calls for the death of Democratic senators and representatives who produced a video advising members of the military and intelligence communities not to follow illegal orders:

Now this is how you detect whether an election was stolen. Humans choose rounder numbers. by @TheEconomist

It’s letter-of-recommendation season again, when universities ask me to rate a 21 year old student’s ability to “see the big picture of life” while I eat leftover pasta in a Tupperware…

One of the most upsetting articles I've read in a long time www.theargumentmag.com/p/when-grade... UCSD report senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347... We are failing a generation of kids.

#Tierney 3-2 #Scotland Epic

Highly concerning… 😬

AI presents a fundamental threat to our ability to use polls to assess public opinion. Bad actors who are able to infiltrate panels can flip close election polls for less than the cost of a Starbucks coffee. Models will also infer and confirm hypotheses in experiments. Current quality checks fail

Another reminder that if you got students who wanna do a social psych PhD focusing on identities (specifically Asian, Latine, MENA Americans), I’m recruiting! I’m hustling hard here so pls send people my way 😅 see website for details www.pbandjlab.com

We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people.”

The Change from 2020 tab is particularly interesting, given the narratives about what happened.

Political Gap Between Pastors & Pews “Political partisanship of the average mainline pastor diverges significantly from the politics of the folks sitting in their pews.” Ryan Burge analyzes recent PRRI data to highlight pervasive pattern in Mainline Christianity 👉 open.substack.com/pub/ryanburg...

A family member just posted this on Facebook… even as a social psychologist who studies these things and intellectually understands understands these concepts, seeing this level of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias in the wild still baffles me

Oh wow @reuters.com got the photo here:

POSTDOC POSITION in social psychology at Cornell @cornellpsych.bsky.social! We will begin reviewing apps Dec 1st. Please repost! academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31185 @spspnews.bsky.social @spspsc.bsky.social @aplssc.bsky.social @spssi.bsky.social @psychscience.bsky.social

New write-up of our political scandal experiments for SPSP's (@spspnews.bsky.social) blog. We find that partisan voters allow politicians to get away with hostile, defensive "explanations" for scandal, esp when the politician is high-status and when party goals are at stake spsp.org/news/charact...

For folks (and journalists) who want to search the Oversight Committee email texts, I made a database for searching the 20k text files: splendorous-chaja-f79791.netlify.app

Beautiful ride this weekend on the Natchez Trace Parkway SW of Nashville 🚴‍♂️ made it 50 miles, my longest ride yet! (Not pictured, me dying the last 10 miles)

Cowards die many times before their deaths, The valiant never taste of death but once.

Friends, if you have the means to donate to a local food pantry financially via online giving, I highly encourage you to do that. But I don’t want to discount the importance of actually showing up at the pantry, even if it is just to drop off food. (1/5)

“How did you receive the foreigner? And did you receive him and welcome him or not?” Pope Leo XIV challenges us to reflect on the moral cost of policies that target deeply-root immigrants and families.

PRL welcomes postdoc applications at Dartmouth for 2026-2027. Work with @seanjwestwood.bsky.social & @ylelkes.bsky.social on projects like www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... and elite rhetoric analysis using americaspoliticalpulse.com/elites/ Pls apply by Jan 5 on Interfolio 🙏 apply.interfolio.com/175722

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

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.

Most Americans don't often talk politics with people who hold different political opinions % of U.S. adult citizens who do this [online | in-person] Very often 10% | 9% Somewhat often 12% | 24% Not very often 22% | 33% Not at all often 54% | 32% today.yougov.com/politics/art...

The challenge in learning using AI is very similar to the same learning issue discovered about internet search When we are given answers we think we learn, but we don’t. Learning is work. However, things like the “learning modes” from the AI providers help, as does using AI for tutoring not answers

Posting is correlated with affective polarization: 😡 The most partisan users — those who love their party and despise the other — are more likely to post about politics 🥊 The result? A loud angry minority dominates online politics, which itself can drive polarization (see doi.org/10.1073/pnas...)

NEW RESEARCH Americans who embrace Christian nationalism more likely to agree situation f/ people with disabilities is good as it is, disabled people demand too much from rest of society, & there have been enough societal efforts in favor of people w/ disabilities. academic.oup.com/socpro/advan...

I often hear from jr faculty in SLAC and postdocs that they want more reviewing experience. This is a great idea to connect editors to potential reviewers, so sign up to review for our top social-personality journals!!

Cognitive psychologist, here. Trump is not describing IQ tests. He is describing taking measures of cognitive decline from dementia. Those aren’t hard. All the questions should be easy. I hope he passes, but worry he isn’t. I’ve written about these issues (links in 🧵). 1/

Are men and women different? Most Americans say yes in many ways, but there’s little agreement on what’s driving these differences. Republicans tend to point to biology, while Democrats are more likely to point to societal expectations. Read more: pewrsr.ch/3Nx6tkh

"Vanderbilt is failing in its moral responsibility to push back against rising authoritarianism and political coercion." My effort to convince Vanderbilt (and all universities) to take a stand for the rule of law, the Constitution, and our democracy. www.tennessean.com/story/opinio...

So you should really watch this. Just 2 minutes. But a window into the truly radical nature of the people Trump is nominating. When pressed today, the nominee to be Ambassador to South Africa refuses to oppose reinstituting laws to prevent black people from voting in America.

Here are two "I can't believe these are free" online stats texts books that cover both underlying principles and practical applications in R that I regularly refer to. Learning Statistics with R learningstatisticswithr.com Doing Meta-Analysis with R bookdown.org/MathiasHarre...

#nokings Portland frog brigade

Take note of all these people turning out for protests in small towns in red states. Remember them the next time you’re inclined to write an area off because “they voted for this.”

I saw a tragically AI-generated version of this poster, so I have recreated a 100% human-made version for all your protest sign needs.

Job 🚨! PRL is looking for a postdoc based at Dartmouth College for next year. Candidates should bring advanced data skills and enjoy writing. Read more about our work at polarizationresearchlab.org and apply through Interfolio by February 15, 2026: apply.interfolio.com/175722

NEW: There’s a disaster unfolding in Alaska right now. And no major network is covering it. The remnants of Typhoon Halong battered western Alaska overnight. Homes, with people in them, have literally been swept into the Bering Strait. At least 20 are missing. No comment from any federal agency.

Stoked to see our paper, lead by the fantastic Belmont undergrad student, Brielle Croke, now out in the Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research! Extending findings from self-determination theory, we find higher job autonomy predicts less parental burnout! www.psichi.org/page/304JNWi...

Many people lack a coherent system of political beliefs (Converse, 1964). Yet, studies in social and political psychology often measure political ideology using a single-item "liberal-conservative" or "left-right" scale that assumes a coherent ideology. doi.org/10.1007/s112...

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.