New research explores why openness/intellect stands apart from other personality traits. It turns out this trait may be less universal across cultures and rarely targeted for change. Read more in #PSPR: ow.ly/UGlJ50XqLqS

Join us for two fun days of moral psychology and philosophy! #MPRG2025

Come work with us @msupsychology.bsky.social! I promise, we don’t match *all* the time @tedmond.bsky.social

Two great scholars doing work on moral (@drmeltemyucel.bsky.social) & personality (@tedmond.bsky.social) development & change are recruiting PhD students this year @msupsychology.bsky.social! Your grad office could be across the hall from my office!* *not necessarily a selling point, just a fact

The welfare state is about dignity, equality, and making people not poor, but as @itsafronomics.bsky.social says/cites here, it’s often also an investment that more than pays for itself

New data, data nerds!

At a time when it’s impossible to take research funding for granted, @ncaluori.bsky.social, Cindel White, and I are humbled to receive support from the @templetonfdn.bsky.social to fund 3 years of cross-cultural research aimed at understanding how people decide who counts as their religious ingroup.

Big shoutout to MSU's email spam filter for blocking emails from my external collaborators, but not actual spam from MDPI journals I get at 2am every night...

My paper “Testing Theories of Threat, Individual Difference, and Ideology” is a winner of the Student Publication Award this year. I’m proud of this one, because it shows that if we ask interesting questions and use rigorous methods, we can contribute to ~science~ even when we’re wrong or 1/2 right!

This list of excellent SPSP awards includes @abbycassario.bsky.social’s paper on threat, personality, and ideology, one winner of the student publication award! 🎉 journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

🚨NEW PREPRINT ALERT! Why is there no coherent labor movement in the U.S., despite widespread outrage at economic inequality? One answer is that structural/systemic factors (such as Right-to-Work legislation) impede collective organizing. #Polipsy #socialpsychology #sociology #polisky

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...

Check out the Moral Psychology Research Group online conference in November! EMP Lab and @prcpennstate.bsky.social post-doc @amormino.bsky.social will be talking about her work. A lot of great talks scheduled, a treat for folks who enjoy interdisciplinary work sites.google.com/view/mprg/on...

This is an amazing opportunity for those seeking a PhD programme in Exeter: www.exeter.ac.uk/study/pg-res... If you’re interested in a PhD in social psychology on the following topics, feel free to contact me - Activism - Social movements - Resistance - Solidarity - Leadership - Intergroup conflict

Parents of 0- to 12-year-olds, come do science with us! 👉 Sign up to hear about our upcoming studies: redcap.link/MoralMindsLab 👉 To learn more about us: www.moralmindslab.com/participate-...

More than a third of Lucid (now Cint) respondents in 2019 were "professional" respondents according to a new article in @polanalysis.bsky.social , and that's the conservative estimate www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Has anyone ever written an LOR for a medical school app and know what committees tend to look for? I’m writing one for an absolute rockstar of an RA and want to make sure I’m highlighting the right things!

Hi all! Having recently moved to @uh.edu, I’ll be reviewing graduate applications to join the newly minted Worldviews in Motion lab for Fall 2026! Please share with anyone who might be interested 😊 For lab info, check out our (though it’s mostly me atm) website: www.abdoelnakouri.com

Did you hear the news? New interview dropped! Meet @drmeltemyucel.bsky.social in her interview with @msupsychology.bsky.social! Learn about her research interests, how to get involved, and the @psychresearchlist.bsky.social website. psychology.msu.edu/news-events/...

Natalism for me but not for thee. Read my new working paper w/ @tylerreny.bsky.social and Ben Newman: we show some conservative white people support legalizing abortion and contraception access in an effort to minimize the growth of the non-white population.

Increasing the minimum wage decreases poverty and food insufficiency.

Does anyone know of any *panel* data that has a question asking people to compare their *subjective* SES to that of their parents? I’m using some WVS/EVS data with an item like this right now but the repeated cross sectional design is… less than ideal for my specific question

I believe that the experimental paradigm in "polarization research" should receive strong criticism for its thin conception of political culture. I make this argument in a new blog post. Experiments Can’t Reduce Partisan Animosity tkeskinturk.github.io/blog/experiments

Come join the Moral Minds Lab as a grad student at MSU! Brand-new lab equipped for child & adult testing, with motivated undergrads in a happy department. 🤩 Learn more: www.moralmindslab.com/join-our-tea... (P.S. @tedmond.bsky.social is also taking a student!) @msupsychology.bsky.social

Younger people are more pessimistic about the economy and about open and fair elections. This is bad. www.pbump.net/o/the-doomer...

It's ~so~ much fun when your "small" "side" project ends up having 60 models per study across 4 studies with some machine learning thrown in for fun. 🤷‍♀️

people's opinions are formed through a combination of long-lasting exposures and political socialization, and we should not expect one-shot experimental settings to *scale* in the first place. this is such a needed correction to the "polarization" literature:

I’ve been in Michigan for three years now and I still can’t tell whether that many Michiganders are awful drivers or if there are cases where it’s legal to take a left on red here

This is a fantastic and much needed contribution. Highly recommend to anyone interested in building strong designs for rigorous empirical work with networks.

A new preprint, lead by lab undergrad Aymin Triki, with machine learning support from @abbycassario.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/ps...

An academic job app wants my employment history going back three employers, which for me means a place I worked in college called "Wicked Weed." They also want my manager's name. My friends, does this sound like the kind of establishment where I'd know my manager's last name? 😅

nice to know osf is a mountain goats fan

Recent research in #PSPR highlights why people's perceptions of inequality matter more than official statistics for predicting political behavior. The study outlines five key psychological processes that shape how we see inequality around us. Learn more: ow.ly/C7Y550WTS5p

This is the same court that just said you can't use race at all in college admissions. It was always about white supremacy.

Excited to announce my paper, Measuring Strategic Positioning in Congressional Elections, is officially accepted and online @thejop.bsky.social here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... Quick thread on the paper below:

I'm looking for a PhD student to do some trailblazing at the frontier of personality genomics and lifespan gene-environment transactions (start Fall 2026)! If you want to work with me: psychology.msu.edu/graduatestud... (PS @drmeltemyucel.bsky.social is taking a student too, in moral psych/dev!)

a new working paper: osf.io/vsr5b I propose a three-stage model of cohortization where dynamics of cohort learning and political sorting serve as complementary engines of aggregate political change. I apply this to the case of the killing of George Floyd & the BLM. it's also my job market paper!

New article thinking about the interplay between identity and solidarity among people of color. How stable is each orientation in a national sample? How much does each feed into each other over time, if at all? Do things look similar or different across PoC? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

In many countries, mainstream politicians are adopting rhetoric and policies that typical of the far-right. Our new paper (w/ @dziblatt.bsky.social and E Dinas), out now in the @bjpols.bsky.social, finds that doing so erodes norms more than when far-right politicians make similar statements. 1/3

You are either a "the real deadline is ~actually~ at least 48 hours before the stated deadline" kind of academic, or you're a "deadlines are suggestions" kind of academic. Sorry, I don't make the rules. I'm the former, and it is less of a good thing than you'd probably assume...

The Full Release of the ANES 2024 Time Series Study is now available! The data and documentation can be downloaded from the ANES website at: electionstudies.org/data-center/...

"Panel data on 41 million voters from 2008 to 2020 and an original survey of 24,433 respondents demonstrate that exposure to partisan neighbors increases party switching." www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...

New article out (w Marcel R, Ben N, and David S) in @pnas.org. We show that young folks who signal interest in becoming cops hold more conservative views on race, multiculturalism, gender, and sexuality, etc.than their peers intending careers in other fields www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We could have had cancer vaccines, and instead the United States will contribute nothing whatsoever to mRNA research, condemning millions of people worldwide to unnecessary illness and death

And here's the last talk from the "Empathy and the Extremes" panel at the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making's Political Divisions event. Penn State alum @mikeypasek.bsky.social gave a great talk on religious nationalism across countries #socialpsych #psychscisky www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOA4...

Experimental manipulation of threat exposure has a null effect on ideological conservatism, finds @abbycassario.bsky.social et al. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Every news outlet that reports on US stocks "surging" should be required to note that the wealthiest 10% of Americans hold more than 90% of all the value of US stocks.

New Paper by my PhD student Anni Schröder: German Version of 4D-Scale (Shuman et al., 2024) on managing privileged group identity. Open Access in Measurement Instruments for the Social Sciences doi.org/10.5964/miss...

📈 New research: Financial scarcity is associated with less perceived control over one's life, but cultural values may be more effective than formal institutions in buffering individuals against these psychological effects. Read more in #SPPS: ow.ly/uB6050WuAAb