Super proud advisor moment: kudos to @jdweng.bsky.social for his first first-author publication! With @minzlicht.bsky.social, we inverted the empathy selection task to look at preferences to receive empathy. We can speculate on what people want from AI, but a motivational account suggests we ask 1/n

New publication with @dcameron.bsky.social and @minzlicht.bsky.social in @commspsychol.nature.com! www.nature.com/articles/s44... AI empathy is good, but would people actually choose to turn to AI for emotional support over a human empathizer?

After 20 years as psychology's golden child, ego depletion collapsed. Now it's back...with a catch. The secret? Make people work for 30-40 minutes instead of 5. In other words, we finally discovered fatigue. New post on the redemption tour.

New review paper led by @lucyfoulkes.bsky.social: Mental health awareness campaigns reduce stigma but can also lead to problematic self-diagnosis and symptom misinterpretation. These trade-offs matter, especially for adolescents. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

I just evaluated many student/job applications by hand. I have little confidence I did it fairly though. Order effects, mood, fatigue, and subjectivity all bias my evaluations. Maybe the responsible thing would've been to let AI do it. New post.

AI companions have become increasingly popular. But what’s their overall impact on our lives? Join Yiran Hua, @minzlicht.bsky.social & @paulbloomatyale.bsky.social at @uoftethics.bsky.social to discuss ethical questions about AI companions. Jan. 23, 5 p.m. - 7 p.m. www.eventbrite.ca/e/ai-compani...

I told my daughter to hide her Star of David in public. I hate myself for it. But I did it anyway. A letter to my non-Jewish friends. open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

Merry Chrismukkah to my readers and friends. I wrote something you might enjoy. open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

I just republished an essay about visiting Poland and why I felt uneasy there. This is about forgiveness, nations confronting their past, and my own blind spots. open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

I quite enjoyed answering questions about what got me interested in empathy, what surprised and interested me in a recent paper on state and trait empathy, and how I think about some of the interpersonal implications of my research. Thank you to @theloveconsortium.bsky.social for the opportunity!

Excited to announce a new open-access EMP Lab paper on empathic AI: an interdisciplinary collaboration between psychology, philosophy, & engineering on motivated empathy expression and reception with social robots. @ssripennstate.bsky.social @psuliberalarts.bsky.social @rockethics.bsky.social 1/n

Excited to share work led by Conrado Eiroa-Solans, a PhD student at UC Berkeley who I first met when he was applying to grad school. His new paper is out in Computers in Human Behavior Reports. /1

New Nature Medicine study: doulas with a few weeks of training delivered therapy as effectively as PhD clinicians. Same outcomes. If that's true, what exactly requires 5-7 years of grad school? And what does it mean for AI therapy? The therapy elite won't like this.

I wrote a Substack every week during sabbatical without fail, but I can't stop eating carrot cake from the bakery down my street. The difference? "Want-to" motivation beats "have-to" motivation every time. New essay on why loving what you do matters more than willpower.

Excited to share new work led by the amazing Dasha Sandra, a PhD student at UofT. We tackled a tricky problem: mental health awareness can reduce stigma, but it can also cause healthy people to falsely self-diagnose. /1 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The Publications and Communications Board of the American Psychological Association and the Society for the Science of Motivation has opened nominations for the editorship of Motivation Science, a multidisciplinary journal that publishes significant contributions to the study of motivation.

Very problematic beer taste?!

People are lazy--except when they're watching other people work hard. My student Emily Zohar just published her first first-authored paper, and it reveals something surprising about effort and social norms. /1 osf.io/preprints/ps...

I don't usually write grateful posts, but I wanted to thank the people who shaped my career: from my PhD advisor who taught me to write, to the student who taught me courage. New post!

New chapter with @dcameron.bsky.social, Martina Orlandi, and @minzlicht.bsky.social: osf.io/preprints/ps... In this chapter, we argue that instead of debating whether human or AI empathy is superior overall, it is more useful to focus on the distinct trade-offs that each source of empathy offers.

New chapter preprint, led by my graduate student @jdweng.bsky.social -- "What so special about human empathy? Examining AI empathy and its trade-offs". A fun collaboration with @minzlicht.bsky.social and philosopher Martina Orlandi. Considering tradeoffs for *both* is critical to understanding

Finally, someone has solved a real problem with AI! No more having to take a paper in the format for a journal that rejected you, and reformat it for a new journal. Well done!! formatmypaper.com

I'm republishing my most controversial essay: defending drinking culture in academia. Colleagues got mad. One journal editor loved it. Online reactions ranged from "fascinating" to demands for retraction. Now it's free to read.

🚨New WP!🚨 Structured AI Dialogues Can Increase Happiness and Meaning in Life In a preregistered RCT, four psychology-grounded #AI chatbots improved well-being across several outcomes. Co-authors: Jonas Schoene, Johannes Eichstaedt, Aadesh Salecha, Sonja Lyubomirsky 🧵👇

Can AI be a friend? At the third Technophilosophy Soirée, led by @karinavold.bsky.social, SRI brought together scholars to ask how AI companionship is changing the way we connect, empathize and understand each other. 🎥→ tinyurl.com/ys4wdzeb #AIethics @minzlicht.bsky.social @uoftethics.bsky.social

53 posts, one sabbatical, and five dead psychological theories later: reflecting on a year of Speak Now Regret Later. Also 40% off annual subs through October because apparently I enjoy controversy.

Thread on a bunch of my issues with "cognition" and "cognitive" talk in the Mind Sciences.

New review! We synthesized literature on empathic AI: AI-generated emotional support is rated higher than human responses, but people's knowledge of the source shapes their perceptions. W/ @desmond-ong.bsky.social @amit-goldenberg.bsky.social @anatperry.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/ps...

What happens when the data say no, but our feelings say yes? From stereotype threat to implicit bias, psychology keeps choosing vibes over evidence. Maybe the data was just decoration?

It's publication day! Check out this thread for a summary of our new paper ❝Delegation to AI can increase unethical behaviour❞ Lots of love and labor got into this paper and I'm thrilled to see it out in the wild today

I've been shushed my entire life—in Starbucks, by strangers, even by my own wife. But maybe the problem isn't that I'm loud. Maybe it's that we automatically assume quiet is virtuous. Am I the asshole? You tell me.

Just found out that I am the 2025 recipient of the Diener Award in Social Psychology from SPSP. I couldn’t have done it without my mentors (official and otherwise), students, and collaborators. I'm proud of this, but mostly just grateful I get to do work I love.

“In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Those affected receive a small apartment & counselling with no preconditions. 4 out of 5 people affected make their way back into a stable life. And all this is CHEAPER than accepting homelessness.” It costs a lot less to house people.

In a new paper, my colleagues and I set out to demonstrate how method biases can create spurious findings in relationship science, by using a seemingly meaningless scale (e.g., "My relationship has very good Saturn") to predict relationship outcomes. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

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!

Exciting news! I'll be working with the Center for Digital Thriving @digitalthriving.bsky.social as a fellow to develop an intervention aimed at improving the well-being of youth on social media. The intervention will train youth to engage skilfully with emotions on their feed using wise empathy.

Universities have writing centers but no public speaking centers. We just throw academics on stage and hope for the best. New post breaks down 10 ways to connect with your audience and actually enjoy giving talks (yes, it's possible).

Online Now: Are metabolic costs needed to explain cognitive fatigue?

My Globe and Mail opinion piece on the attack this week at our local “kosher Loblaws.” It is now being investigated as a hate motivated crime. I reflect on what it now means to go grocery shopping while Jewish in Canada in 2025. www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/bc5ccfd...

The far left hates Jews for being “white colonizers.” The far right hates Jews for not being white enough. Antisemitism comes from all sides, and it must be condemned every single time. This poster, seen in Maine, is shocking and must never be normalized. Never again.

"The framework requires a commitment to actively fighting racism; choosing to be simply 'non-prejudiced' or 'non-racist' can unintentionally support passive racism." (Inzlicht, 2025) #EduSky #PsychSciSky #Psychology #PsychSky #SocialPsych #SocialPsychology #AcademicSky

Interesting research finding: when trying to reduce prejudice, the how matters as much as the what. Coercive approaches can sometimes backfire. New post exploring the psychology of persuasion and a frustrating academic story.

Adam Raine, 16, died from suicide in April after months on ChatGPT discussing plans to end his life. His parents have filed the first known case against OpenAI for wrongful death. Overwhelming at times to work on this story, but here it is. My latest on AI chatbots: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/t...

I set out to learn pickleball and accidentally discovered what diversity workshops wish they could create. 84-year-old widowers, Vietnamese mothers, recovering alcoholics all united by willingness to look ridiculous chasing plastic balls. Sometimes the joke is the point.

Time to confess and unburden. A reader chose love over studying in France, then got dumped 2 years later. Another confesses to creating a vicious echo chamber during online debates. Plus me having no regrets about a recent post that cost me readers.

Does cognitive fatigue require metabolic explanations? @jakeembrey.bsky.social and I argue the evidence is pretty thin. Computational & motivational theories may be sufficient without invoking depleting brain glucose or accumulating neurotoxins like glutamate. New commentary, in press at TiCS