Today at SPSP was busy in the best way — a full, energizing day packed with fascinating talks and posters. I came away with lots of new ideas (and an even longer reading list).

For folks interested in learning about our lab's research, check out this flier with all our presentations at this coming #SPSP2026 conference @spspnews.bsky.social. With research by several rising stars covering tech, culture, politics and more Credit to our talented lab manager Hanying Yao!

Before the end of this year, I’m glad to share a short perspective/policy piece, recently out with @joshcjackson.bsky.social , Zhao Wang, and @williambrady.bsky.social: “Large AI Models Have a Prioritization Problem: Policy Implications and Solutions.”

It’s grad school application season, and I wanted to give some public advice. Caveats: -*-*-*-* 
> These are my opinions, based on my experiences, they are not secret tricks or guarantees 
> They are general guidelines, not meant to cover a host of idiosyncrasies and special cases

In a new paper, we find that sycophantic #AI chatbots make people more extreme--operating like an echo chamber Yet, people prefer sycophantic chatbots and see them as less biased Only open-minded people prefer disagreeable chatbots: osf.io/preprints/ps... Led by @steverathje.bsky.social

🚨 New preprint 🚨 Across 3 experiments (n = 3,285), we found that interacting with sycophantic (or overly agreeable) AI chatbots entrenched attitudes and led to inflated self-perceptions. Yet, people preferred sycophantic chatbots and viewed them as unbiased! osf.io/preprints/ps... Thread 🧵

English language is filled with trait words like “caring” and “smart” These words are the currency of personality/social psych, yet key questions remain about their evolution, function, and structure We take on these questions in a preprint led by @yuanzeliu.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/ps...

Today (w/ @ox.ac.uk @stanford @MIT @LSE) we’re sharing the results of the largest AI persuasion experiments to date: 76k participants, 19  LLMs, 707 political issues. We examine “levers” of AI persuasion: model scale, post-training, prompting, personalization, & more!  🧵:

On the Malleability of Democratic Attitudes: Do Citizens' Views of Democracy Vary With How They Feel?: https://osf.io/hz2mt

✨Did markets make Americans more cooperative❓🔍 ✅YES‼️ Between 1850 and 1920, the US became the largest and most integrated economy in the world 📶🌎 We show that this shift didn’t just move goods and affect prices—it fundamentally changed culture and behavior 🧵 👇 1/17

Great new paper by Stagnaro & Amsalem in NatComm: Detailed fact-based informational module about gun control leads to persistent reductions in polarization (attitudes move towards midpoint). Seeing the evidence cited by other side makes opinions more moderate www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This paper is now published. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

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

New preprint on prejudice and state centralization: osf.io/preprints/ps... Our team of historians, psychologists, and anthropologists analyzed 90 historical societies and Chinese records from 206 BCE - 1911 CE In both studies, we find a link btw group prejudice and historical state centralization

We are deeply saddened to share the passing of James Liu, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Political Psychology and long-time ISPP member. We are forever grateful for his contributions to our field. Our thoughts are with his loved ones. He will be greatly missed. ispp.org/news/in-memo...

It has been a challenge to identify predictors of moralization. This new study finds that perceived polarization prospectively predicts attitude moralization during the 2020 US Presidential election psycnet.apa.org/record/2024-... #psychology #socialpsyc #PsychSciSky #BehSci Polisky