We're all very excited around here to read @pauleastwick.bsky.social's new book!

Where popular portrayals of polyamory most often miss the mark is in the idea that the practice is primarily about having sex with multiple partners. Polyamory is mostly about intimacy, not sex, and it has ethics at its core. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/polyamory-isnt-all-about-sex/

You never need to watch the video but you do need to know it was an execution

why I have trust issues

Large Language models pose an existential threat to online survey research www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... An AI can now evade a comprehensive suite of data quality checks, achieving a 99.8% pass rate on 6,000 trials of standard attention checks.

Pleased to share for those using #rstats for analyzing #dyadic data, that we released a major update of dySEM on CRAN (now ver. 1.4.1) *just* before the winter break. New functionality for scripting/outputting dyadic SEMs, along with (much) more test coverage! 🧵 cran.r-project.org/web/packages...

AI presents a fundamental threat to our ability to use polls to assess public opinion. Bad actors who are able to infiltrate panels can flip close election polls for less than the cost of a Starbucks coffee. Models will also infer and confirm hypotheses in experiments. Current quality checks fail

Is social interaction a tradeoff of autonomy for belonging compared to being alone? New paper by phenom @elainehoan.bsky.social says yes if you're interacting with strangers, no if you're interacting with friends/family. With a romantic partner you gain in both. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Nice coverage of our Pseudo project in Nature Reviews. @johnsakaluk.bsky.social @davekhera.bsky.social @helenaqin.bsky.social @sarahcestanton.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Silly Jimmy Kimmel. He should have just called for all homeless people to be killed and he’d still have a job.

Is the idea that getting into a romantic relationship increases well-being a myth? A new MacLab paper says no. And I had so much to say about this work, I started a Substack: The Unromantic. Links for the paper and the Substack in replies.

I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN. It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package. Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats

For potential grad students: if you're interested in this kind of work on assessing and improving close relationships measures, our group just got a grant to do five more years of it. Join our team!

Our preprint for #dyadic SEM tutorial with {dySEM} is back up/available! Thanks to @psyarxivbot.bsky.social team quickly retooling their approach (and the thankless work of the mods) to help sift the real from the slop!

Excellent paper alert!!!

I’ve watched Sam give two talks about this topic (once as a first year grad student which was extremely formative for my research trajectory). Very excited to see this in print!

This is schmeasurement's Dead Salmon fMRI study: A cautionary tale of how standard research practices can produce misleading results. I love it. Immediately putting it on my reading lists.

It's out!!🌶️🔥

Shoutout to my talented coauthors @johnsakaluk.bsky.social, James Kim, @davekhera.bsky.social, Helena Qin and @sarahcestanton.bsky.social.

When considering the moving to UWO, the opportunity to have Sam as a colleague in SPDP, and work with her, was a huge draw. And I'll never forget how agitated her award-winning address--where she first laid these ideas out--left the audience. Incredibly proud to see this work out and play a role.

From this paper: (Holy Cow! Reminds me also of how Bullshit Receptivity items can glom together!)

🚨 YA’LL!! HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS PAPER TO COME OUT FOR AGES. IT IS SO SATURN. I MEAN, IT IS SO GOOD. SAME THING. (JUST READ IT)

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/...

I'll be recruiting a grad student to join the UNICORN lab for Fall 2026! If you know any magical students interested in gender/sex, LGBTQ+ issues, intergroup relations, stereotyping & prejudice, social cognition, feminism, issues of bodily autonomy, or anything else I do, please send them my way!

The Love Consortium Statistics Decision Tree launched today! Think of it like a choose-your-own adventure guide to help you identify the best analyses for your specific dataset and research question. theloveconsortium.org/so/9fPWyVE6Z... #DataScience #Statistics

🧵 Very excited (w/ @omarjcamanto.bsky.social) to share our preprint tutorial for using our R 📦 dySEM for #dyadic data analysis with latent variables, in cross-sectional data sets. This paper has been literal years in the making, and provides three distinct tutorials. osf.io/preprints/ps...

New MacLab paper. Do people partner up to save on rent? Apparently not.

Excited to share that I will be the next Editor-in-Chief of Archives of Sexual Behavior. See: link.springer.com/journal/1050...

Our paper is now out: Trust in Close Relationships Revisited. All the buzzwords: bifactor modelling, invariance testing, construct, and a few others. Joking aside, @omarjcamanto.bsky.social is a very skilled and careful data wrangler/analyst while also able to relate theory and data. 👇

This university bookstore is a giant Stroop test

Issue 5 of #JSexResearch is now online with contributions from @drjustingarcia.bsky.social @mlchivers.bsky.social @typicaltims.bsky.social @drkristenmark.bsky.social @kinseyinstitute.bsky.social @sexsciencesociety.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/toc/hjsr20/6...

Great day to take care of an important task. Get out and visit an advanced polling location this weekend!

My Phd student Noah is recruiting Trans* and Non-Binary folks to participate in a survey study on well-being (uwo.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...). Check it out if relevant and of interest to you, and appreciate any signal boosting in your networks!

Who's more satisfied: people in monogamous or non-monogamous relationships? A meta-analysis of 35 studies actually finds no differences in relationship or sexual satisfaction based on whether the relationship is open or closed. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Cat's done some amazing work at the intersection of transgender health and misinformation, and I was in awe watching her present this work at SPSP. If you do research on either of those areas and have a position open, or you know someone who does, spread the word.

Good data management is the backbone of psychological science. But rarely are scientists trained in best practices. Join TLC for our upcoming Virtual Symposium: Data Management for Psychological Science. Check out www.theloveconsortium.org/engage for more information and to register.

It is often assumed that the longer a couple is together, the more they engage in sexual self-disclosure. But research doesn't support this. Factors that predict sexual disclosure include: relationship satisfaction, secure attachment, and sexual assertiveness. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Want to make nice graphs with me, starting this summer? I am hiring for two PhD positions at the University of Witten/Herdecke.

Tens of thousands of psychological measures have been created, but 79% are not reused more than twice. In a new article in NHB lead by @faridanvari.bsky.social and @ruben.the100.ci we quantify this fragmentation in psychology's measures and propose solutions. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Hey folks, @datingdecisions.bsky.social and I are recruiting couples in CNM relationships for a 12 week diary study on relationship attitudes. The study consists of a zoom screening, an intake survey, and 12 weekly surveys. Couples living in Canada/UK/USA can earn up to $80 CAD total.

We're still recruiting women who identify as #Femcels for this study! #PinkPill #RedPill #BluePill #PurplePill #femcel #incel #women #woman #PsychSciSky

Would be very interested in anyone wanting to: 1) Work at the intersection of psychometrics and dyadic data analysis (am keen to train dyadic SEM, R package development, Monte Carlo, etc.), and 2) Apply quantitative synthesis + knowledge translation to psychological intervention literatures

If you're looking to do a postdoc studying research methods in the close relationships/sexuality space, you can apply to work with me or @johnsakaluk.bsky.social or both! www.uwo.ca/research/fun...

For most of my career as a relationship scientist, MLM has felt like the only analytic game in town for handling dyadic data. I'm very excited about John's primer on how feasible it has become for us to all better incorporate SEM into our workflows.

New OA paper in Compass with @datingdecisions.bsky.social, @omarjcamanto.bsky.social, and a number of non-blue-sky students and colleagues. If you're a #dyadic #closerelationships researcher, and interested in what dyadic SEM can do for you: compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Trudeau: I want to speak first directly to the American people… your government has chosen to do this to you. Your government has chosen to put American jobs at risk. They have chosen to raise costs for American consumers on everyday essential items…

⭐ Hooray! This issue includes my article on the development of our multidimensional CNM attitudes scale! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

There were a lot of missing posters at #SPSP2025 this year, and at the LGBTIQ+ Pre-conference, at least two presenters didn’t come bc of the climate. In addition to fighting these bans, I hope @spspnews.bsky.social considers taking its *international* conference outside the US in the future.

Today, nearly 1 in 10 US adults identify as LGBTQ, almost triple the number that it was a decade ago. The increase is mostly driven by young people, with nearly one-quarter of Gen Z identifying as LGBTQ, most of whom are bisexual. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/u...