A. James Benjamin, PhD
@jb-is-psyched.bsky.social
This is my academic profile on Bluesky. I am a social psychologist and educator. This account is to connect with all the cool psych peeps I met on Twitter and at SIPS, as well as to highlight interesting (sometimes good, sometimes bad) research. He/Him
Ultimately this is not a tale of hope or despair. It is a simple story of mixed findings that were at times blown out of proportion. /end
February 17, 2026 at 7:57 AM
Ultimately this is not a tale of hope or despair. It is a simple story of mixed findings that were at times blown out of proportion. /end
That's it in a nutshell. It's a story of a body of research that was a response to a social era of rising crime rates and easy access to violent media. And as most of these responses go as they almost always do, the findings were often mixed at best. /5
February 17, 2026 at 7:56 AM
That's it in a nutshell. It's a story of a body of research that was a response to a social era of rising crime rates and easy access to violent media. And as most of these responses go as they almost always do, the findings were often mixed at best. /5
/4 The 2010s - the era of mass shootings - demanded answers & what could have been a moribund line of research found a new life. The good, the bad, and the ugly of that set of articles comes to light here. After that we look toward the future - some philosophers have some potentially testable ideas.
February 17, 2026 at 7:53 AM
/4 The 2010s - the era of mass shootings - demanded answers & what could have been a moribund line of research found a new life. The good, the bad, and the ugly of that set of articles comes to light here. After that we look toward the future - some philosophers have some potentially testable ideas.
Once the weapons effect was considered established fact, a small literature on semantic priming effects of weapons on aggressive cognition would emerge (this was peak social cognition era) starting in the late 1990s (Anderson et al., 1998). We look at how well that has held up. /3
February 17, 2026 at 7:51 AM
Once the weapons effect was considered established fact, a small literature on semantic priming effects of weapons on aggressive cognition would emerge (this was peak social cognition era) starting in the late 1990s (Anderson et al., 1998). We look at how well that has held up. /3
Then I spend some quality time on the initial Berkowitz & LePage (1967) experiment and Berkowitz's subsequent writings on the experiment's implications. Then I spend some time on the pushback and replication efforts that had very mixed results. Following that, we look at Carlson et al. (1990). /2
February 17, 2026 at 7:47 AM
Then I spend some quality time on the initial Berkowitz & LePage (1967) experiment and Berkowitz's subsequent writings on the experiment's implications. Then I spend some time on the pushback and replication efforts that had very mixed results. Following that, we look at Carlson et al. (1990). /2
As long as the amps go up to eleven.
February 17, 2026 at 5:09 AM
As long as the amps go up to eleven.
I did eventually contact someone at Elsevier regarding the apparent self-plagiarism. Roughly a couple months later (give or take), I did get a reply along the lines of "there is more duplicate content than we would want to see, but so what?" I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
February 17, 2026 at 5:06 AM
I did eventually contact someone at Elsevier regarding the apparent self-plagiarism. Roughly a couple months later (give or take), I did get a reply along the lines of "there is more duplicate content than we would want to see, but so what?" I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
I also had to assume that the anchor points for each scale was correctly reported. Admittedly I don't have a lot of confidence that much of anything was correctly reported, but that's what I had to work with. Here is the corrigendum for those interested.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Corrigendum to ‘Unresponsive or un-noticed?: Cyberbystander intervention in an experimental cyberbullying context’ [Computers in Human Behavior 45C (2015) 144–150]
www.sciencedirect.com
February 17, 2026 at 4:21 AM
I also had to assume that the anchor points for each scale was correctly reported. Admittedly I don't have a lot of confidence that much of anything was correctly reported, but that's what I had to work with. Here is the corrigendum for those interested.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A big unaddressed concern is that even with the recent corrigendum, there are a couple reported standard deviations that, according to a preliminary SPRITE run, appear to be impossible. I made a couple assumptions - 1. the N is correctly reported for each cell & 2. each DV is based on 1-item scale.
February 17, 2026 at 4:20 AM
A big unaddressed concern is that even with the recent corrigendum, there are a couple reported standard deviations that, according to a preliminary SPRITE run, appear to be impossible. I made a couple assumptions - 1. the N is correctly reported for each cell & 2. each DV is based on 1-item scale.
I can't divorce scientific content from politics in this age and wouldn't want to, but this is my designated space to share some interesting research, kvetch about fraud, etc. In other words if you remember me from 2018 - 2023, I hope you'll follow me or follow back.
February 17, 2026 at 3:27 AM
I can't divorce scientific content from politics in this age and wouldn't want to, but this is my designated space to share some interesting research, kvetch about fraud, etc. In other words if you remember me from 2018 - 2023, I hope you'll follow me or follow back.