Mark Rubin
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markrubin.bsky.social
Mark Rubin
@markrubin.bsky.social

social psychology ▪︎ metascience ▪︎ philosophy of science ▪︎ higher education

Professor at Durham University, UK. He/him.

Website: https://sites.google.com/site/markrubinsocialpsychresearch/

Substack: https://markrubin.substack.com/ .. more

Psychology 30%
Sociology 18%
Pinned
Just published…

I argue that preregistration does not improve the transparent evaluation of the severity of hypothesis tests (a) in Popper’s approach or (b) in Mayo’s error statistical approach when preregistration is treated as “a plan, not a prison.”

Open Access: doi.org/10.1007/s112...

"Masculinity at the cultural level has consistent negative associations with well-being."

#SocialPsyc #AcademicSky
Really interesting new study out in SSM: "Precarious Manhood, Precarious Nations: The Contribution of Cultural Beliefs Comprising Masculinity to National Happiness”

More national precarious manhood beliefs = less national happiness, lower national GDP, shorter life expectancy, & less social support
Precarious Manhood, Precarious Nations: The Contribution of Cultural Beliefs Comprising Masculinity to National Happiness - ScienceDirect
www.sciencedirect.com

Reposted by Mark Rubin

Reposted by Mark Rubin

Really interesting new study out in SSM: "Precarious Manhood, Precarious Nations: The Contribution of Cultural Beliefs Comprising Masculinity to National Happiness”

More national precarious manhood beliefs = less national happiness, lower national GDP, shorter life expectancy, & less social support
Precarious Manhood, Precarious Nations: The Contribution of Cultural Beliefs Comprising Masculinity to National Happiness - ScienceDirect
www.sciencedirect.com

"Basic scientists consistently enhance scientific output quality, yet research and newly joining researchers have shifted toward applied orientations."

Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2509.01530

#PhilSci #MetaSci #AcademicSky 🧪

And there’s a ton more psychology starter packs here…

#SocialPsyc #PsycSci #Psychology

Hi Mark! There’s a couple of social psychology starter packs here you might be interested in...

New work by Joelle-Cathrin Flöther and @julianedegner.bsky.social suggests we should integrate both positive and negative evaluations into measures of social identification.

#SocialPsyc #AcademicSky
Testing the multicomponent ingroup identification model in diverse stigmatized groups: model fit, group differences, and predictors of social identification
Social identities play a crucial role in shaping how individuals interpret their position in society and navigate social interactions to serve both personal and ingroup interests. Existing social i...
doi.org

"While ingroup evaluation may not always be positive, this does not preclude strong ingroup identification."

Open Access: doi.org/10.1080/1529...

For Italian speakers...

Interview with Stefania Paolini from @durhampsych.bsky.social on the sense of belonging of multilingual communities in Australia.

#SocialPsyc
Io non mi sento australiano (ma per fortuna o purtroppo...)
Quanto ci sentiamo "a casa" in Australia? Uno studio recente ci ha offerto lo spunto per chiedere alla comunità italoaustraliana qual è il nostro senso di appartenenza alla società che ci ha accolti.
www.sbs.com.au

-- Call for Papers --

Special issue on "Intersectionality in Social Psychology: Perspectives, Methods, and Applications" in the British Journal of Social Psychology.

Abstract submission deadline: 15 December 2025
<em>British Journal of Social Psychology</em> | Wiley Online Library
<em>British Journal of Social Psychology</em> is an international journal publishing impactful basic and applied social psychological research from all parts of the world.
bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Reposted by Mark Rubin

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

"...Psychological interventions that decrease psychological distance or challenge system justification increase motivation to exert effort to mitigate climate change..."
Psychological interventions that decrease psychological distance or challenge system justification increase motivation to exert effort to mitigate climate change - Communications Psychology
Pro-environmental actions often require effort. Participants were less motivated to help the climate than a food charity, but two interventions removed this bias. Computational modelling linked climat...
www.nature.com
For each additional moral–emotional word in a social media post, the number of shares increases 13%

Our new meta-analysis finds robust evidence of moral contagion (N=4,821,006)

The moral contagion effect is even stronger in larger, pre-registered studies (17%).
academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Reposted by Mark Rubin

#AcademicSky #PsychSciSky #Metascience

Yesterday in class, I talked about HARKING (hypothesizing after results are known).

Next....

I brought a little dollar-store bow and arrow (suction cups), to do a demonstration of this idea 👇

😅

Reposted by Mauricio Suárez

"These may be thought to be in the world, but they may also be abstractions...or they may fail to exist: They may be interesting fictions."

From responses to commentaries on the 2024 book "Inference and Representation" by @msuarez.bsky.social

Book: doi.org/10.7208/chic...

#HPS #PhilSci #HistSci
Inference and Representation by Mauricio Suárez: Reply by the Author.
www.sciencedirect.com

*Interesting Fictions*

"Scientific models do not (typically) represent ‘the world’, except perhaps for the models of cosmology. Models represent local systems, states, events, phenomena, effects."

"From the point of view of the integrated history and philosophy of science,...the history must be informed by the philosophy and vice versa."

"From the point of view of deflationary pragmatism, focusing on the effective means of application of a concept in its operative context, is the only way to capture the normative commitments underlying the use of the concept."

"That the normative and the descriptive interpenetrate in essential and irreducible ways is an old and established pragmatist lesson."

”From the point of view of deflationary pragmatism, this is plainly the wrong question to ask. It bypasses and completely ignores the pragmatist primacy of practice (Putnam, 1995), which is aimed precisely at overcoming this dichotomy (Putnam, 2002)."

“Should we aim at the best descriptive account of scientific practice, or should we strive to articulate some further normative claims?”
The below link should work, but let me know if you can't get access and I'll DM you the author's copy!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Hearty thanks to Oscar Westerblad @oscarw.bsky.social, Chiara Ambrosio and Alexander Bird for their wonderful commentaries!
Inference and Representation by Mauricio Suárez: Reply by the Author.
www.sciencedirect.com

Reposted by Mark Rubin

The below link should work, but let me know if you can't get access and I'll DM you the author's copy!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Hearty thanks to Oscar Westerblad @oscarw.bsky.social, Chiara Ambrosio and Alexander Bird for their wonderful commentaries!
Inference and Representation by Mauricio Suárez: Reply by the Author.
www.sciencedirect.com

👍

Not by me Nico...by Luke Conway.

Reposted by Mark Rubin

"Regrettably, and despite the null hypothesis being simple, elegant and often underpinned by evidenced or reasoned convictions, conventional p-value analysis can only argue against the null hypothesis, never in favour of it."
Saying ‘no’ with confidence: statistical approaches to test for the absence of an effect | Biology Letters
Publishing non-significant findings is essential for the progress of science. However, many of us forget that ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’ and believe that a statistically non-sign...
doi.org

"Preregistarians may have an answer to that, of course. It goes something like: 'yeah, but that isn’t the right kind of preregistered study. You have to do it right'.”

#MetaSci #OpenSci

"The best study showing why preregistration is important to increase transparency was retracted for not being transparent."

Reposted by John Wilkins

"I’m actually biased in favor of the intuitive value of preregistration; but things that seem intuitively sensible can turn out to be wrong anyway. Increasingly, I’m wondering if this is one of those things."
Preregistration Isn’t the Chief Executive of Science, It’s a Small Part of the Quality Control Department
And I'm Beginnning to Think It Should Be Fired for Poor Performance
open.substack.com