"For too long, the university has ignored the wisdom of the donor class and hired based on academic excellence. Regrettably, this has led to the underrepresentation of discredited viewpoints in elite higher education." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wer...

Study after study shows campaign ads barely move the needle. So where does money’s real power come from? I ranked the five ways money corrupts politics—from least to most corrosive. What I’ve learned from 15 years of tracking political money:

If the shopkeeper demanded 1p more than the advertised price fur a pint of milk, most people would not just pay up. They’d challenge the seller, perhaps even refuse to buy and pay even more elsewhere. Isn’t that odd? My weekly post suggests an answer: buff.ly/jVboMjQ

New postdoc position at Cornell! This is a bit of a unique one: It's a teaching postdoc focused on integrating active learning strategies into psychology courses (including one of my own). Should be a lot of fun! Apply here: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31738

Come see my talk at SPSP tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be talking about why it’s suspicious to offer to pay people to eat cookies.

We are quick to condemn people as irrational for not choosing the most generous offer, but cool research by @andyvonasch.bsky.social et al suggests this is overlooking how people suspect ‘phantom costs’, eg in very high pay offers, or very cheap products or services: buff.ly/bVPs9ln

Only a small % of people engage in toxic activity online, but they’re responsible for a disproportionate share of hostile or misleading content on nearly every platform Because super-users are so active, they dominate our collective impression of the internet www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

Essential reading (by @jasonstanley.bsky.social) for every American. The media, aided by a handful of reactionary academics and compliant university administrations, has sold the public a huge lie about wokeness on college campuses, enabling the extreme right. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Moral Saurus learns the three goals of philosophy from Preston Stovall youtu.be/sZ_Yu9LwhO8

Disappeared Tufts Human Dev. PhD student Rumesya Ozturk is also a graduate of Teachers College - she’s a dev. psychologist studying children’s media & prosocial development. She also bakes without recipes and binge-watches cartoons. She is our colleague & she was abducted on the street w/ our tax $.

I just don’t think that - real brainwave here - “believe in something and stand up for it” is some niche leftist tactic. Baffled by those who do. It’s what normal people respond to.

"even lawmakers within his party have feared for their personal safety, and at least one has told confidants that it has swayed his decision-making" "Tillis told people that the FBI warned him about 'credible death threats' when he was considering voting against Pete Hegseth’s nomination"

Very excited to announce that my former PhD student, Scott Danielson, has accepted a faculty position at Lincoln University!

I haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but this summary is an interesting and hopeful take on why “getting out into nature” - a common intervention I use with my clients is so often helpful - the “awe walk” apple.news/AZGLdS58nSdm...

At SASP and just met a very friendly colleague

We are launching MetaROR, a peer review service for research on research, about an hour from now! researchonresearch.org/project/meta... You could join us online by registering for our ongoing conference (low free or free) here: agbarnett.github.io/aimos.confer...

Nature Human Behaviour The effect of seeing scientists as intellectually humble on trust in scientists and their research www.nature.com/articles/s41...

youtu.be/FEw98ipUA1I Need some levity in your life? Watch a new episode of Moral Saurus! He talks with philosopher Manuel Vargas about how humans flourish through moral responsibility... and not eating their young.

www.eurekalert.org/news-release... we discovered a psychological bias toward killing anonymous bystanders in war

Gossiping carries the risk of backfiring on the gossiper, but new research suggests women’s gossip, when disguised as concern, harms reputation the reputation of the target, while protecting the gossiper: https://buff.ly/4heeKam

Wow this is so reasonable. What a shock that this is shocking

Hi I’m a psych researcher. My greatest hits include: -p-values can’t tell you that -that definitely won’t replicate -ok but some humans are not US college students -you measured that with a self-report? -your brain images don’t impress me and -sorry that’s not the only plausible mechanism

www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.... new study showing ai cannot be detected with enough accuracy to prevent fraudulent participants from ruining online studies… we don’t know how prevalent this issue is yet, but soon it will likely be a problem

authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S00… New (open access) article! People took a personality test--but it was rigged to tell them they were high on one trait and low on another. THE HIGH/LOW TRAITS WERE ASSIGNED AT RANDOM. We then asked them how morally important those traits were...

Nice website showing graphically what it means to allow for random intercepts, slopes, and both mfviz.com/hierarchical...

Feature suggestion: Editorial Manager Clippy

A cool paper on an important topic: Questionable research practices in student projects. Students may engage in QRPs not knowing that they’re questionable, or not thinking that the data would be used for a real article. See full thread 👇 https://spb.psychopen.eu/index.php/spb/article/view/9411

If your institution or organization is interested in having me visit to talk about a Pedagogy of Kindness next summer or fall, you can find all the important details at bit.ly/CateSpeaking. Remember, pre-orders are open at bit.ly/PreOrderPoK!