Ted Schwaba
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tedmond.bsky.social
Ted Schwaba
@tedmond.bsky.social
psych professor, MSU. personality and environments and genes and the tangle all between! Also music opinions! tedmond.net
Out now at PSPR: our love letter to the personality trait of Openness!

Amber Thalmayer and I identify and (try to) explain the many ways that openness/intellect is the weirdest & WEIRDest of the Big Five. (Big improvements over the old preprint! thx reviewers)

journals.sagepub.com/eprint/HBGXT...
November 7, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
a couple years ago i contracted with one of subway's ad agencies for a small rotating sandwiches collab that ultimately they decided not to publish and i never did anything with. today feels like a good day to post one of them. here's my favorite subway sandwich, the veggie delight
November 6, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
1/ 🚨New paper in Nature Genetics

Genetic factors are associated with the educational fields people study, from arts to engineering.

Article: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
FAQ: www.thehastingscenter.org/genomic-find...
Genetic associations with educational fields - Nature Genetics
Genome-wide analyses of 10 educational fields identify 17 associated loci. Analysis of genetic clustering across specializations identifies two key dimensions that show genetic overlap with personalit...
www.nature.com
November 4, 2025 at 10:23 AM
On my calendar today I have scheduled "zoom GWAS" for 1pm. Current me has no idea what this refers to, there's no zoom link, no other guests, nothing in my last month of emails provides a clue. SO I'm just going to anxiously await an email at 1:05pm that says "where are you?" SORRY to whomever!
November 3, 2025 at 2:32 PM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
A reminder that I’m accepting applications for PhD students!
✨✨ I will be reviewing applications for the University of Minnesota psychology PhD program this fall!

Information for potential applicants can be found on my lab website: ringwaldlab.psych.umn.edu/join-lab

Please spread the word!
Join the Lab | Ringwald Lab
ringwaldlab.psych.umn.edu
October 30, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
Interdisciplinary paper with @paulhufe.net Astrid Sandsør and Nicolai Borgen now out in PNAS!
www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Causal evidence of gene-environment interaction for reading test scores based on:
🧬 Exogenous within-family genetic differences
🏫 Exogenous variation in school value added
The genetic lottery goes to school: Better schools compensate for the effects of students’ genetic differences
www.pnas.org
October 28, 2025 at 11:25 AM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
New release of PowerLMM.js! Browser-based power analysis for longitudinal models with dropout.

Now includes:
- Power analysis summary report
- Reproducible & shareable configs (URL/JSON)
- Calculations validated against R
- Hypothesis region visualization

powerlmmjs.rpsychologist.com
October 28, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
After the FBI denied "children were zip-tied or hit with rubber bullets" in a raid in Wilder, Idaho, the FBI said no "young" children were.

The updated statement came after KIVI-TV sent FBI photo reportedly showing 14-year-old U.S. citizen in zip ties.
FBI backtracks on denying children were zip tied in Idaho raid, saying instead no ‘young’ kids were • Idaho Capital Sun
After the FBI denied "children were zip-tied or hit with rubber bullets" in raid in Wilder, Idaho, FBI says no "young" children were.
idahocapitalsun.com
October 22, 2025 at 11:43 PM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
Has conscientiousness really been in a free fall since 2014? A question that made us blog again: Has conscientiousness really been in a free fall since 2014?*
floggingpvalues.blog/2025/10/22/h...
Has conscientiousness really been in a free fall since 2014?*
Brent W. RobertsA.J. WrightLena RoemerCavan Bonner Recently Burn-Murdoch reported in the Financial Times (FT) that since 2014 conscientiousness was in a “free fall” in younger p…
floggingpvalues.blog
October 22, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
☀️To all Master’s & PhD students: Join the Summer School of Personality Science 2026 (July 15–19, Edinburgh) for a week of research training, mentoring & networking in personality psychology.

Template: osf.io/76ej2/files/...
Apply Nov 2-20: www.conftool.org/ssps2026

#SSPS #eapp
October 22, 2025 at 7:53 AM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
Here is another way to put the paradox. If you ask, "If I had different genes, would my personality be different?" Then the answer is, "Probably, yes." If you ask, "If I had THESE genes, what would my personality be like?", the answer is, "We don't have any idea."
October 17, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
When do machine learning models actually outperform standard polygenic scores? 🤔

In our new preprint, we benchmark how non-additive genetic effects (i.e, dominance deviations) shape polygenic prediction across simulated and UK Biobank traits.

👉 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧵 1/6
Benchmarking non-additive genetic effects on polygenic prediction and machine learning-based approaches
Polygenic scores (PGSs) are widely used to translate genome-wide association study (GWAS) findings into tools for genetic risk prediction. Most current approaches assume additive effects, yet the cont...
www.medrxiv.org
October 14, 2025 at 11:14 AM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
This is a fairly technical but highly relevant paper on how we can model complex systems at various levels of detail without losing causal content. Think gas: instead of tracking every molecule, we can focus on big-picture properties like temperature and pressure. www.auai.org/uai2017/proc...
July 8, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
@jfealy.bsky.social, Joesphine Fealy, investigated how genetics were associated with personality trait develolent after stressful life events. Find out more in our upcoming newsletter and on our Instagram!
October 13, 2025 at 11:35 PM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
You can find a #NoKingsDay event near you at nokings.org/#map.

Join your neighbors and friends. Stand up for what actually makes America great.

This Saturday. Everywhere.
A notice from @ofthebraveusa.bsky.social.

Will run in newspapers across the nation.
October 13, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
New from @ent3c.bsky.social in The Atlantic --

7 years (!) after Charles Murray made a bet with us that we'd "understand IQ genetically" by 2025, Eric describes how far we still are--and might always be--from that goal

www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...
Your Genes Are Simply Not Enough to Explain How Smart You Are
Seven years ago, I took a bet with Charles Murray about whether we’d basically understand the genetics of intelligence by now.
www.theatlantic.com
October 13, 2025 at 2:04 PM
I was wondering why this photo felt familiar and then I realized my profile pic is just me cosplaying as this flower
October 9, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Trump's "university compact" is blatantly transphobic and deeply evil stuff. Any university that agrees to this kneels to fascism.
October 2, 2025 at 5:21 PM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
% of US men under 30 who say legal sports betting is a *bad thing* for society

22% in 2022
47% in 2025

No other demographic group has seen a bigger increase.
Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society and sports
Today, 43% of U.S. adults say the fact that sports betting is now legal in much of the country is a bad thing for society, up from 34% in 2022.
www.pewresearch.org
October 2, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
Non-paywalled link to my commentary on @vw1234.bsky.social and colleagues new paper in @nature.com rdcu.be/eI2NG
October 1, 2025 at 6:17 PM
If you're teaching about lifespan personality development, and you want to include Bleidorn + colleagues (2022) meta-analysis, I made some prettier plots than the ones in our paper. (Y axis is cohen's d)

(Alternately, if you've never read our paper, check out these plots!)
September 29, 2025 at 4:30 PM
2015: the CLPM is misspecified, it doesn't account for stable traits, use the RI-CLPM!

2025: the RI-CLPM is misspecified, it doesn't account for linear decay over time, use the ARTS!

(But actually, given how stable everything is, maybe just don't estimate cross-lagged models in adults)
It turns out it's very common. Here are the plots of stability over increasingly long lags for about 400 variables from a large panel study. For anything less than almost perfect short-term stability, stability coefficients should reach an asymptote long before 22 years; very few do [10/x]
September 19, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
Submissions are now open for 22nd European Conference on Personality (Edinburgh, 2026); deadline 7/12/25.
Keynote speakers and pre-conference workshops have also been confirmed.
www.ecp22edinburgh.org/submission
September 18, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
Report: You To Be Fired For Reading This Headline About Charlie Kirk
Report: You To Be Fired For Reading This Headline About Charlie Kirk
NEW YORK—Insisting your fate was sealed the moment you clicked the link, a report released Tuesday found that you will be fired for reading this headline about Charlie Kirk. “Shortly after you navigat...
theonion.com
September 18, 2025 at 12:02 AM
Reposted by Ted Schwaba
The largest study on late life virginity, based on >400k individuals, out now in @pnas.org

Open access link: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Shoutout to shared first author @laurawesseldijk.bsky.social ❤️

Thread below 👇🏽
September 16, 2025 at 8:26 PM