Great article about the psychology of guilty pleasures by my colleague @jjtogans.bsky.social at Lafayette College! 🎉 psyche.co/ideas/guilty...

Struggling to find peer reviewed evidence in support of spending all of your money on going to festivals and gigs? Let us help... doi.org/10.1002/casp... w/ @profjohndrury.bsky.social @hannaeldarwish.bsky.social Danielle Evans, Fiona Green

Do your hands talk when you do? 🗣️✋ Check out this @duke-university.bsky.social write up about my new work with my postdoc Esha Naidu (she is on the job market!) showing gestures reflect culture & identity—our nonverbal “accents” can shape interracial communication. trinity.duke.edu/news/talking...

Want to help with autism research? The Social Experiences of Loneliness of Autistic Adults (SELA) Project at the AJ Drexel Autism Institute is forming a Community Council of autistic adults (ages 18–35) to help guide a 5-year study on loneliness and social connection. Info in flyer and alt-text.

Some @theguardian.com coverage! Women use exclamation marks 3x more than men—not from extra joy, but to avoid sounding unfriendly 😬 Online, neutrality reads as hostility, so warmth is outsourced to punctuation!! BUT it boosts likability and can hurt credibility www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Ambitious new study finally out! 🚨 Here’s the lightning version. bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

New research finds that conservatives tended to endorse moral absolutism, whereas liberals tend to endorse moral relativism. Moral absolutists are more likely to support banning practices they deem immoral psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

It is often assumed that conformity is higher in collectivist cultures. In our new study that just came out in JCCP, we show that emotional conformity is actually higher in individualistic cultures, replicating earlier findings across 28 nations journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Read the actual science here! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🤔New research highlights a persuasion paradox: using many arguments can make a person seem more like an expert, increasing persuasion, but it can also make them appear to have greater persuasive intent, decreasing persuasion. Read more in #PSPB: ow.ly/1u2Q50X2erC

had a ton of fun working on this poll with @today.yougov.com about the songs that everybody knows the lyrics to, the generational anthems are super neat www.numlock.com/p/numlock-su...

To prevent Ps from pasting (GPT-generated) responses to your text entry Qualtrics question, disable pasting. Add this code to the OnReady section of your question's javascript: jQuery("#"+this.questionId+" .InputText").on("cut copy paste",function(e) { e.preventDefault(); }); Enjoy!

That's because newer music sounds like shit. The older we get, the fewer favorite songs we have, study shows. Via @sciencex.physorg #sociology #Music 🎵📻🎼🎧🎙️

Do you sometimes feel torn when making decisions, like whether to eat unhealthy food or recycle? This is called felt ambivalence: a psychological discomfort from having mixed feelings about something. Check out our new work to know how people resolve such conflicts: doi.org/10.1016/j.je... 🧠💥 1/10

Bottom line: Tightness mattered for mask use during the Covid pandemic (and after!). Tightness is a characteristic of cultures AND situations. Both matter. Mask use could explain why tight cultures had fewer deaths on average: journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1... @sagepublishing.bsky.social

Should you text or meet face-to-face to have a conversation? Our research shows greater benefits when talking in-person. If it is necessary to text, have more intimate conversation when possible. New paper lead by @cmleckfor.bsky.social is out in @josoperrel.bsky.social now: doi.org/10.1177/0265...

Did I finish all my summer research? No. But did I get a jump on new projects? Also, no. BUT: am I ready for the semester to begin next week? Extremely no

In a study of naturally occurring ostracism experiences: After experiencing ostracism, people initially prioritize withdrawal and prosocial coping responses. Prosocial responses increase overtime. Anti-social responses were relatively rare journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

📣 New registered report in @nathumbehav.nature.com with Ivan Soraperra, @jonathanschulz.bsky.social, and Shaul Shalvi: rdcu.be/eAcMA With data from 7,978 participants in 20 countries, we find that information about negative externalities promotes prosociality, especially in guilt-prone individuals.

As always, Ted Chiang is great in this interview. cdh.princeton.edu/blog/2025/08...

For folks course prepping, I wanted to give a quick plug for my recent pub in PSPB on the psychology of guilty pleasures. The research is a great example of discrete emotion theory and self-conscious emotions, but would also work well for discussing self-presentation, dissonance, and norms.

Big cities are vibrant hubs of culture, but why exactly is that? Now out in @natcomms.nature.com, we analysed music listening patterns of over 2.5 million people and demographics to examine mechanisms driving cultural diversity. With @researchdeezer.bsky.social @norijacoby.bsky.social Highlights ⬇

New paper out from the Self & Motivation Lab on Safety and Threat in the Environment Perceptions (STEP). The STEP scale assesses people's overall, gut-level impressions of any given space and uniquely predicts engagement, interest, & desire to recruit others journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

(please share widely!) With the start of August quickly approaching, I wanted to announce that the usual slack for fellow people on the Psych Academic Job Market for the coming cycle has been activated. If you are interested, feel free to fill out this form to join! forms.gle/2DBgs8S1fktS...

For folks course prepping, I wanted to give a quick plug for my recent pub in PSPB on the psychology of guilty pleasures. The research is a great example of discrete emotion theory and self-conscious emotions, but would also work well for discussing self-presentation, dissonance, and norms.

📈 New research: Financial scarcity is associated with less perceived control over one's life, but cultural values may be more effective than formal institutions in buffering individuals against these psychological effects. Read more in #SPPS: ow.ly/uB6050WuAAb

Socioeconomic Status in Social Interactions "Low-SES individuals exhibited greater attunement to others and elicited greater comfort in others than high-SES individuals, but impressions were formed in line with homophily effects." doi.org/10.1177/0956... #SocialPsyc #Sociology

The June 2025 special issue of Social Cognition -- Tutorials on Novel Methods and Analyses in Social Cognition, Part 1 -- was guest edited by Jimmy Calanchini, Juliane Degner, and Colin Smith, with support from Bertram Gawronski. The introduction is linked here: doi.org/10.1521/soco....

Despite all the handwringing about “intellectual diversity” the reality is that higher ed exposes young people to a vastly different array of people and experiences than almost anything else you can do.

🚨 New paper 🚨 I'm thrilled to announce data from a project on TATTOOS We tested whether people can accurately judge your personality just by looking at your tattoos 🖋️ Turns out...mostly no (with one weird exception) Paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.jr... Open Access: osf.io/preprints/ps...

🚨 NEW PREPRINT KLAXON 🚨 We argue (with data!) that #agnosticism isn't some midpoint between faith and #atheism, but is instead its own endpoint compatible with either. Here's a thread. Saddle up partners, philosophy ahead 🧵👇 🧪 *me, Hugh Turpin, Konrad Talmont-Kaminski osf.io/preprints/ps... 1/

Although this isn’t exactly new news, I wanted to share more about a paper that came out while I was on maternity leave: “Who Gets to Belong in College? An Empirical Review of How Institutions Can Assess and Expand Opportunities for Belonging on Campus,” published in Educational Psychology Review. 🧵

Didn't expect such lively discussion. I am gonna use this as guidelines for future trainees. Thanks everyone. I try my best to summarise below. Feel free to correct me if I misinterpret you. Overall, the takeaways clarify how hypotheses should be developed and justified, with some dos and don'ts 🧵

New paper in PSPB! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... Well, actually, not "new". We first put this paper online way back Dec 2022... in any case, we think it's really cool! We find that conspiracy believers tend to be overconfident & really don't seem to realize that most disagree with them

📈New #PSPB research uses machine learning to map cultural differences beyond traditional theories like individualism-collectivism. The method reveals both known patterns and novel dimensions in comparing countries like USA, China, and Japan. Learn more: ow.ly/C3bb50VXMqL

🚨 New @psychinquiry Issue 36:1 just dropped! Target article: Understanding Belief-Behavior Correspondence by @jgranadossamayoa.bsky.social & @dalbarra.bsky.social. Why don’t beliefs always drive actions? 🔗 www.tandfonline.com/toc/hpli20/3...

I’m thrilled to share my new paper on impression formation & updating in @natrevpsychol.nature.com! In it, I argue that impression formation is fundamentally a learning process. And as such, theories of impression formation should be based on mechanisms of learning and memory. Some key take-aways:

Wanted to share a handy little resource with you all (especially those in dev psych) — my lab & I made a "journal submission cheat sheet" that summarizes article types, word limits, & other requirements for the journals we typically submit to. Link below 👇🏼 docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

“Facilitating faculty well-being with baked goods” counts as departmental service, right? 🧐

NEW in press paper! “Wisdom in Time” (ERSP). TL;DR: Social psychology keeps talking growth & social change — but half the evidence is frozen in time. PDF👇https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/uy93k_v4

Excited to share a new paper in Current Directions on the theme of merging in close relationships, with @emmamcgorray.bsky.social, @erinhughes.bsky.social , and @abdoe.bsky.social! In the paper, we discuss merging in the domains of selves, goals, processing, and reality. tinyurl.com/ynbedzys (1/4)

Always a blast at #MPA2025 #MPA25! I had the pleasure of presenting work I conducted with @jasonfolmsbee.bsky.social and our advisor Dr. Heather Claypool. Of course, I forgot to post *before* I presented, but reach out if you would like to know about how jargon impacts belonging and engagement!

Tomorrow afternoon at #MPA2025, I’ll be giving a talk on my recent research examining the social consequences of (un)successfully sharing guilty pleasures with close others. If you’re attending MPA, I hope to see you there!

Tragedy of the commons. If a small % of survey respondents use this, surveys will go away

Research finds that people with a less well-defined sense of self (low self-concept clarity) are less selective in choosing a romantic partner and less confident in their evaluations of others. www.psypost.org/having-an-un...

📖#PSPB Research: People from lower social classes are less willing to engage in cross-class interactions due to negative expectations. Interventions addressing these expectations can significantly increase willingness to connect across class lines. 🔗: ow.ly/joyj50VeT2S

🔔 Participants needed!! 🔔 My colleague @drberrysaplab.bsky.social & I are collecting data on attendance policies & instructor/student experiences. If you’ve ever taught Psych at the college level in the US, please consider participating. (Grad student instructors also welcome.) Thank you!!

Do you teach research methods? Here's an example you can use to teach a repeated measures design: www.everydayresearchmethods.com/2025/02/the-...