📊 Sometimes belonging comes down to a checkbox. Our new paper in PSPB led by Brenda Straka finds that the way Latino identity is formatted on demo forms, especially the traditional two-question census format, can subtly undermine feelings of inclusion and belonging news.illinois.edu/study-demogr...

It was puzzle box day again and I'm very relieved that the 2nd group of students also had fun!! Resources at osf.io/q2zk3/files/...

If someone paid you $4.75 every night you slept 7+ hours, would you sleep more? And--more importantly--would that increase in sleep change your behavior in other meaningful ways? This new paper ran an experiment to find out.

🚨New paper alert!🚨 Super proud of the work that went into this one, which includes a systematic review and MEGA-ANALYSIS of the development of sense of belonging in STEM education across Grades K-12, with special attention to gender differences. (1/N) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

🚨 📣 Summer Fellows Program Call for undergraduates interested in education research: What are the barriers to effective learning in college? How can we support motivated learning? For more details, visit: sites.edb.utexas.edu/slam/fellows/ #cogscisky #edusky #academicsky #psychscisky

🎉 My PhD work has just been published in @natcomms.nature.com! How do we learn who caused what - and how much control we had - when outcomes depend on multiple people? We studied how humans do so using a new social learning task, computational modelling and fMRI. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵👇

Trust in others and institutions predicts subjective well-being and vice versa. This makes me even more attuned to the costs of people and systems that undermine trust. The decay of trust as a public health issue. #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky doi.org/10.1037/bul0...

Have you noticed how we often describe people from disadvantaged backgrounds as “strivers” or “go-getters” (💪🏼) rather than naturally gifted (🧠)? This may sound benign, but our new KiDLAB research shows that it reveals a harmful, early-emerging stereotype. (1/5)

I am thrilled to announce that this framework is out! Who is responsible for inequality? @tanialombrozo.bsky.social and I show that answers depend on whether people are judging causes or obligations, and the past vs the future. doi.org/10.1177/1745...

Ever try to encourage student creativity in undergraduate education? Out now and open access, our new paper documents an iterative (4 study) exploration and evaluation of our approach doi.org/10.1016/j.ts... #edpsych #highered #creativity

Don't underestimate the effect of the arts—music, dance, visual, gardening, crafts, theater—for promoting health, a systematic review @naturemedicine.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In our research on socioeconomic background in academia, we ran a survey. Over 2,000 faculty members responded (thanks if you were one!) Social & cultural capital showed up time and again as key issues. A few findings you might be interested in...🧵

Experimental evidence that students are more likely to contest grades when they are delivered by an evaluator with a female-sounding name. "These findings suggest that women in evaluative positions face disproportionate resistance when delivering negative assessments."

How are students' motivational and emotional self-regulation related? In our new article, we advocate for more integrative approaches and discuss possible conceptual and functional linkages between MR and ER. doi.org/10.1080/0046...

New paper in PSPB on the benefits of giving positive feedback to students, especially from underrepresented groups. Although not the norm in STEM, giving positive feedback boosts self-efficacy and belonging, which increases STEM performance, attitudes, interest journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

This critique of twin studies is well written and convincing. www.madinamerica.com/2024/09/the-...

New paper building a theory of stereotype negotiation. How people don't just let stereotypes happen to them; instead they constantly and actively navigate social impressions and others' evaluations by @cydneydupree.bsky.social: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Motivated reasoning is a well-understood phenomenon - or is it? In a new paper just published at @collabrapsychology.bsky.social we discuss three known unknowns. doi.org/10.1525/coll... Here is a 🧵

Paper out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com: 1) those groups (women, African Americans, lower SES, rural) that are underrepresented in science have been less trusting of science. 2) If you improve representation in science, you improve trust among those groups. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper with Esha Naidu and Emmy Reilly! As U.S. campuses grow more diverse, what really matters isn’t just who is on campus—it’s how universities shape interactions. Randomized roommates when supported with institutional backing can strengthen belonging journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Academic accommodations in college more than doubled between 2011 and 2024 (4% -> 10%) and is driven by students getting accommodations for mental health conditions - job market paper by @alvinchristian.bsky.social

New paper in press at JPSP! An adversarial collaboration focusing on a large-scale test of how strongly implicit racial attitudes predict discriminatory behavior. Pre-print here: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Happy to share our latest study published in PNAS. Using data from 274,316 French students, we find that lower-SES students are less likely to wait for better university offers, even when waiting would lead to more prestigious or better-fit programs. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Excited to share a new paper by my grad student and myself, highlighting how classroom experiences such as positive classroom climate relate to changes in STEM motivational beliefs across the semester 🤸‍♀️🎉https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1m8Px,8E16MF-A

How can psychology help fight poverty? Our @pnas.org article shows how “culturally wise” interventions can support women’s agency and boost poverty reduction (Patrick Premand, Thomas Bossuroy, Abdoulaye Sambo, Hazel Markus, Greg Walton @stanforduniversity.bsky.social): t.co/maI5vf3meP

We replicated one of the oldest experiments in Psychology (Triplett, 1898) as a registered report. Children completed a task faster in pairs than when they were alone. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Starting the week strong with a newly accepted paper in Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, co-authored with postdoc @lizsnoland.bsky.social and Sohad Murrar! We merged two largely independent research lines to call for data disaggregation of Asian Americans and MENA Americans

What happens when a lottery determines which proposals for third-party funding get reviewed? Details here (#OpenAccess and fresh off the press): doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Kudos to Leiming Ding on this super cool study showing that STEM college students' cost perceptions interacted with early assessment performance to predict dropout intentions. #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky

New in @pnas.org. Preschool teachers were less likely to accept participation attempts by children from working-class backgrounds, regardless of their perceived language level. With a great team: @andreicimpian.bsky.social @sebastiengoudeau.bsky.social & Louise Goupil. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Open-access publication alert!! This is a special one; it represents two years of work with an amazing team of researchers, teachers, educational stakeholders, and technology experts to identify infrastructure that would advance equity in STEM education: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

New publication! 🤓 This experience sampling study examines how motivational regulation and cost predict students’ momentary motivational conflicts and emotions.

Your LMS clicks say more than you think. 🖱️💭 New research shows that students’ digital traces—like opening readings or requesting hints—can reveal how they self-regulate learning. #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky 🔗 doi.org/10.1037/edu0...

💖This paper has been ~11 years in the making - and probably my favorite project of all time. Thrilled to see it in @pnas.org! I'm so lucky that Zach decided to do a second PhD and join my lab @psychillinois.bsky.social back in 2014 - a fabulous scientist & human being! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

This special issue "invites submissions on research areas recently de-prioritized and/or de-funded that address or discuss how social cognition approaches can aid in the understanding of these critical societal issues." Plz consider submitting!

My new office for the year! I’ll be spending my sabbatical in Berlin as a Fellow of the @wiko-berlin.bsky.social Excited to read, write, learn, and meet some amazing new people.

Now published: Our paper investigating cognitive processes of ingroup favoritism across 20 countries. Free to read (hashtag#OpenAccess) at www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2417456122

What do first-year students think about STEM course office hours? How do these perceptions change over time? So excited to share a new paper in the International Journal of STEM Education where we conducted a longitudinal study to find out! 1/7 stemeducationjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10....

📊 New #PSPB research highlights the impact of the STEP scale - a tool that measures how safe or threatening people perceive different environments to be. Researchers report that environmental cues significantly impact engagement and belonging. Read more: ow.ly/6mAE50WyCwi

As women became a larger share of undergraduate student bodies in the United States over the course of the 20th century, research on gender-related topics increased in science as a direct result.

Thrilled to share our new @NatureComms paper: "Exploration is associated with socioeconomic disparities in learning and academic achievement in adolescence." www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵1/7

Imagine going to the gym and thinking "lifting this heavy weight is hard, so lifting it is not making me stronger." Not how it works, right? Yet that's, in essence, how many students view mental effort and learning. Let's help students embrace mental effort. #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky

New paper out from the Self & Motivation Lab on Safety and Threat in the Environment Perceptions (STEP). The STEP scale assesses people's overall, gut-level impressions of any given space and uniquely predicts engagement, interest, & desire to recruit others journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Our new paper is out! 🎉 Led by Echo Yan (along with @drmuenks.bsky.social), we used a vignette-based experiment to test the effects of perceived instructor and peer field-specific ability beliefs (FABs) on students' motivation, psychological experience, and anticipated behavior: t.co/WnzqHsvGyn

🔥Excited to share our new paper in PsychScience! Shout out to best-ever collaborators Aida Davani, @ruyuan-zuo.bsky.social, @shreyahavaldar.bsky.social, Eleanor Chestnut, @mdehghani.bsky.social & @andreicimpian.bsky.social 🧵1/8… doi.org/10.1177/0956...

How do our brains and bodies support social learning in real time? We take an ecological and multimodal neuroscience approach to study mutual prediction and social coordination when learning with others. It took 5 full years for this one! Full open-access pre-print: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Cool paper with an great title. Across the world, boys are much more likely to overestimate their math ability than girls. People from high SES backgrounds do the same www.iza.org/publications...

A meta-analysis of meta-analyses substantiates that teacher-student relationships matter for academic & other outcomes. "Thus, it is central to train teachers to develop positive TSRs to give their students a sense of safety and belonging." #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky doi.org/10.1037/bul0...

2️⃣ new papers to share! First is a paper in CBE-Life Sciences Education led by former undergrad Gabby Dauber '24, examining student motivations and experiences in STEM course office hours (OH). She conducted interviews with students about their knowledge of and 1/5 www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/...

🚨🚨🚨 New publication alert! We took a look at students' reported costs in chemistry, statistics, and English composition and examined how they differed over time, across courses, and by gender! @ecallen.bsky.social www.researchgate.net/publication/...