What is a psychological theory? Here's our take on this tricky and controversial question in this week's Experimentology chapter summary. Many things called "theories" in psychology aren't actually theories — they're frameworks. 🧵 experimentology.io

🚨 New paper! Think of a place you feel deeply attached to. When you're in that place, do you feel like your life is more meaningful? New work from @ashleykrause.bsky.social suggests you probably do! Just accepted at Journal of Environmental Psychology, we find places can give our life meaning 🧵

This report, unfortunately, is timed perfectly with the release of my new JPSP article on apocalyptic thinking. Apocalyptic rhetoric is not new, and we are beginning to understand the psychology underlying it. Pre-print available free on my website: www.matthewibillet.com dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi...

New article in JPSP on Apocalyptic Thinking! Takeaways in the title: End of world beliefs are common, diverse, and predict how people perceive and respond to global risks. Cindel J.M. White, @azimshariff.bsky.social & Ara Norenzayan. @ucirvine.bsky.social @psych.ubc.ca @spspnews.bsky.social 1/5

What motivates people to engage in climate advocacy? In a new PNAS Nexus megastudy [https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf400] led by @dgoldwert.bsky.social we tested 17 theoretical interventions on a large US sample (N=31,324) to increase public, political, and financial climate advocacy. 1/5

Revision posted! An evolutionary model of identity signaling with nested/overlapping/intersectional identities, complex multidimensional signaling capabilities, and a primer on ancient Mesopotamia. What more could you ask for? osf.io/preprints/so...

New pre-print analyzing 25,000 Christian sermon transcripts across the USA. Churches account for most systematic variance in sermon content, geographic region accounts for none. We identify niches in sermon content that may guide religious competition in USA. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Interested in the psychology of people's spiritual connections with nature, and how it shapes well-being and sustainable behavior? Check out my open-access Current Directions article with Adam Baimel (@abaimel.bsky.social), Mark Schaller, and Ara Norenzayan: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Below is my new post about our Three Stages of Religious Decline paper (www.nature.com/articles/s41...). We argue that a similar process of decline affects countries on every populated continent, including countries in which Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism is the largest religion. A🧵

An incredible resource on Social Psychology today spanning 50 beefy chapters written by some of the greatest scholars today. The best part is, the new Handbook of Social Psychology is completely free and available online to download. Here's the link. openpublishing.princeton.edu/projects/the...

Fully-funded PhD position on the cultural evolution of environmental management! Link evolution, ecology and behavioral science in the ACE Lab timwaring.info Details: forms.gle/gZWK9BpwYfoG... @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social @alexmesoudi.com @hyperadapthyrax.bsky.social @michael.muthukrishna.com

After a long wait, the working paper for the Many-Economists Project: The Sources of Researcher Variation in Economics. We had 146 teams perform the same research three times, each time with less freedom. What source of freedom leads to different choices and results? papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

How can we sustain both our planet and ourselves? Drawing on a new review of research by @matthewibillet.bsky.social, @abaimel.bsky.social, and colleagues - as well as faith and climate scientist leaders like @katharinehayhoe.com, my article for @psychologytoday.com explores what we can do.

Where do moralizing religions come from? Useless cognitive by-products?Cultural group selection for complex societies? Our Psych Review paper argues: neither. Let’s rethink their cognitive & evolutionary origins🧵 w/ @manvir.bsky.social @nbaumard @jbaptistandre.bsky.social doi.org/10.1037/rev0...

Does poverty lead to risk taking or risk avoidance? Turns out, to both. Our new paper (with D. Nettle & W. Frankenhuis) in @royalsocietypublishing.org explains why, and conducts preregistered tests of our ‘desperation threshold’ model. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... A 🧵

Critical comms about climate change is increasingly happening on social media. But it is challenging to study climate comms on popular social media platforms, so researchers often rely on survey research. How much do survey responses tell us how things will play out on social media? Thread 🧵

Does anyone have recommendations for more recent textbooks on environmental psych / conservation psych? I love this one by Gardner and Stern, but it's quite outdated now. #APA34 #environmentalpsych #conservationpsych #sustainability

Check out our new article on ecospirituality! Takeaways: Ecospirituality is associated with environmental concern and well-being, and changes in ecospirituality are associated with changes in these variables too! (plus a large pre-registered outdoor experiment that kinda failed!)

Super interesting - another great article from Gordon Hodson

Very interesting results in this new meta-analysis of why people turn to conspiratorial thinking. Conspiratorial thinking is a response to external threats, not really a trait of specific kinds of people. I want to know... 1/2

New open access article assessing the common ground between liberals and conservatives on why nature is worth preserving. Turns out they share a lot in common! I did this work with Adam Baimel (@abaimel.bsky.social ), Taciano Milfont, and Ara Norenzayan. 1/n journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

{ggeffects} version 2.0.0 is out now! Read more about this #rstats package at strengejacke.github.io/ggeffects What does {ggeffects} do? The 📦 helps you to understand (complex) models and results by calculating and plotting *estimated marginal means* or more generally, *adjusted predictions*. 🧵