David P. Schmitt, Ph.D.

Anatomy of a Fall: The Case of Indiana University (Guest Post) Indiana University on November 3, 2025    by Johannes Türk Chair of Germanic Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington Indiana Universit...

"unilateral changes in faculty governance, protest rules, research funding, instructional regulations, and legislative policy: these factors interact in degrading the campus ecology, perhaps permanently, in ways that shed light on national trends" utotherescue.blogspot.com/2025/11/anat...

I gave a workshop about using social media to faculty at the UT Austin. Here are some tips:

-Stay in your lane (share what you know)
-Avoid fights
-Use plain language
-Including clear visuals
-Follow quality accounts
-Leverage trends
-Have some fun
-Embrace your natural workflow

Context specific personality associations with political ideology are shaped by geographical variation - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Context specific personality associations with political ideology are shaped by geographical variation

in conservative areas, extraverts and agreeable people more conservative...in liberal areas, extraverts and agreeable people more liberal..."highlights the importance of considering geographical context in personality research" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I Set A Trap To Catch My Students Cheating With AI. The Results Were Shocking. "Students are not just undermining their ability to learn, but to someday lead."

"Those in power recognized that oppression is best maintained by keeping the masses illiterate...Don’t surrender to AI your ability to read, write and think when others once risked their lives and died for the freedom to do so" www.huffpost.com/entry/histor...

Affective science has lost an extraordinary member of our community: Dr. Paul Ekman, who passed peacefully at home at the age of 91 on Monday. Dr. Ekman's pioneering cross-cultural research on the interpretation of facial expressions in emotional terms...(1)

"The best hope we have of improving our scientific understanding of the tangled realities of sex in humans is to look within and across cultures, bodies, and life histories and remember that we, too, are part of the rich breadth of biological sexual diversity on this planet"

“I wish I hadn’t worked so hard...paradox is that popular culture and neoclassical economics promote materialism and overwork, and few people question them as a way of life...yet they lead to deep and painful regrets at the end of life" papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Former UVA president Jim Ryan, who resigned over the summer due to pressure from the Trump Administration, just shared this 12-page letter with the Faculty Senate, detailing his experience with the Board of Visitors and DOJ.

It's a surreal--and troubling--read.

drive.google.com/file/d/1Is6x...

"etic and emic cross-cultural evidence openness/intellect is least cross-culturally portable Big Few trait. We hypothesize that variation in individualism, looseness, and complexity modify its relevance and coherence around a potentially universal core" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Three preregistered experiments with prolific participants (N = 2,254) found no evidence for experimenter demand effects

osf.io/preprints/ps...

"study of 92 countries (n = 53,774), trend of languishing mental health across many groups, particularly among younger adults...alarming but perhaps unsurprisingly low level of positive mental health in a substantial number of countries" osf.io/preprints/ps...

1/ The challenges in public health are urgent and constant, so it can be far too easy to miss progress when it happens. But one of the things that's been keeping me sane this year has been to pause and acknowledge that progress. So let's showcase some real signs of what public health can accomplish👇

"Even though Sweden has reputation for equality...Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability co-occur at relatively higher levels in southern Sweden...municipal-level correlations with health and well-being variables...interpretations remain speculative" pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41204763/

Multilingualism protects against accelerated aging in cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of 27 European countries - Nature Aging In cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of 86,149 participants across 27 European countries, Amoruso, Hernandez and colleagues identify multilingualism as a protective factor against accelerated ...

27 nations..."Multilingualism emerged as protective factor (against accelerated aging) in cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, monolingualism increased risk...Effects persisted after adjusting for linguistic, physical, social and sociopolitical exposomes" www.nature.com/articles/s43...

We are doing a pilot survey about how prospective PhD students in PSYCHOLOGY make decisions about applying to grad programs. If you are thinking of applying to a program in the future, and have 2-5 minutes to spare, could you take this survey? 🫶

northwestern.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

"higher cognitive ability and education were associated with spending less time on self-help products...people did not differ in personality and well-being change trajectories depending on self-help product use and usage intensity, raising considerations about the effectiveness of such products"

"How should we cope with this Trump chaos?...We keep the faith in America’s ideals. We stay as close as we can to our loved ones and dearest friends. And we celebrate small and noble acts of decency, wherever they occur."

The (In)Effectiveness of Psychological Targeting: A Meta‐Analytic Review The use of psychological targeting—employing machine learning to predict consumer personality from digital footprints and subsequently tailoring persuasive messages—has emerged as a controversial yet...

"only about 5% of the variance in personality can be
predicted from digital footprints, and personality‐tailored messages show negligible effects on behavior... When design and evaluation flaws are controlled, the combined end‐to‐end effectiveness of psychological targeting approaches zero."

Advancing sex and gender research in dementia Drs. Natasha Clarke and Rikki Lissaman are advancing dementia research by exploring the impact of sex and gender differences on brain health.

Sex and gender differences matter when it comes to improving outcomes for dementia braincanada.ca/clarke-lissa...

📢 Conference opportunity: The International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) is hosting their 2026 congress in Leuven, Belgium (July 14-18). Registrations and submissions are now open!

Learn more: ow.ly/nHEV50Xj9ZE

Religious/Spiritual Connection and Subjective Well-Being Across Religious and Nonreligious Individuals in 121 Countries - Zhuo Job Chen, Telli Davoodi, Pablo Diego-Rosell, Timothy Lomas, Alden Yuanhon... Prior research suggests a positive association between some religious/spiritual variables and well-being. However, many measures of religious/spiritual construc...

121 nations..."religious/spiritual connection associated positively with subjective well-being in the global sample of religious individuals and, in some countries, nonreligious individuals" journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Masculinity and sexual attraction appear to shape how people respond to infidelity A large study finds that reactions to infidelity vary not only by sex but also by sexual orientation and psychological traits. Traits like masculinity, femininity, and sexual attraction appear to shap...

Masculinity and sexual attraction appear to shape how people respond to infidelity www.psypost.org/masculinity-...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

"cultural values may be more effective than formal institutions in buffering individuals against the psychological consequences of financial scarcity" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

A smart challenge but ultimately mistimed and misleading: Commentary on Baumard and André

on cultural evolution approaches in evolutionary behavioral sciences..."scholarly work on historical legacies cannot be entirely reduced to individual or inclusive fitness calculus, nor dismissed as epiphenomenal, if we are to make sense of human diversity" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"multiple ways polygyny can be harmful.
Nevertheless, best evidence suggests polygyny is unlikely to be root cause of social unrest...polygyny may not just be a tolerable choice but in some contexts a preferred arrangement with tangible benefits for both genders" theconversation.com/rethinking-p...

In the Eye of the Beholder: Mate Value and Romantic Relationship Functioning - Evolutionary Psychological Science These studies examined the links that mate value and mate value discrepancies had with indicators of romantic relationship functioning (i.e., satisfaction, investment, commitment, and quality of alter...

believing one’s mate value lower than partner’s...For community members from Israel, being “over-benefited” linked to positive relationship, whereas negative evaluations for college students from the USA...concerns about their partner being “out of their league” link.springer.com/article/10.1...

"ironic exploration of a new construct—Pseudo—comprised of irrelevant relationship evaluations...moderately associated with common relationship measures (e.g., satisfaction, commitment)...methodological artifacts can pose a serious validity threat" journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

Evaluating perceptions of STEM majors to explain diversity gaps in entomology and other sciences Abstract. Communities working in entomology, ecology, and other natural sciences are known for having shortfalls in racial and gender diversity. We aim to

"race and sexual orientation did not often explain differences in perception of academic fields while gender did...several recommendations for higher education based on our results" academic.oup.com/aesa/advance...

Sexual selection drives sex difference in adult life expectancy across mammals and birds Sexual size dimorphism and mating system contribute to male and female life-span differences across wild and zoo populations.

"findings may help explain why differences...so consistent across time and cultures...humans conform well to general mammalian trend of female advantage in [life expectancy], demonstrating, at least in terms of sex differences in survival, our species is not unique" www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Texas professor ousted from admin role over "ideological differences" Art Markman had served as a senior vice provost for academic affairs since 2021.

“The ousting comes amid a critical dispute within academia about how to rebuild confidence in higher education in a politically polarized moment.”

This is such a tortured story frame it is functionally a lie. Greg Abbott is not trying to rebuild confidence, he is proudly conducting a purge.