William J. Brady
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williambrady.bsky.social
William J. Brady
@williambrady.bsky.social

Assistant prof @ Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Studying emotion, morality, social networks, psych of tech. #firstgen college graduate

Medicine 25%
Sociology 11%
Pinned
👀New preprint! In 3 prereg experiments we study how engagement-based algorithms amplify ingroup, moral and emotional (IME) content in ways that disrupt social norm learning (and test one solution!) w/ @joshcjackson.bsky.social and my amazing lab managers
@merielcd.bsky.social
& Silvan Baier 🧵👇

Reposted by William J. Brady

These has been sharp rise in moralized language on social media

Two processes explained this shift:
(1) within-user increases in moral language over time
(2) highly moralized users became more active while less moralized users disengaged osf.io/preprints/ps...
Posting is correlated with affective polarization:
😡 The most partisan users — those who love their party and despise the other — are more likely to post about politics
🥊 The result? A loud angry minority dominates online politics, which itself can drive polarization (see doi.org/10.1073/pnas...)

Reposted by Mark J. Brandt

Reminder to apply to the DRRC postdoc fellowship! Deadline is this week.
Are you interested in topics related to conflict and intergroup relations *broadly construed*? Come join us as a postdoc in the Dispute Research Research Center! This position is up to 3 years, comes with your own research funding, and a phenomenal network of past DRRC postdocs.
Apply now for Kellogg’s DRRC Postdoc Fellowship, which supports outstanding research in conflict and cooperation, offering dedicated time for scholarship, access to exceptional resources, and a vibrant academic community. Deadline: Nov 1.
t.co/UDZwJCqDw5

Reposted by William J. Brady

Re-posting this because I really like it and I think we need to understand identity from a functionalist perspective more than ever.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
I wrote a chapter on a functionalist account of social identity.

IMO, thinking about identity in an instrumental way helps explain a lot of behavior that seems otherwise baffling.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
1. We ( @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social, and I) have a new preprint up on the arXiv.

There we explore how social media companies and other online information technology firms are able to manipulate scientific research about the effects of their products.
Great piece on the absurdity of brute force multiverse analyses.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Robustness is better assessed with a few thoughtful models than with billions of regressions | PNAS
Robustness is better assessed with a few thoughtful models than with billions of regressions
www.pnas.org
Can AI simulations of human research participants advance cognitive science? In @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social, @lmesseri.bsky.social & I analyze this vision. We show how “AI Surrogates” entrench practices that limit the generalizability of cognitive science while aspiring to do the opposite. 1/
AI Surrogates and illusions of generalizability in cognitive science
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have generated enthusiasm for using AI simulations of human research participants to generate new know…
www.sciencedirect.com

Last call for data-blitz and poster submission for the Computational Psychology preconference @spspnews.bsky.social! See thread below for details and hope to see you in Chicago!
The computational psych preconference is back @spspnews.bsky.social for a full day! This year's lineup:

👉theory-driven modeling: Hyowon Gweon
👉data-driven discovery: @clemensstachl.bsky.social
👉application: me
👉 panel: @steveread.bsky.social Sandra Matz, @markthornton.bsky.social Wil Cunningham

Very difficult indeed. We study these types of issues empirically:

osf.io/preprints/os...
OSF
osf.io
🚨 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 🧵

Cool work! Did y'all look at how people update when they discover AI makes an error?

Reposted by William J. Brady

Our new paper finds that AI can overcome partisan #bias

We find that AI sources are preferred over ingroup and outgroup sources--even when people know both are equally accurate (N = 1,600+): osf.io/preprints/ps...

Thanks to our rotating organizers: lead organizer Tessa Charlesworth & co-organizers: @chujunlin.bsky.social Brent Hughes Xuechunzi Bai

Post any questions here!

We are now accepting submissions for posters and data blitz! If your research is computational (broadly construed) you should apply! We try to program for a wide range of topics and computational approaches.

Submission guide here: spsp.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/EdvejV...

Deadline: October 23rd 🎃

The computational psych preconference is back @spspnews.bsky.social for a full day! This year's lineup:

👉theory-driven modeling: Hyowon Gweon
👉data-driven discovery: @clemensstachl.bsky.social
👉application: me
👉 panel: @steveread.bsky.social Sandra Matz, @markthornton.bsky.social Wil Cunningham

My proposed solution is to not write more 150 pg papers 🤣
New dataset that describes social media activity of a very large group of US elected officials: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The digitally accountable public representation database: online communication by U.S. officials - Scientific Data
Scientific Data - The digitally accountable public representation database: online communication by U.S. officials
www.nature.com

And here we are

Really cool work led by @hongkai1.bsky.social ✨ observational and experimental studies finding that differentiation helps explain the evolution of negative discourse online!
🚨New preprint🚨

osf.io/preprints/ps...

In a sample of ~2 billion comments, social media discourse becomes more negative over time

Archival and experimental findings suggest this is a byproduct of people trying to differentiate themselves

Led by @hongkai1.bsky.social in his 1st year (!) of his PhD

Reposted by William J. Brady

🚨New preprint🚨

osf.io/preprints/ps...

In a sample of ~2 billion comments, social media discourse becomes more negative over time

Archival and experimental findings suggest this is a byproduct of people trying to differentiate themselves

Led by @hongkai1.bsky.social in his 1st year (!) of his PhD

@aoc.bsky.social come hang out at Northwestern and we'll take you surfing on the great lakes!
I have been taking surfing lessons. Still in the beginner kook trenches, but celebrating my last time on a foam board 😎

Graduating to a hard top next session.

It’s fun to learn new things! Even if you look like a goober at the beginning. 🏄🏽‍♀️
I have been taking surfing lessons. Still in the beginner kook trenches, but celebrating my last time on a foam board 😎

Graduating to a hard top next session.

It’s fun to learn new things! Even if you look like a goober at the beginning. 🏄🏽‍♀️
Yet again, machine learning — even gussied up via the transformer architecture — encodes and reinforces societal biases.

This study reveals that LLM-based peer review relies heavily on author institution in its decisions.

arxiv.org/abs/2509.15122
Prestige over merit: An adapted audit of LLM bias in peer review
Large language models (LLMs) are playing an increasingly integral, though largely informal, role in scholarly peer review. Yet it remains unclear whether LLMs reproduce the biases observed in human de...
arxiv.org

I suspect we are already at the point where students view writing a dissertation without LLMs the same as us millennials viewed writing a dissertation on a typewriter, i.e., unfathomable. No value judgment, just interesting how quickly that escalated.

Reposted by William J. Brady

Attempts at reducing online aggression (ie, cruel Reddit comments) by increasing empathy (eg, "There is a human being on the other side who might be hurt by your words") tended to backfire. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Whom to pity, whom to scold? Effects of empathetic and normative AI-assisted interventions on aggressive Reddit users with different activity profiles
During a six-month experiment conducted on Reddit, we studied the impact of counter-speech interventions against personal attacks sent by 440 users re…
www.sciencedirect.com

📢JOB POSTING: Senior Director for the Center for Enlightened Disagreement (CED).📢

@nourkteily.bsky.social and I seek a strategic leader to help us build the Center (see ensuing post for information about CED).

Target salary range: $125,000-$155,000.

1/2

careers.northwestern.edu/psc/hrnu_er/...
An error has occurred.
careers.northwestern.edu

Reposted by William J. Brady

"psychological biases to overestimate the influence of self-interest on others’ behaviors and to attribute malicious intentions to those who harm us may create inherent challenges for punishment to effectively promote cooperation"
Profitable third-party punishment destabilizes cooperation | PNAS
Third-party punishment is theorized by some scholars to be essential to the evolution of large-scale cooperation, but empirically, it often fails t...
www.pnas.org
Apply to the awesome DRRC postdoc position at Kellogg. Open to any scholar who studies conflict and cooperation, very broadly construed. We’ve had some amazing people come through over the years. Note the earlier application deadline this year (Nov 1)!
Apply now for Kellogg’s DRRC Postdoc Fellowship, which supports outstanding research in conflict and cooperation, offering dedicated time for scholarship, access to exceptional resources, and a vibrant academic community. Deadline: Nov 1.
t.co/UDZwJCqDw5
https://tinyurl.com/drrcpostdoc2025
t.co