Lilith Roberts
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lilitou.bsky.social
Lilith Roberts
@lilitou.bsky.social
she/her 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 | views my own

Psychology PhD student at University of Sheffield | Research interests: intergroup bias (incl. weight stigma), social identity, behaviour change, cyberpsychology | also writer, "activist", procrastinator
Pinned
Incredibly excited to share that our meta-analysis (with
@chantellewwood.bsky.social and others) has been published in Psychological Bulletin! 🥳

Our findings support the efficacy of confrontation as a prejudice reduction tool (with some important caveats!)

doi.org/10.1037/bul0...

#PsySciSky
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
Spot on. The terms of the plan 2 loan are utterly usurious. Notably the budget has not frozen just the threshold for repayments at a marginal rate of 9%, dragging more and more graduates into it, but it also freezes the interest of those loans which is as much as 6.2%! Which is ridiculous!!
I'm constantly shocked (but not surprised) by how little we discuss the additional financial burden placed on young people by the Clegg-Cameron student loan regime.

@rmcunliffe.bsky.social is one of the few journalists who brings it up continuously - once again in the wake of the budget 👇
Rachel Reeves hits young graduates with a double stealth tax
The Chancellor plans to raise as much money from freezing loan repayment thresholds as from the mansion tax
www.newstatesman.com
November 27, 2025 at 1:09 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
One of the giants of social psychology was a serial sexual harasser.

This new report reveals how Miles Hewstone touched, bullied, and sexual harassed numerous women during his 18 years at the University of Oxford. It's amazing how often bullying and sexual harassment go together in academia.
November 19, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
This is something that really bothers me in so much talk about benefits including from some policy wonks.

Not everyone who is given something from the state is Oliver Twist, nor should they be.

The state should provide help to all sorts of people in different circs, not just gruel for the needy
Sorry, no, Motability was not about 'helping the most vulnerable' - it was about providing people who need modified vehicles modified vehicles!
November 26, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
This research was published 14 months ago. In *Nature*.

Three months BEFORE Wes Streeting announced a "permanent ban" on puberty-blockers.

& yesterday, the Tories insisted you don't even need a clinical trial to keep that ban, forever...
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...
Evidence has now emerged of the adverse consequences of the laws banning GAHT for trans youth in both the US and UK. This includes sharp declines in mental health and increased suicide attempts among transgender young people.

t.co/YZaiSgdDAl
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01979-5
t.co
November 26, 2025 at 10:38 AM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
I think at this point if you're including Diane Abbott - a woman who has never held government office, has been a backbencher since 2020, and is scarcely a government ally - on your list of political wrongdoers, we all know exactly what your real concerns are
November 26, 2025 at 12:28 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
and again - literally just the hobby horse of some random anonymous Twitter accounts, enraging how quickly they managed to turn their horrid posting into actual government policy and rhetoric
“The Motability scheme was set up to protect the most vulnerable. Not to subsidise the lease on a Mercedes Benz,” Reeves says.

Misleading and nasty in equal measure.
November 26, 2025 at 1:20 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
Many people on socmed responding to the Farage racism story with ‘We all said things like that in the 70s’. If you did, you’re one of those who made my childhood miserable much of the time. And if you have no remorse, face facts: you’re (still) a racist.
November 26, 2025 at 11:27 AM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
OBR says lower net migration will hurt overall productivity
November 26, 2025 at 12:31 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
'Exiting the market' is such a crap euphemism. It's not like the 'university' will then go and apply all its assets to another market. Those assets (human and non-human) will be dispersed, wasted, destroyed. Un-creative destruction. Which we can't afford as a society.
Chief exec of OfS 'said the OfS believes there are 24 institutions at risk of exiting the market in the next 12 months, seven of which are large providers with more than 3,000 students. There are another 25 or so institutions of various sizes at risk over a two- to three-year period, she added.'
Seven ‘large providers’ at risk of going under in the next year
Skills minister says no higher education institutions are at imminent risk of collapse this year but OfS confirms more than 20 providers are being closely monitored
www.timeshighereducation.com
November 26, 2025 at 9:54 AM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
"It is against the TOS to be talked into suicide by our LLM" is possibly the most evil tech bro thing I've ever read
Additionally, OpenAI argues its not liable because Raine, by using ChatGPT for self-harm, broke its terms of service
November 26, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
OpenAI says they aren't liable for the suicide of a user their chat bot urged to kill himself because suicide is a violation of the TOS
Additionally, OpenAI argues its not liable because Raine, by using ChatGPT for self-harm, broke its terms of service
November 26, 2025 at 4:43 AM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
okay you cannot do the 'they do this on continent and it's fine' thing here the continental justice system is basically known best for its appeals loops, this is just despotic
November 25, 2025 at 10:20 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
The media really will treat LLMs as human before they give trans people the same courtesy
can’t fucking catch a breath

make it stop
November 25, 2025 at 9:39 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
I’ve been running around asking tech execs and academics if language was the same as intelligence for over a year now - and, well, it isn’t. @benjaminjriley.bsky.social explains how the bubble is built on ignoring cutting-edge research into the science of thought www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...
November 25, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
To tie back to my comparison to other online radicalisation, even if you don't give a shit about trans people, the judiciary becoming increasingly partial on a specific issue should be seen as the canary in the coal mine giving the current direction of travel in this country
Like it was obvious when the Supreme Court randomly decided to rewrite the Equality Act, but I think there's a large amount if journalistic negligence that no one really treats judges as anything other than neutral conduits through which the word of law moves
November 25, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
I don't know the criminal standard specifically but Linehan did say *in court* that he was motivated by the victim's status as a trans person. If a clear statement of explicit prejudice isn't enough then you need a new standard.
news.sky.com/story/bluesk...
November 25, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
Sometimes wonder if what the UK needs is a thinktank that doesn't do any new research, it just repeats obviously true statements that people try to ignore because they're inconvenient.

International students cross-subsidise home students. Your pension is paid for out of general taxation.
November 25, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
I think we are long past the point of noting the judiciary is ideologically captured by bigots and extremists
It is genuinely insane to see a judge describe Graham Linehan as a “generally credible witness” in a trial where he claimed Sophia Brooks has been engaged in “trans activism” since 2013 (when she would’ve been 6 years old), then, when challenged, claimed her drivers license lied about her age.
November 25, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
Universitiws are one of the only three truly world-class institutions that the UK has and this government wants them to collapse. It's mind boggling.
November 25, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
I actually think it's bad that the law thinks that calling a 17 year old a "sissy porn-watching scumbag", a "groomer" and a "disgusting incel" in public is not a crime, and indeed I do not think criticising this would constitute "[picking] sides in the debate about sex and gender identity".
November 25, 2025 at 12:08 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
This little transphobic rant by Hadley Freeman in the Sunday Times really shows how pathetic gender critical ideology is. They play victimhood every day from the national media, while childishly insulting the existence of trans and non-binary individuals, calling any criticism of that 'silencing'.
November 23, 2025 at 8:51 AM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
I don’t think Danny Kruger is being taken seriously enough - this is far more extreme than anything the Conservatives were allowed to get away with. He is effectively saying that being anti-racist and being trans are contrary to British national identity and his party is leading the polls.
Reform are so dangerous and this headline doesn’t do it justice. I also think a piece like this should start with the politician‘s core views just to emphasise the urgency.
November 22, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
this week's newsletter is titled "aren't you tired of feeling insane all the time?" and I think it speaks for itself

it is also free to read

youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/arent-you-...
November 21, 2025 at 10:18 AM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
The party that promised "free speech on campus" has made sure there can be no free speech on campuses.
This week, I withdrew from a speaking engagement at a public university because they sent me a list of prohibited “words & concepts.” I will not humor this censorship. It does a disservice to the stories I’m discussing & the audience, who deserve unfettered access to information & conversation.
November 21, 2025 at 4:25 AM
Reposted by Lilith Roberts
VERY funny that Labour are being pointlessly cruel and haemorrhaging support from their base and yet none of what they're offering is ever going to be enough for the people whose approval they're seeking, WHO could have predicted it
November 20, 2025 at 3:20 PM