The Publications and Communications Board of the American Psychological Association and the Society for the Science of Motivation has opened nominations for the editorship of Motivation Science, a multidisciplinary journal that publishes significant contributions to the study of motivation.

New review! We synthesized literature on empathic AI: AI-generated emotional support is rated higher than human responses, but people's knowledge of the source shapes their perceptions. W/ @desmond-ong.bsky.social @amit-goldenberg.bsky.social @anatperry.bsky.social

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Motivation and Emotion is seeking a new Editor-in-Chief! 4-year term starting Jan 2025. Looking for someone with vision, experience in motivation/emotion research, and editorial chops. Deadline: Aug 1. Ready to shape the field? Details: morgan.ryan@springer.com

Sometimes you need to be told to shut the fuck up, Donny. My story of moderating psychology's civil war, complete with sock puppets, drama, and the naive belief that academics could discuss their crumbling field civilly. Spoiler: they couldn't. New post.

open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

Attention metascience & AI enthusiasts: SSHRC is offering $140K/2yr postdoc fellowships, and I'd be happy to sponsor someone to work in my lab at UofT. If you're interested in how AI might transform scientific practice (for better or worse), apply by April 8. Let's question everything together.

Nothing says “I care deeply about human connection” quite like dismissing AI empathy while ignoring the 12% of Americans without a single friend. But a Princeton neuroscientist said it, so…

Here's where it gets interesting (and honestly, where our preregistered predictions got turned on their head): When people worked harder for rewards, they were MORE likely to gamble them away /4

We ran 3 experiments (N=450) to peek into this paradox. Had folks choose between easy tasks for small rewards or harder tasks for bigger ones. Then gave them a chance to gamble with what they earned. /3

Alternative headline: Moderate cannabis use can improve young adults' short-term memory**

**And by short-term memory we mean small (d=-.28, p=.02) effects in some brain areas related to short term memory, but short term memory itself is unaffected. And by improve, we mean correlated with.

1/ New paper led by Dariya Ovsyannikova & Victoria de Mello Oldemburgo.

Can AI offer empathy that’s better than humans? Maybe. Our new study found that people rated AI-generated responses as more compassionate than from humans, including trained crisis responders.

www.nature.com/commspsychol/

🚨 Get Paid to Get High! 🚨

Are you a regular cannabis user? Help us uncover the cognitive effects of cannabis in a new study at U of Toronto Scarborough!

Time: 1.5–2 hrs
Compensation: $40
Eligibility: Male (per Health Canada restrictions)

Take the prescreening survey: tinyurl.com/ytdrrjpb

And here's a little video teaser from the post. Enjoy.

So I got into a fight with a Nobel laureate over marshmallows and personality.

t.co/7gjfxe6IZC

🚨Out in Nature Human Behaviour!🚨

Effort is costly - how can we learn to value doing effortful things? Reward effort, not outcomes/performance! Registered report led by the incomparable Hause Lin shows people can learn to prefer doing effortful tasks doi.org/10.1038/s415...

🚀 Our tests on ChatGPT, inspired by classic empathy experiments, reveal fascinating insights: ChatGPT consistently expresses empathy without biases seen in humans - it doesn't avoid empathy for strangers, doesn't tire over time, shows no ingroup bias, and adheres to fairness norms. /4

We investigate empathic AI, asking how its seemingly empathic expressions make people feel. We highlight AI's unique ability to simulate empathy without the same biases that afflict humans. While acknowledging serious pitfalls, we propose that AI expressions of empathy could increase human welfare.

Trying (and failing?) to be cute!

And @bwroberts.bsky.social, we created a state version of the Chernyshenko Consciousness scale to examine within-person variability...