Many think LLM-simulated participants can transform behavioral science. But there's been a lack of accessible discussion of what it means to validate LLMs for behavioral scientists. Under what conditions can we trust LLMs to learn about human parameters? Our paper maps the validation landscape. 1/

Our paper on the ☀️ "summer slide" 🛝 is out now @pnas.org! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Summer slide is a replicable phenomenon across diverse datasets that's more than "forgetting" school material in vacation months, but effects of socioeconomic inequality are ➡️ 7x bigger! ⬅️ #PsychSciSky #DevPsy 🧵👇

I maintain that this is an excellent benchmark for d-type effect sizes: Sleep satisfaction & duration declined with childbirth & reached a nadir during the first 3 months postpartum, with women more strongly affected (satisfaction d = -0.79, duration minus 62 min, d = -0.90)>

Nothing worse than signing an email "warm regards" and getting a reply with "warmest regards". Oh, now it's ON.

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

We are beyond excited to announce that abstract submissions are now open for #SAA2026, which will be hosted by @univie.ac.at in early August next year. We are looking forward to receiving your submissions. More info: univie.eventsair.com/saa2026/subm... @ambulatory-assessment.org

This year explaining regression to the mean took forever but I’m sure next year will be better.

Es ist richtig, Klassismus - also die Benachteiligung und Diskriminierung aufgrund von Klasse - zu kritisieren. Aber das darf niemals das eigentliche Problem überdecken: Dass wir in einer Klassengesellschaft leben, in der die einen die anderen ausbeuten - was nur durch Klassenkampf zu ändern ist.

"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se

🚨 SynthNet is out 🚨 Researchers propose new constructs and measures faster than anyone can track. We (@anniria.bsky.social @ruben.the100.ci) built a search engine to check what already exists and help identify redundancies; indexing 74,000 scales from ~31,500 instruments in APA PsycTests. 🧵1/3

In our rejoinder, we argue 1) Dark terminology isn't used responsibly as BL et al. claim, 2) the term can be replaced with a more sensible and scientific one, 3) data support our position (Stanton et al., 2025), and 4) popularity ≠ importance. @davidchester.bsky.social @drlynam.bsky.social

1/2 New open access paper in which we apply the Nyquist-Shannon thereom from signal processing to 2 EMA datasets to figure out the optimal sampling frequency for EMA assessments. 🧪 #psychscisky #statssky www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Very excited to see this out from @hitop-system.bsky.social! It really seems like these are two literatures poised to advance each other. Looking forward to reading this with my lab.

We built the openESM database: ▶️60 openly available experience sampling datasets (16K+ participants, 740K+ obs.) in one place ▶️Harmonized (meta-)data, fully open-source software ▶️Filter & search all data, simply download via R/Python Find out more: 🌐 openesmdata.org 📝 doi.org/10.31234/osf...

A new take on the limitations of "psychometric networks" now out in Nature Human Behavior. You don't want to put too much confidence in individual edges. Something we cautioned against in 2017. 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Great study! A general implication is that when we infer effects of retrospectively measure variables on outcomes, we’re largely just seeing the effects of how people are currently feeling.

📣 New Pub 📣 We captured 30-day emotion intensity & dysregulation data from EMA & examined in relation to cortisol (from hair) during the same period. Emotion intensity & hair cortisol levels were significantly associated among women with high (but not low) emotion dysregulation.

We’ve just published another video on HiTOP that tries to flesh out a bit more how the framework can be helpful in research: youtu.be/q0jOi_Nl1yo We hope it’s useful, and are keen to hear any feedback Thanks again so much to @tashtc.bsky.social for all of her hard work creating this video series ✨

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

Finally, after 21 years, an expression of concern has been issued for the publication of Study 329 by the journal where it appeared. If you haven't heard about this scandalous study, see here: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Study_329 www.jaacap.org/article/S089...

‼️ Recent work by Setayesh Radkani, Joshua Tenenbaum & Rebecca Saxe: What people learn from punishment: A cognitive model

Wrote for @psyche.co about disinhibition – the trait that brings chaos and frustration, but can also (sometimes) spark charm and boldness. Check it out!

🎉🎉New preprint from graduate students Lily Martin and Ning Yeo! The piece focuses on better understanding / classifying suicide ideation content, and examines how endorsed content is distributed across key aspects of social identity. Comments/feedback are welcome! doi.org/10.31234/osf...

My blog has moved! It’s now at sometimesimwrongblog.wordpress.com If you have links to posts in your syllabus, let me know if you have any trouble finding the corresponding post!

We're looking for an experimental psychologist in Witten. Contact me if you have questions about the job (I'm not on the commission, so can talk freely :-) uni-wh.softgarden.io/job/59638545...

Open Science Professor ship at HU Berlin www.academics.de/jobs/w2-prof...

New paper out! 🎢 We found that following negative life events most people's self-esteem tends to increase again–though some don't seem to recover. Personality traits and perceived event characteristics predicted who recovered vs. who did not. @peterhaehner.bsky.social doi.org/10.1177/0890...

If colleagues or students share a dataset with you and you make this face, consider sharing these resources with them. ☺️ datamgmtinedresearch.com 1. Organizing data (Ch. 3) 2. Naming variables and files (Ch. 9) 3. Documenting data (Ch. 8) 4. Cleaning data (Ch. 14)

Longitudinal associations of structural and functional brain connectivity with dimensions of psychopathology in adolescence. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. doi.org/10.1016/j.bp...

study emotion? sections of this are a v worthwhile read. no paywall. useful reminder that not everyone falls neatly into BET v constructionism buckets researchgate.net/publication/255522683_The_duration_of_affective_phenomena_or_emotions_sentiments_and_passions

We are conducting a meta-analysis on personal and contextual predictors of solitude. We're looking for unpublished research such as theses, unpublished manuscripts, conference submissions etc. Full call for data: tinyurl.com/4hur45cw Please reskeet, or message me if you know unpublished research!

Personality change people: does it make sense to think that to change a broader trait domain (neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness) one could consider starting with those facets/nuances that are furthest from the desired levels? (Most room for change?)

I recommend reading the age 18 follow-up on the Bucharest Early Intervention Project: Children in foster care had significantly stronger communication & socialization skills than their peers who remained in institutional care, and higher quality was critical. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40638296/#fu...

1/32 Fluoxetine's loss of efficacy for the treatment of pediatric depression. 🚨 New paper and pre-print alert 🚨 With great colleagues @floriannaudet.bsky.social @richlyus.bsky.social @markhoro.bsky.social @joannamoncrieff.bsky.social and Gert van Valkenhoef A longer 🧵

At #SRP2025? I'm presenting some findings on antagonism from meta-analyses, large scale text mining, and large language modeling tomorrow at 2:30!

Hey #SRP2025! Curious about how context shapes impulsive action and inaction in daily life? Come chat with me about our findings! 🗓️ Tonight (Thurs), 7-9pm 📍 Poster T72, The Topography of Momentary Impulsivity: Context Matters

Vanderbilt University's Peabody College is hiring a TT Assistant Prof in Clinical Psychology (child/family focus) with expertise in AI methods (ML, NLP, LLMs, CV). 📅 Review begins Nov 15, 2025 👉 apply.interfolio.com/174418 Please share!

Easily one of my favorite collaborations yet! Working with @whitneyringwald.bsky.social is always a joy—so much fun and endlessly inspiring.

✨✨ New paper out in JPSP! ✨✨ Despite rich theory on links between temperament and personality, they're rarely studied together. This has left major unaddressed questions. We tackled these questions by looking at how temperament and personality develop together from ages 10-26. Brief thread...

We studied a sample of 647 youth who rated their temperament traits from ages 10-16 and Big 5 personality traits from 14-26. With this unique dataset including overlapping temperament/personality assessments, spanning key developmental periods, we were able to find some very interesting things:

1. Childhood/adolescent temperament predicts conceptually similar Big 5 traits at age 26. But also, Effortful Control predicts all Big 5, suggesting self-regulation helps us adapt to the roles of responsibilities of adulthood.

2. Looking at bivariate associations across all available waves, we see analogous temperament starts predicting adult personality around age 12-14, in line with the idea the transitional time of adolescence is when we start laying the foundation for who we grow up to be.

3. My favorite finding. Using joint latent growth models that assume analogous temperament/Big 5 traits are indicators of the same factor... ....we found evidence that they are not distinct constructs but are actually just different expressions of the same underlying dimensions.

4. With these joint temperament/personality traits, we were then able to establish mean-level change and rank-order stability in traits across an age span that's not been investigated yet. Bottom line: traits are really stable and change in the direction of maturity.

In meinem Team an der Universität Göttingen ist eine PhD Stelle (3 Jahre, 75%) ausgeschrieben – bitte gerne teilen bzw. bei Fragen melden! www.uni-goettingen.de/de/644546.ht...

🚨 New preprint: We compared 13 methods for detecting momentary careless responding in the WARN-D data (206k+ obs.). Tutorials guide you through each method. The takeaway? Diverging results, inherent subjectivity (to varying degrees), and a clear need for further validation. osf.io/preprints/ps...

There is so much to unpack, but I’ll be brief here! Teens with higher levels of maladaptive traits often acted less warmly and more dominantly in their everyday interactions. Their ability to “read” others’ minds (mentalizing) was less stable, shifting a lot from one moment to the next.

By linking these frameworks through ambulatory assessment, our goal was to capture how Criterion B plays out moment-to-moment in natural settings—and, critically, how these dynamics might signal opportunities for intervention before unhelpful patterns consolidate.