RFK Jr. can't change state vaccine regulations. But, he can dismantle the vaccine supply chain. FDA's failure to review Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine demonstrates how HHS can weaponize the vaccine approval process to discourage the production of new, innovative, and potentially life-saving vaccines.

This is AWFUL. Univ of Texas is consolidating 4 depts into 1: African and African Diaspora Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, American Studies, and Mexican American and Latino Studies will become "a Social and Cultural Analysis department." www.texastribune.org/2026/02/12/t...

Asian Americans have long histories of violence, discrimination, & exclusion. Much of this behavior is poorly understood. The literature on discrimination against other racial groups is much larger than the literature on anti-Asian animus. A group of my coauthors and I are trying to fill that gap.

Gallup ends presidential approval polling. There are plenty of alternatives but having one firm back the 1930s was a great continuity. Here is my last update of their series. RIP. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Not only that, but social cues about entertainment audiences provide indicators both of the demographic make-up of the audience as well as whether watching certain content is normative of one's partisan (and racial) ingroup—all of which predicts exposure intentions.

Out now with Wiley: The Handbook of Inoculation Theory and Practice, edited by Bobi Ivanov, Kimberly Parker, and me—the first handbook devoted entirely to inoculation theory. Grateful for my co-editors and contributors. #InoculationTheory www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Ha...

There have been increasingly shrill accusations against the EU over its digital legislation, based on accusations of "censorship" by defenders of "free speech" -- including, so it appears, the right to peddle an AI app that seemingly produces child sexual abuse material (CSAM). 1/9

65% of Americans, up from 54% in June of 2025, think the actions of ICE have gone too far in enforcing immigration laws. (NPR/PBS News/@maristpoll.bsky.social) More, via Opinion Today: opiniontoday.substack.com/p/260205-top...

New study on communicative dynamics in relative risk scenarios in health decision making, forthcoming in Health Communication, Yuanyuan Wu & Ozan Kuru

Very specific to certain medical research, yet also a warning about other vulnerable areas

Characteristically thoughtful discussion of a known snag of survey research -- people who care a lot about politics are more likely to take political polls -- and what we might be able to do to address that (As noted, I think this is such a fun experiment)

Our BPP paper on government shutdowns, need for chaos, and prospect theory (w/ Erin Fitz, @stecula.bsky.social, Matt Hitt, and me). Here's the abstract and link for "Mindset to Gain? Framing Effects, Need for Chaos, and the Limits of 'Burning It All Down'." www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Recent paper to read on this: By @jinxungoh.bsky.social and team. drive.google.com/file/d/1_MbT...

I wrote about our recent paper for @uk.theconversation.com "...it does mean that judging these responses without understanding their cultural roots risks blaming individuals for navigating systems that were never designed to protect them." theconversation.com/why-some-peo...

How does information on public opinion on environmental issues shape citizens' opinions? Out and open access with @mbarnfield.bsky.social, @florianstoeckel.bsky.social, @benlyons.bsky.social, @vittoriomerola.bsky.social, and @jasonreifler.bsky.social + others! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New real-world field study *inoculating* against misinformation in live social media scroll feeds out in Harvard Misinfo Review @misinforeview.bsky.social We targeted +375k users with a short ad on Insta using a novel quasi-experimental method (1/3) misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/preb...

"A central insight from our study was that the question of what purpose a review should pursue depended critically on the status of knowledge in a field. Ultimately, we succeeded in mapping the different purposes onto four main directions a review can progress a field of research (Fig.1)"

“Why do both economically advantaged and disadvantaged voters sometimes converge in their support for conservative parties? ... Because inequality is inherently relational, its political implications arise not only from the objective distribution of resources but from ... themselves and others"

People keep referring to what’s going on in the US right now as a “modern-day gestapo” and “un-American”. In my @annualreviews.bsky.social preprint w/ @abautistachavez.bsky.social (doi.org/10.1146/annu...), we show that the US has repressed and expelled marginalized communities throughout history.

There's a type of survey that is fueling talk of a young adult religious revival in the UK & the US. You should be concerned about this type of survey because it is increasingly common and it may produce misleading results on many topics other than religion. Read more:

There’s a lot of discussion about what is meant to distract from what in the current news environment. This is the wrong way to think about things; Donald Trump’s modus has always been to constantly redirect attention so that nothing becomes “the big story.” That was the big lesson of our book.

🚨 #Bots and #LLMs threaten the integrity of online surveys and public opinion research, but we can identify LLM-generated text in open narrative responses by fine-tuning #BERT. New #OpenAccess article with @jkhoehne.bsky.social @rubac.bsky.social @carohaensch.bsky.social. 👉 doi.org/10.1177/0894...

New party identification polling from Gallup this week shows Americans are moving against Trump faster than they did in his first term. Adults were R+4 in 2024, now D+8. That 12-pt drop is 3x the change in the first year of his first term. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/backlash-t...

Pub Alert! Introducing new JoC publication: “Words that trigger: a meta-analysis of threatening language, reactance, and persuasion in health”, by Rong Ma, @zxma.bsky.social Callie Kalny, Nathan Walter. Read here: doi.org/10.1093/joc/...

Does news about a more diverse Congress change how Americans see democracy? In POQ, Olson et al. find that diversity boosts Democrats’ trust in Congress, has no effect on Republicans, and does not weaken support for democratic norms. Read now: doi.org/10.1093/poq/...

"Transparency" is utilised to avoid ethical discussions around genAI. The ppl pushing for it have a very particular idea of what science is & how it is done. It is specially concerning that universities & other institutions fail to see the wider context of this fascist technical apparatus. #ResistAI

ONLINE FIRST! This article by @antoniskalog.bsky.social, @richardfletcher.bsky.social, and @rasmuskleis.bsky.social compares inequalities in #news use in traditional offline and #online news #media environments over time among #internet users in six countries. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Guys, I found a poll from 1998 in the @ropercenter.bsky.social archives about their predictions for the year 2025 www.cnn.com/2025/12/29/p...

These technologies can and are being used to create lifelike images and videos of actual living women and girls. For what I think are pretty obvious gendered civil rights reasons, it needs to be a recognized civil cause of action to create an AI image or avatar of a woman without her consent.

New survey: As measles cases rise, the public's views of the MMR vaccine's safety and effectiveness -- and a willingness to recommend it -- have dropped. www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/as-measles-c...

This is very informative. Thank you @perrybaconjr.bsky.social and @victorpickard.bsky.social

There is no ethical use of AI because the continued existence of the AI industry is directly harmful to (alongside everyone else) the interests of everyone whose labour makes books exist—writers of fiction & nonfiction, illustrators, translators, researchers, editors, everyone.

The core concept I develop is defiant pride: when state institutions discriminate against a group, more exposed members double down on their identity as a psychological defense mechanism. This manifests as ethnicity becoming a larger part of the self-concept, which shapes preferences and beliefs.

This suggests that VAAs, while not increasing the quantity of voteswitching, do increase the quality of voteswitching: while many non-users switch their votes ahead of elections too, VAAs make it more likely for users to switch precisely to the party they are ideologically most aligned with. 12/14

📊 A new @jmcquarterly.bsky.social study by @teresaelena.bsky.social, @jlegelhofer.bsky.social and @solecheler.bsky.social compared how deepfakes, cheapfakes, and decontextualized videos influence perceptions, finding distinct effects. Read the full #OA paper: doi.org/10.1177/1077...

First off we pluralise L to accentuate there's no 1 approach. And we position ourselves in this interdisciplinary field of critically examining AI & reflecting on harms. We give 5 non-exhaustive angles: conceptual clarity, critical thinking, decoloniality, respecting expertise, slow science. 2/

We’ve been talking with writers, artists, and actors, and they’re not worried about AI’s abilities, they’re mad that it stole its creativity from them and worried that it’s now being used in ways that threaten to dry up the pipeline of creative jobs that gave many their start.

Why do citizens who say they support democracy tolerate leaders who dismantle it? Delighted to share my paper “Framing Democracy: How Elite Discourse Shapes Citizens' Understandings of Democracy and Enables Backsliding” is forthcoming in World Politics...(1/5, link at the end)

Excited that "Race, Gender, and Nascent Political Ambition" is now out in @bjpols.bsky.social. W/ survey of white, Hispanic, and Black American respondents, we show primary gap in nascent political ambition is not between men and women but between white men and the majority of the polity.

De Gruyter Handbook of Media Psychology, edited by Rachel L. Bailey & Glenna L. Read, has arrived, with comprehensive reviews of media psychology. It includes our chapter on psychology of digital news consumption and public opinion (Anita KC Liu & Ozan Kuru). www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Using panel survey data collected before and after Elon Musk’s takeover, we ( @prowag.bsky.social @zeningduan.bsky.social Sijia Yang) find evidence of lagging resistance: users who view the takeover negatively intend to quit Twitter but do not (yet) reduce their actual use. 1/ shorturl.at/x3syg

Here we go! @lmesseri.bsky.social & I wrote about epistemic risks of synthetic participants ('AI Surrogates') in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social (see 🧵 here) bsky.app/profile/mjcr...

Over the past several months, we hosted several scientists, experts, and authors to discuss climate change issue from various angles. @fisherdanar.bsky.social @drpauldorfman.bsky.social @cdelawalla.bsky.social @djspratt.bsky.social @climatehuman.bsky.social Playlist: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

What's more effective, retrieval practice or elaboration? Retrieval practice with feedback > elaboration, and a stronger effect when the content was complex. I suspect, overall, what matters is using the best strategies for the content & task (i.e., why not both?). #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky

ICYMI: The Supreme Court is revisiting the legality of religious vaccine exemption bans. That's bad news for public health. Religious exemptions are broader than medical exemptions, which can increase infectious disease risk. That's why (some) states treat them differently under the law.

"our work reaffirms the idea that scholars must not assume that broad theories of political behavior apply equally well across a diverse population of people..., demonstrating across multiple data-sources that their cross-cutting identities allows for relative inter-partisan harmony."

Singapore has recently introduced a range of measures aimed at reducing screen time in youths, including banning smartphones during school hours in secondary schools and updating guidelines on screen use.

New study on LLMs shows that while LLMs & humans converge on similar judgments of reliability of news media, they rely on very different underlying processes. In delegating, are we confusing linguistic plausibility with epistemic reliability? The age of "epistemia" www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

📈New #SPPS research: Subjective economic inequality undermines engagement in health-promoting behaviors like regular physical activity and healthy eating. The research helps refute the idea that health issues are solely due to personal choices. 📖: https://ow.ly/ZM7v50XFRUb#SPPS