Ike Silver

The 5th HotFresh recommended paper is:

Kirgios, E. L., Silver, I., & Chang, E. H. (2025) Does communicating measurable diversity goals attract or repel historically marginalized job applicants? Evidence from the lab and field, J Experimental Psychology: General

psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

The El Greco Fallacy, this Time with Feeling: How (not) to Measure Group Differences in Emotional Intensity - Affective Science We all get angry. And some of us get angrier than others. But are such differences systematic across groups? Affective scientists often make claims about group differences in emotional intensity by co...

Do women feel some emotions more strongly than men do? Out today in Affective Science, I argue that claims like this make a notoriously subtle mistake. What is it? And what does it have to do with an astigmatic painter and thyroid medicine? A short thread...

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Sam is one of the most thoughtful scholars of dishonesty around. His latest on the topic - disentangling cheating from lying - is required reading!👇

Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, recently used my second-place finish in the 1,600-meter run, and that of my teammate in the 800-meter run, to malign Soren Stark-Chessa, the trans-identified athlete who finished first. One of the reasons I chose to run cross-country and track is the community: Teammates cheering each other on, athletes from different schools coming together, and the fact that personal improvement is valued as much as, if not more than, the place we finish. Last Friday, I ran the fastest 1,600-meter race I have ever run in middle school or high school track and earned varsity status by my school’s standards. I am extremely proud of the effort I put into the race and the time that I achieved. The fact that someone else finished in front of me didn’t diminish the happiness I felt after finishing that race. I don’t feel like first place was taken from me. Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points. We are all just kids trying to make our way through high school. Participating in sports is the highlight of high school for some kids. No one was harmed by Soren’s participation in the girls’ track meet, but we are all harmed by the hateful rhetoric of bullies, like Rep. Libby, who want to take sports away from some kids just because of who they are. Anelise Feldman Freshman, Yarmouth High School Yarmouth

this is a letter to the editor from a high school track runner who came in second to a trans girl in a race. her state house rep in maine started talking about it. so she wrote this: www.pressherald.com/2025/05/14/r...

What makes people feel entitled to rewards?

Check out Corey’s paper for a provocative new take…

We think a broader version of the hypothesis - that people avoid scaling down outrage from relevant reference points - is a big part of it. We are currently working on follow-ups that explore a preference for escalation from *others’* judgments and finding evidence for that prediction!

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

The paper contains a number of cool extensions that explore conditions under which people become more or less sensitive to harm and severity when making moral comparisons. Check it out (open access) here:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Direction of comparison matters because scaling down condemnation (saying B is less bad than A) leaves ambiguity as to whether one is “downplaying.” Does scaling down mean I am not taking this seriously enough? This moral character threat is not present when scaling up (saying A is worse than B).

While people readily say that bad act A is worse and deserves more punishment than bad act B, they are reluctant to say that B is less bad and deserves less punishment than A. When asked which of two acts is less bad, many opt to say both are equally bad (even when one is quite transparently worse!)

Really proud of this new work out @psychscience.bsky.social. Led by the amazing but bluesky-less Amanda Geiser and with @deborahsmall.bsky.social.

We show that when comparing moral wrongs, people are (much) more willing to “scale up” than to “scale down” condemnation and punishment…

1. For the past thirty years I've had the best job in the world.


I've had the opportunity to follow my curiosity; explore the workings of nature and society; mentor students and junior colleagues in the same process; and teach generations of students about it all.

A new paper by Team Scientists @erikakirgios.bsky.social, Edward Chang, & co-author @ikesilver.bsky.social found that sharing measurable DEI goals increases applications from women & underrepresented job seekers, highlighting the of impact clear diversity commitments from companies: bit.ly/4187XZD

not paying indirect costs for research is like only paying the players in the Super Bowl.

can't have a Super Bowl without coaches, referees, security, janitors, announcers, stadium staff, and a stadium - and you can't have research without supporting people and facilities

@cusimano.bsky.social

I, for one, think Apple’s new AI-powered summary tool is great.

✨New preprint✨How does repeated exposure to transgressions online shape moral judgment? Results show two competing processes:
💠We get desensitized = ⬇️ wrong
💠Transgression seems more infamous =⬆️wrong
Relative strength of each may predict outrage to viral transgressions w/ @danieleffron.bsky.social

Ah this is so cool!

I am worried that scientists will self-censor and not share their work because they view it as trivial relative to what is going on

But let's not participate in the destruction of science.

Please share your work unapologetically and share others' work

Science matters; your science matters!

If everyone puts a drop in the bucket…

Get Motivated With a Streak Here’s how getting on a roll can help you achieve your goals.

Why are streaks so painful to break? Research covered in today’s @nytimes.com by @jackiesilverman.bsky.social and Alix Barasch shows that loss aversion drives us to maintain our streaks, and that’s a motive we can harness to build habits. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/w...

🚨NEW PAPER ALERT🚨
A field experiment w/ 13M federal student loan borrowers at risk of delinquency shows we can meaningfully reduce delinquencies with well-designed reminders. Work led by Rob Kuan (of Wharton). Read paper in @pnas.org: www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10....
What reminder ingredients matter?🧵

New open-access paper in Annual Review of Psychology with @mjbsp.bsky.social: “Ideology: Psychological Similarities and Differences Across the Ideological Spectrum Reexamined”

www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

In happy news, our paper, "Thinking about God increases intergroup prosociality even when conflict is salient", is now out in GPIR! Particularly excited that this paper includes two amazing Fijian collaborators who played integral roles in leading fieldwork! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Thank you!!!

Super cool work! Congrats!

New work out in JEP:Gen with @erikakirgios.bsky.social and Edward Chang!

How do historically marginalized job applicants respond to concrete, quantified diversity commitments in job ads?

We conducted a large, preregistered field experiment to find out…

Delighted to receive the Journal of Finance DFA First Prize for "Selling Fast and Buying Slow: Heuristics and Trading Performance of Institutional Investors"

We show that behavioral econ findings not limited to the lab, they show up amongst the most sophisticated market participants.

what counts as breaking a rule? you might think this q is easy, but people actually integrate signals from morality, legality, punishability, and normativity to figure it out, new preprint w/ @jowylie.bsky.social & dries bostyn osf.io/preprints/ps... #psychscisky #cognition #socpsyc #philsky

ChatGPT Gives Moral Advice. Here’s Why You Probably Shouldn’t Take It Before turning to a large language model for ethical counsel, consider what makes for good advice

been seeing lots of work lately on whether LLMs can give ethical counsel, but i am not so optimistic. it's pretty hard to know good advice when you get it! and sometimes the best moral advice transcends the prompt.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/plea... #socialpsyc #PsychSciSky