Introducing the Words Can Harm Scale: a measure of the belief that words can cause psychological harm. Preprint and online assessment in next tweet!

✍️ New Preprint: "Sticks and stones may break my bones..." but can words really harm? We created the Words Can Harm Scale (WCHS) to measure the belief that speech can cause lasting psychological harm. You can take the online assessment here: sampratt99.github.io/Words-Can-Ha...

People often rely on their own judgment over the "wisdom of the crowds" when making tough decisions (e.g., "which school should I attend?") A new study found that across 12 countries, most participants went with their gut even when given the option to consult others.

New study finds that as birth rates have declined, we've started spending more on pets. And across several studies, dog lovers often prioritized dogs over people in moral dilemmas 🐶 > 🙍

A new study seems to show that right-leaning participants care more about left-leaning causes than right-leaning ones 🤯 A surprising finding, but I think we should be cautious about this interpretation 🧵 1/8

People are averse to "doubling back": in a virtual reality maze game, over half (56%) of participants chose a longer route over a more efficient route when the efficient option required them to "double back", effectively undoing their previous progress.

Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: "The existence of consciousness is both one of the most familiar and one of the most astounding things about the world. No conception of the natural order that that does not reveal it as something to be expected can aspire even to the outline of completeness"

Our recent paper on trigger warnings was covered by @psypost.bsky.social . You can read the article at the link below.

Feeling mixed feelings on my last day as lab manager in the Deepest Beliefs Lab. It's been an amazing two years working with @kurtjgray.bsky.social and I'm so grateful for all the amazing people I've worked with. But lots to look forward to starting at UCLA in two months!

This week's Science to Impact symposium at Ohio State hosted experts in all kinds of science communication! Grateful to have helped organize this event and heard from these minds in one room. 🧠 🧪

55-70% of people followed an arbitrary rule (e.g., wait at a stoplight until a cross disappears) even when 1) nobody is watching, 2) they would get money for breaking the rule, and 3) breaking the rule harms nobody Open access paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper in JEP Applied: Why do so many instructors use trigger warnings or announce that their classroom is a "safe space"? We find that these practices send important signals about the instructor's intentions, values, and political commitments. @apajournals.bsky.social

Very cool experience giving a talk at the YMCA summer camp I attended in New Hampshire from age 9-16. I spoke about the youth mental health crisis and how summer camps can provide boys and young men with a sense of belonging.

Psychological inoculation is a very popular intervention against online misinfo, but it hasn't been tested using real-world outcomes in realistic scenarios. In a new paper just published in PNAS Nexus, this is what we did: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar... Short version: It didn't really work.

Some promising trends in the psychology replication crisis since 2004: - Fewer studies publish weak p values (.01 < p < .05) - Studies with weak p values are less likely to get cited - The % of weak p values (26%) is now roughly what we would expect from studies with 80% power.

AI is quickly becoming a valuable tool in psychological research. I created a short guide to help you use it well (link in comments 👇). Includes CustomGPTs, example prompts, and tools for lit reviews, survey design, data analysis, and manuscript prep.

I recently had the chance to go on the Outrage Overload Podcast (@outrageoverload.net‬) with David Beckemeyer. We discussed the psychology of morality, the role of victimhood in political conflict, and how we might lower the temperature on society's biggest divides. Link in the comments!

Lots of famous findings about human behavior are built on the results of economic games - tasks where participants allocate resources or make choices with different payoffs. A new study finds that up to 70% of participants don't understand the instructions of these games.

New post: What do a physicist in a strip club, a pop star in a church, and government officials making war plans in a group chat have in common? 🔬🎤💣 The setting is all wrong—so wrong that their decisions start to feel immoral. (🔗 in thread)

I had a great time this weekend presenting with @emilykubin.bsky.social at the Templeton World Charity Foundation Listening and Learning in a Polarized World meetup in Marrakesh, Morocco. @templetonworld.bsky.social put on an amazing event!

@sampratt99.bsky.social and I are having a fantastic time in Marrakesh Morocco discussing polarization and pluralism. Enjoying the great discussions across disciplines to tackle some of the most pressing societal issues. Thanks Templeton World Charity Foundation for organizing this event!

I’m excited to share that I’ll be starting a PhD in Social Psychology at UCLA this fall. I’ll be working in the Social Cognitive Neuroscience lab with Dr. Matt Lieberman, studying consciousness and morality. I can’t wait for this next chapter!

New Paper in Philosophical Psychology: Trust in experts is low. Why? How bad is it? And what should we do? To answer these questions, we reviewed philosophy (when *ought* we defer to the experts) and psychology (when *do* people defer to the experts). Link in comments!

A year ago @kurtjgray and I argued that popular discourse about the "loneliness epidemic" might be making people more lonely. Today @NatureComms published direct evidence for this: reading news stories about the risks of isolation makes people feel worse about being alone. 🧵

New post: "AI is More Moral Than You (And the NYTimes' Best Ethicist" With @kurtjgray and @helenldevine (Link in comments)

🚨New preprint 🚨 Do trigger warnings and safe spaces help or harm? We explored how these practices shape students’ perceptions of instructors and the classroom environment. Here’s what we found 🧵

2024 year in review: Check out our most popular newsletter posts from the past year! 🧵 w/ @kurtjgray and @helenldevine

New post: "In Defense of Flat Earthers" Why conspiracy theorists are more logical than you think, and why we should be more skeptical of our own beliefs. ✍️ With @kurtjgray and @helenldevine

New post (link below): the curse of knowledge and political animosity. With @helenldevine and @kurtjgray

Retweeting this with an updated link: Resources for applying to Post-bacc and PhD programs in psych. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HoO1f8yL5u64M0IZQ4yU0lJsTvcqPozC/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=117671288754234266393&rtpof=true&sd=true

New paper in early publication at Annual Review of Psychology: @kurtjgray and I review how the mind makes sense of morality. We argue that morality is fundamentally tied to perceptions of harm/victimhood/suffering and discuss how to understand and bridge moral/political divides

✍️ New article on the psychology of pet peeves: when minor norm violations spark major outrage. With @kurtjgray and @helenldevine https://open.substack.com/pub/moralunderstanding/p/the-psychology-of-petty?r=lh5af&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Does anyone know of research on how well people are able to articulate / introspect on their own values?

New post: The Problem With Moral Psychology The problem is that our morals are subjective, short-sighted, and biased, but we feel like they reflect objective truth. People hate the idea of moral relativism, but it could be true - and useful. w/@kurtjgray...

🚨 New preprint 🚨: "Testing the Coddling Hypothesis: Campus Safetyism and Student Resilience" Some say that "safetyism" helps vulnerable students, some say it "coddles." We find that it does neither: exposure to trigger warnings, safe spaces, etc had no impact on resilience. 🧵

I saw this at a museum the other day. It’s interesting how creatives (artists, filmmakers, musicians, poets, etc) are studying many of the same things as psychologists, each in their own way. Many different ways to learn about the human experience.

🚨New preprint: Health Behaviors are Moralized when they Seem to Cause Harm Through four studies, we show that the perception that poor health causes interpersonal harm predicts moralizations of health – seeing health issues as moral issues....

New article with @kurtjgray and @CurtisPuryear about how moral panics spread on social media and make it hard to have important conversations about... the threat of social...

A pseudo-mental health disorder called “high-functioning anxiety” has been making the rounds on the internet. A long thread on what it is, why it’s an incoherent concept, and how it’s reminiscent of the “concealed insanity” diagnosis from the insane asylum era. 🧵(1/13)

The importance of stupidity in science. The biggest change I’ve noticed going from student to researcher is being a producer (discoverer?) of knowledge vs a consumer. In undergrad all your questions are answered for you. Certainty is a virtue, and saying “I don’t know” is a flaw

New op-ed with @kurtjgray: Being Alone Doesn't Make You a Killer. We explore the stigma against solitude, why the "loneliness epidemic" is misleading, whether Thoreau would be a mass shooter in 2024, and how the covid lockdowns had an unexpected benefit. Link in photo

New op-ed with @kurtjgray: Being Alone Doesn't Make You a Killer. We explore the stigma against solitude, why the "loneliness epidemic" is misleading, whether Thoreau would be a mass shooter in 2024, and how the covid lockdowns had an unexpected benefit. http://tinyurl.com/lonerloop

Come check out my poster at #SPSP2024! "Harm Denial: A Source of Political Animosity and a Potential Solution" We find that partisans view their opponents as reacting to imaginary and exaggerated threats. This perception predicts animosity, but we propose a potential solution

New substack with @kurtjgray Social psychologists have the difficult job of explaining evil. Is to explain to condone? We explore why honest explanations of human behavior are important as we approach a contentious election. http://tinyurl.com/y7xje783

Dall-E's interpretation of reframing time alone. "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."

Deepest Beliefs Lab team looking good! @UNCPsych

Claims of moral decline - that people are less honest and virtuous than past generations - are usually wrong. But here’s an interesting datapoint to the contrary: from 1978-1996 virtually everyone stopped obeying stop signs in suburban New York. (From Bowling Alone, by R. Putnam)

The Myopia of Heroism - new substack article on superheroes, the compulsion to save victims, and the moral psychology of collateral damage. With @kurtjgray and @blakey_will https://moralunderstanding.substack.com/p/the-myopia-of-heroism

Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone: “Even if we assume, conservatively, that community issues come up in conversation only once every ten card games, the decline of card playing implies fifty million fewer microdeliberations about community affairs each year now than two decades ago.