mark brandt
LightNews LightNews
banner
mjbsp.bsky.social
mark brandt
@mjbsp.bsky.social
5.7K followers 1.5K following 1.1K posts
Social/Personality Psychology, Michigan State University | ♥ Burritos+Vinyl+ | if there aren’t typos, I didn’t write it
Posts Replies Media Videos
mjbsp.bsky.social
November 7, 2025 at 1:40 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
The light touch intervention did not significantly cause a boost (vs. control), although the effect sizes were in the "right" direction and similar to what we might expect from Voelkel, Stagnaro, @robbwiller.bsky.social & team's Strengthening Democracy Challenge. More data needed
October 17, 2025 at 4:35 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
Recruitment was tricky, but we got ~200 people in our pre-post experiment

In the simple (and not causally identified) one group pre-post design, the intensive intervention seemed to reduce toxic polarization
October 17, 2025 at 4:35 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
This preprint reports on a project with @j-rock.bsky.social.

We merged a light touch intervention (typical of survey experiments) w/ an intensive intervention (more typical of practitioner efforts) for reducing toxic polarization to see if we could cheaply boost 🚀 the more intensive intervention
October 17, 2025 at 4:35 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
Benevolent authority beliefs predict public approval in China, but not Japan. At the same time, democratic values were positively associated with public approval in Japan but negatively associated with that in China (in @ispp-pops.bsky.social)

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
September 13, 2025 at 2:23 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
I suppose a lot of great artists have a similar story
A painting of Vincent van Gogh by Vincent van Gogh, the OG of selfies
September 3, 2025 at 12:54 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
The Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Postdoctoral Research Fellowships at NSF are no more?

But hopefully I misunderstand?

www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
screenshot of SBE fellowship webpage with words "archive" circled in red.
August 19, 2025 at 12:18 AM
mjbsp.bsky.social
In a study of naturally occurring ostracism experiences: After experiencing ostracism, people initially prioritize withdrawal and prosocial coping responses. Prosocial responses increase overtime. Anti-social responses were relatively rare

journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
August 18, 2025 at 1:25 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
New advances in the genetics of personality, with value for personality psychology, including...

-Studying Personality’s Correlates with Genetic Data
-Testing Causal Models of Personality

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
August 18, 2025 at 1:20 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
Large Language Models Do Not Simulate Human Psychology

arxiv.org/pdf/2508.06950
August 18, 2025 at 1:52 AM
mjbsp.bsky.social
Similar vibes for the role of stupidity in scientific research

web.stanford.edu/~fukamit/sch...
August 1, 2025 at 1:08 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
The incomparable Alice Eagly giving a guest lecture at our (w/ @theklamorgenroth.bsky.social) summer school course
July 23, 2025 at 6:38 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
The political slant of psych research (e.g., left vs. right) is not related to replicability, although more slant (in any direction) may be associated with less replicability

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
May 30, 2025 at 8:26 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
There are a lot of promising tools being developed to help avoid the costs of credulity for common sense knowledge and science skepticism

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
May 24, 2025 at 1:06 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
Populist attitudes may be a key contributor here as people with more populist perspectives tend to have an increased sense of credulity

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
May 24, 2025 at 1:06 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
People use scientific skepticism selectively to discredit science that conflicts with their point of view

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
May 24, 2025 at 1:06 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
The defense of commonsense knowledge against scientific expertise is used as a political weapon across countries

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

#AcademicSky #Psychology #SocialPsychology #polpsy #Polisky
May 24, 2025 at 1:06 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
Despite all the upheavals, some bright spots!

Yesterday, @shreevallabha.bsky.social successfully defended her dissertation; approved with no revisions! 🎉

Dr. Vallabha’s dissertation work is the most comprehensive study of moral humility to date 👀
Photo of Dr. Vallabha in front of her power point slides
April 2, 2025 at 11:51 AM
mjbsp.bsky.social
January 30, 2025 at 9:14 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
People in social networks made up of others with similar views were more resistant to attitude change than people in heterogeneous social networks

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15598106/
Paper titled, "Attitudes in the Social Context: The Impact of Social Network Composition on Individual-Level Attitude Strength". The abstract reads "Four studies, using both experimental and correlational designs, explored the implications of being embedded within attitudinally congruent versus attitudinally heterogeneous social networks for individual-level attitude strength. Individuals embedded within congruent social networks (i.e., made up of others with similar views) were more resistant to attitude change than were individuals embedded within heterogeneous social networks (i.e., made up of others with a range of views). Mediational evidence suggests that attitudinally congruous social networks may increase attitude strength by decreasing attitudinal ambivalence and perhaps by increasing the certainty with which people hold their attitudes. These results suggest that features of the social context in which an attitude is held have important implications for individual-level attitude strength."
January 25, 2025 at 9:00 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
Over the 2020 US and NZ elections, antidemocratic attitudes preceded conspiracy beliefs, rather than conspiracy beliefs fostering antidemocratic attitudes

by @lindaskitka.bsky.social & many others in @ispp-pops.bsky.social #socpsych #polisky #polpsych

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Screenshot of paper title which reads "Conspiracy beliefs and democratic backsliding: Longitudinal effects of election conspiracy beliefs on criticism of democracy and support for authoritarianism during political contests". Paper abstract that reads, "There are widespread concerns that conspiracy theories undermine democracies. But do conspiracy beliefs increase criticism of democracy and/or support for authoritarianism? Or are antidemocratic people more likely to endorse conspiracy beliefs? To answer these important questions, we collected longitudinal data during two concurrent democratic elections—the 2020 US Presidential Election (N = 609) and the 2020 General Election in New Zealand (N = 603). Random intercept cross-lagged panel models tested whether conspiracy beliefs affect criticism of democracy in general, as well as support for authoritarianism, and both direct and representative democracy, specifically. There was little evidence that conspiracy beliefs temporally preceded changes in attitudes toward democracy or support for any specific form of government. Instead, people who supported authoritarianism more subsequently endorsed stronger conspiracy beliefs. The results suggested that, in the context of electoral contests (e.g., elections), antidemocratic people are more likely to endorse conspiracy beliefs rather than conspiracy beliefs fostering antidemocratic views."
January 23, 2025 at 2:38 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
Students will sign consent forms will absurd requirements (96%!). I doubt this is just a consent form issue; this is all contracts

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
January 13, 2025 at 3:54 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
Following the implementation of policies that were the "extreme version far beyond mainstream conservative positions" people in Israel shifted to the left on issues

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

#socpsyc #polisky
Abstract for a paper that reads, How does the rise of ideologically extreme leaders affect attitudes and beliefs among their supporters? Previous research on paradoxical thinking suggests that when individuals are exposed to a radicalized version of their held beliefs, they moderate them in response. However, it is yet unknown whether, how, and among whom, such moderation occurs in response to radicalization of individuals' favored leaders. The proposed study examines how an unfolding real-world manifestation of a paradoxical thinking intervention—that is, the radical and extreme policies carried out by the newly elected Israeli government—affects the political attitudes of the government's supporters. Using a longitudinal design, we examined how pre-election attitudes (N = 589 government supporters) moderate, radicalize, or remain unchanged following the announcement and implementation of radical policies. Over four time points, we also examine the psychological mechanisms mediating the policies' moderating impact, to disentangle the reciprocal or paradoxical effects of radicalization among leaders on the public.
January 2, 2025 at 10:34 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
Based on the note (screenshotted in this post), I think they are constrained to be equal
December 19, 2024 at 7:45 PM
mjbsp.bsky.social
Participation in collective action moralizes people’s attitudes because it politicizes their identity, enrages them, and/or empowers them to achieve social change (by @alleal.bsky.social & co)

psycnet.apa.org/record/2025-...

#polpsych #socpsyc #polisky
Paper abstract: Although much is known about why people engage in collective action participation (e.g., politicized identity, group-based anger), little is known about the psychological consequences of such participation. For example, can participation in collective action facilitate attitude moralization (e.g., moralize their attitudes on the topic)? Based on the idea that collective action contexts often involve a strong social movement fighting against an immoral adversary, we propose that participating in collective action facilitates attitude moralization over time. By integrating the moralization and collective action literatures, we hypothesized that participation in collective action moralizes individuals’ attitudes over time because it politicizes their identity, enrages them vis-a-vis the outgroup, and/or empowers them to achieve social change. We tested these hypotheses in a 2-year, five-wave longitudinal study (N = 1,214) in the contentious context of the Chilean student movement. We examined within-person (and between-person) changes over time and consistently found that participation in collective action predicted individual changes in moral conviction over time through politicized identification and group-based anger toward the outgroup. Furthermore, moral conviction predicted participation in collective action over time—an effect consistently explained by politicized identification. These findings are the first to show that (a) participation in collective action moralizes individuals’ attitudes because it politicizes their identity and enrages them vis-a-vis the (immoral) outgroup and that (b) moralization in turn helps to better understand sustained movement participation. Theoretical implications for the literature on moralization and collective action are discussed.
December 19, 2024 at 7:33 PM