Can large language models stand in for human participants? Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research. One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want. THREAD 🧵

‼️Academic job alert‼️ Our dept at Queen's University (Canada!) is looking to hire a TT assistant prof in clinical psychology... Applications due end of Sept! Re-posts very much appreciated www.queensu.ca/psychology/n...

The LEADING reporting guideline is now published in Comprehensive Psychiatry 🥳 See www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Or read the previous summary 👇

🎺 Publication in JPSP 🎺 1/7 We automated the coding procedure of the implicit motives of power, achievement and affiliation with at least as high accuracy as human coders while being 99% faster! 🎯⚡️ Article: psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202... #personality #AI #NLProc @apajournals.bsky.social

@davidaellis.bsky.social futurism.com/the-byte/cha...

Our new paper in PNAS Nexus. County morals > politics for carbon footprints? 🤯 We find that county-level values predict actual green behavior (emissions!), not just attitudes. Stronger than political leaning.

With all of the big announcements about AI-facilitated scientific research, like OpenAI's Deep Research and Google's AI co-scientist, it appears as though our thinky-piece on AI in the research process might be worth a re-read: www.frontiersin.org/journals/soc...

our department at Lund University has a position for a PhD student. feel free to reach out if you are interested in applying. lu.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

I'm glad to announce that I just started as co-Editor-in-chief of EPJ Data Science with @yelenamejova.bsky.social Looking forward to building the community around one of my favorite journals! www.epj.org/113-epj-ds/2...

New blog post, and (I think?) my first one directly about LIWC-related things. More challenges, and thoughts, about sailing on the choppy seas of interdisciplinary scholarship. www.pancakes.wtf/20250110/lan...

🥁 Announcing the Public Domain Image Archive! 🥁 We are v excited to share our new sister-project, the Public Domain Image Archive (PDIA), a curated collection of 10k+ out-of-copyright historical images, all free to explore and reuse: pdimagearchive.org @pdimagearchive

Stimulation Clicker is the best thing you'll play today https://neal.fun/stimulation-clicker/

"A study of federally funded research projects in the United States estimated that principal investigators spend on average about 45% of their time on administrative activities related to applying for and managing projects rather than conducting active research" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Hey, it's finally up! I'm hiring a postdoctoral researcher for our new and growing computational social science lab! If you're passionate about Computational Social Science, Social/Personality Psychology, and AI/NLP, don't be shy — apply! jobs.utdallas.edu/postings/28227

I've had a lot of social scientists asking about using Whisper for transcription but without any Python skills on hand. So, here's "Whispering Wizard" — a simple tool to transcribe audio/video files locally with OpenAI’s Whisper models. No Python needed! github.com/ryanboyd/Whi...

📢Announcement! I'm planning to recruit 1 PhD student and 1 postdoc to join our research group. If you're passionate about Computational Social Science, Social/Personality Psychology, and AI/NLP, don't be shy — apply! #PhDPosition #Postdoc #AI #NLP #Psychology

Excited to share our Registered Replication on whether Women are Really (Not) More Talkative Than Men (in press at JPSP): osf.io/preprints/ps.... The results are complex but describe a reality different from what the photos below show 😊. Kudos to Colin Tidwell, Alex Danvers, and Valeria Pfeifer.

For those who haven't heard already, I am delighted to announce that I'll be joining the Department of Psychology at University of Texas at Dallas this Fall! I look forward to contributing to, collaborating with, and being a part of the outstanding School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences community.

Think the Earth is flat? Or that aliens experimented on your cow? Don't worry, KNBV has you covered! In a new #AmericanPsychologist piece Michael Barlev & Steve Neuberg explore the deep evolutionary logic behind why people hold irrational (at least to most) beliefs. psycnet.apa.org/record/2024-...

Excited to announce the release of our new paper, "Verbal Behavior and the Future of Social Science"! Co-authored with @davidmmarkowitz.bsky.social, we delve into the transformative potential of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in social sciences. dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0... (1/)

There are a *lot* of researchers out there asking "How similar is ChatGPT to humans on X psychological test?" @davidmmarkowitz.bsky.social, Kate Blackburn, and I suggest that we can be thinking much, much more broadly about the future potential of generative AI: doi.org/10.3389/frsp...

Excited to share our new paper in Frontiers in Social Psychology! 🚀 With @ryanboyd.io and Kate Blackburn, we explore how AI may revolutionize academic research. Many pieces focus on AI's shortcomings, but we focused on the benefits and potential. Dive in: www.frontiersin.org/articles/10....

Academia needs to consider a world where AI is our primary research collaborator. In our new preprint, @davidmmarkowitz.bsky.social, Kate Blackburn, and I imagine a near-future where AI permeates science, providing some ideas about ethics, equality, and responsibility. osf.io/preprints/ps...

A couple of familiar faces! Thanks, PBS! youtu.be/-EVXdhstw14?...

New paper in press at SPPS w/ Ryan Boyd, Nick Evans, Eriksen Ravey, Perla Henderson, & Han Tran, on The Topics of Nostalgia Recall: The Benefits of Nostalgia Depend on the Topics that One Recalls. fettermanlab.weebly.com/uploads/8/1/...