Out now at PSPR: our love letter to the personality trait of Openness! Amber Thalmayer and I identify and (try to) explain the many ways that openness/intellect is the weirdest & WEIRDest of the Big Five. (Big improvements over the old preprint! thx reviewers) journals.sagepub.com/eprint/HBGXT...

a couple years ago i contracted with one of subway's ad agencies for a small rotating sandwiches collab that ultimately they decided not to publish and i never did anything with. today feels like a good day to post one of them. here's my favorite subway sandwich, the veggie delight

1/ 🚨New paper in Nature Genetics Genetic factors are associated with the educational fields people study, from arts to engineering. Article: www.nature.com/articles/s41... FAQ: www.thehastingscenter.org/genomic-find...

On my calendar today I have scheduled "zoom GWAS" for 1pm. Current me has no idea what this refers to, there's no zoom link, no other guests, nothing in my last month of emails provides a clue. SO I'm just going to anxiously await an email at 1:05pm that says "where are you?" SORRY to whomever!

A reminder that I’m accepting applications for PhD students!

Interdisciplinary paper with @paulhufe.net Astrid Sandsør and Nicolai Borgen now out in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.... Causal evidence of gene-environment interaction for reading test scores based on: 🧬 Exogenous within-family genetic differences 🏫 Exogenous variation in school value added

New release of PowerLMM.js! Browser-based power analysis for longitudinal models with dropout. Now includes: - Power analysis summary report - Reproducible & shareable configs (URL/JSON) - Calculations validated against R - Hypothesis region visualization powerlmmjs.rpsychologist.com

After the FBI denied "children were zip-tied or hit with rubber bullets" in a raid in Wilder, Idaho, the FBI said no "young" children were. The updated statement came after KIVI-TV sent FBI photo reportedly showing 14-year-old U.S. citizen in zip ties.

Has conscientiousness really been in a free fall since 2014? A question that made us blog again: Has conscientiousness really been in a free fall since 2014?* floggingpvalues.blog/2025/10/22/h...

☀️To all Master’s & PhD students: Join the Summer School of Personality Science 2026 (July 15–19, Edinburgh) for a week of research training, mentoring & networking in personality psychology. Template: osf.io/76ej2/files/... Apply Nov 2-20: www.conftool.org/ssps2026 #SSPS #eapp

Here is another way to put the paradox. If you ask, "If I had different genes, would my personality be different?" Then the answer is, "Probably, yes." If you ask, "If I had THESE genes, what would my personality be like?", the answer is, "We don't have any idea."

When do machine learning models actually outperform standard polygenic scores? 🤔 In our new preprint, we benchmark how non-additive genetic effects (i.e, dominance deviations) shape polygenic prediction across simulated and UK Biobank traits. 👉 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧵 1/6

This is a fairly technical but highly relevant paper on how we can model complex systems at various levels of detail without losing causal content. Think gas: instead of tracking every molecule, we can focus on big-picture properties like temperature and pressure. www.auai.org/uai2017/proc...

@jfealy.bsky.social, Joesphine Fealy, investigated how genetics were associated with personality trait develolent after stressful life events. Find out more in our upcoming newsletter and on our Instagram!

You can find a #NoKingsDay event near you at nokings.org/#map. Join your neighbors and friends. Stand up for what actually makes America great. This Saturday. Everywhere.

New from @ent3c.bsky.social in The Atlantic -- 7 years (!) after Charles Murray made a bet with us that we'd "understand IQ genetically" by 2025, Eric describes how far we still are--and might always be--from that goal www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...

I was wondering why this photo felt familiar and then I realized my profile pic is just me cosplaying as this flower

Trump's "university compact" is blatantly transphobic and deeply evil stuff. Any university that agrees to this kneels to fascism.

% of US men under 30 who say legal sports betting is a *bad thing* for society 22% in 2022 47% in 2025 No other demographic group has seen a bigger increase.

Non-paywalled link to my commentary on @vw1234.bsky.social and colleagues new paper in @nature.com rdcu.be/eI2NG

If you're teaching about lifespan personality development, and you want to include Bleidorn + colleagues (2022) meta-analysis, I made some prettier plots than the ones in our paper. (Y axis is cohen's d) (Alternately, if you've never read our paper, check out these plots!)

2015: the CLPM is misspecified, it doesn't account for stable traits, use the RI-CLPM! 2025: the RI-CLPM is misspecified, it doesn't account for linear decay over time, use the ARTS! (But actually, given how stable everything is, maybe just don't estimate cross-lagged models in adults)

Submissions are now open for 22nd European Conference on Personality (Edinburgh, 2026); deadline 7/12/25. Keynote speakers and pre-conference workshops have also been confirmed. www.ecp22edinburgh.org/submission

Report: You To Be Fired For Reading This Headline About Charlie Kirk

The largest study on late life virginity, based on >400k individuals, out now in @pnas.org Open access link: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Shoutout to shared first author @laurawesseldijk.bsky.social ❤️ Thread below 👇🏽

I wrote a little note on awards for diversity and science: mwkraus.medium.com/a-note-on-aw...

Proud to share our new @nber working paper on how genetics shape the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status in the Netherlands. 🧵(1/8) www.nber.org/papers/w34208

Looking for recs on a novel (any genre) where, when you read it, you kept thinking "dang this author has a LOT of fun ideas"

Simon Wood, the GOAT of generalized additive models & creator of the mgcv #rstats package, has an Annual Review of Statistics essay on GAMs, available open access #statssky #mlsky www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Major new paper by finds implicit measures like the IAT are no better than asking people directly about their biases. After decades of avoiding self-reports, turns out our sophisticated replacement tools work no better than what we abandoned. New post!

New paper out at the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science! We examined unconditional & event-related changes in pathological vs normal-range personality using 4 metrics to compare their developmental links, how these vary with life events, and whether unique effects emerge across metrics

this whole "we have to be super private about our salaries" nonsense does nothing but protect the wealthy and privileged by helping hide income and wealth disparities. It's also, fucking annoying.

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!)

📣 New paper published in @natcomms.nature.com‬, where we explored sex differences in local genetic correlations, local heritabilities, and magnitude of effect sizes in quantitative traits. link: rdcu.be/ezuZd 1/7

It's so refreshing to hear Chance the Rapper back and in form. I didn't realize how much I missed him. New album is a comfy 7/10.

2 bits of data from new Economist/YouGov poll..... 13% support for cutting research funding to universities. 24% among Republicans. Polling on this continues to be catastrophic for the Rs, suggests Dems should be learning far harder into standing up for science and our universities. 1/

An updated preprint of our Borderline Personality Disorder GWAS is now online: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Are there any really good papers/posts for teaching nesting in structural equation models? My vibes advice of "well if the difference is mostly parameter constraints it's probably nested, and if the difference is in latent variables it isn't, can I just look at your syntax?" is ... not so helpful.

New pre-print online: Imputing parental genotypes through Mendelian Imputation: Ethical and Legal Considerations osf.io/preprints/ps...

Check us out!! So proud of our team.

New preprint! Ever heard that personality doesn't change? Do you believe that? (you shouldn't) Using data from an online survey (n = 887) & eight longitudinal datasets (n = 166,971), we compared perceived vs. actual lifespan changes in personality and 20+ individual differences (1/8) osf.io/ytmxp

Newly accepted in PSPB! We examined whether Asian and Black Americans perceived one another through a zero-sum lens. Inspired by the SCOTUS affirmative action decisions, I wanted to know if Asians thought they were losing to Black people and how this mindset affects coalition osf.io/preprints/ps...

[taking down the neon RI-CLPM sign in my office window and putting up a new one that says STARTS]

🚨Free data alert!! 🚨 Please share. Large new dataset of Amazon product reviews, including full text and photos and product characteristics, with individual *reviews labeled as fake reviews*. I believe this is the first publicly available data of this kind. github.com/bretthollenb...

𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐀𝐋𝐒 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐒𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐞 𝐨𝐧 "𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐦 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐍𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬" Do you use a classroom activity to help students understand networks? Share it with others in Connections! Submit your abstract (up to 300 words) to [email protected] by 15 September 2025

He has refused his Assent to Laws… For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world… For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury… For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences… A Tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

NO WAR

I’m looking for a postdoctoral scholar to join me in the Self & Society Laboratory at UC Riverside! Sharing would be much appreciated! aprecruit.ucr.edu/JPF02104

Another thing to mention for people who don't live in LA. Most of LA is very chill and peaceful right now. There's a huge Pride fest going on, countless farmer's markets, tourists walking around, families at the parks, people walking their dogs. It's a big place.