LaCount JJ Togans, Ph.D.

Great article about the psychology of guilty pleasures by my colleague @jjtogans.bsky.social at Lafayette College! 🎉

psyche.co/ideas/guilty...

Struggling to find peer reviewed evidence in support of spending all of your money on going to festivals and gigs? Let us help... doi.org/10.1002/casp...

w/ @profjohndrury.bsky.social @hannaeldarwish.bsky.social Danielle Evans, Fiona Green

Talking with Our Hands: Duke Study Reveals How Culture Shapes Our Gestures You are having dinner with friends, and the conversation is lively. Do your hands join the chat, or do they stay focused on your knife and fork?

Do your hands talk when you do? 🗣️✋

Check out this @duke-university.bsky.social write up about my new work with my postdoc Esha Naidu (she is on the job market!) showing gestures reflect culture & identity—our nonverbal “accents” can shape interracial communication.

trinity.duke.edu/news/talking...

Flyer with text reading, “Calling Autistic Adults! “Want to help shape research on loneliness for autistic young adults? “We invite autistic adults (ages 18-35) to join our Community Council on a 5-year research study on how big life changes affect loneliness for autistic young adults. “Community Council members will partner with researchers to make sure that all parts of the research reflect the experiences, priorities, and needs of the autistic community. “We hope this research will lead to a better understanding of loneliness and help create better supports. “• Community partners meet regularly and are paid for their time. “• No prior research experience is needed. “• Your lived experience and perspective are what matter most, and all voices are valued. “For more info or to apply, email kc3673@drexel.edu”

Want to help with autism research? The Social Experiences of Loneliness of Autistic Adults (SELA) Project at the AJ Drexel Autism Institute is forming a Community Council of autistic adults (ages 18–35) to help guide a 5-year study on loneliness and social connection. Info in flyer and alt-text.

Exclamation marks! Why do women use them three times as much as men? It’s the punctuation that can make you seem warmer and more agreeable – but also much more compliant and lacking in analytical thinking

Some @theguardian.com coverage! Women use exclamation marks 3x more than men—not from extra joy, but to avoid sounding unfriendly 😬 Online, neutrality reads as hostility, so warmth is outsourced to punctuation!! BUT it boosts likability and can hurt credibility
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

<em>British Journal of Psychology</em> | Wiley Online Library Does moving to a new environment change people's cultural thought style? We tracked the cultural thought style of 1462 university students at 18 sites over time after they moved across China for coll....

Ambitious new study finally out! 🚨 Here’s the lightning version. bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

New research finds that conservatives tended to endorse moral absolutism, whereas liberals tend to endorse moral relativism.

Moral absolutists are more likely to support banning practices they deem immoral psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

Which Cultural Dimensions Predict Variations in Emotional Conformity? An Extension of Vishkin et al. (2023) Across 28 Nations - Peter B. Smith, Alexander Kirchner-Häusler, Lusine Grigoryan, Vivian Miu... Despite being a classic social psychology topic, cultural variability in conformity has only been examined systematically in the last few decades. Vishkin et al...

It is often assumed that conformity is higher in collectivist cultures. In our new study that just came out in JCCP, we show that emotional conformity is actually higher in individualistic cultures, replicating earlier findings across 28 nations journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

From ostracized to pleased: How fair and unfair social exclusion activates schadenfreude People sometimes derive pleasure from the misfortune of others. Here, we investigate social ostracism as a multifaceted trigger of this complex emotio…

Read the actual science here! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Two young people sitting on the floor against a yellow backdrop, dressed casually in denim and plaid shirts.

🤔New research highlights a persuasion paradox: using many arguments can make a person seem more like an expert, increasing persuasion, but it can also make them appear to have greater persuasive intent, decreasing persuasion.

Read more in #PSPB: ow.ly/1u2Q50X2erC

had a ton of fun working on this poll with @today.yougov.com about the songs that everybody knows the lyrics to, the generational anthems are super neat

www.numlock.com/p/numlock-su...

To prevent Ps from pasting (GPT-generated) responses to your text entry Qualtrics question, disable pasting.

Add this code to the OnReady section of your question's javascript:

jQuery("#"+this.questionId+" .InputText").on("cut copy paste",function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
});

Enjoy!

The older we get, the fewer favorite songs we have, study shows Do you think that Spotify's suggestions for new music are getting stranger all the time? It may be because of you. In a unique study, 15 years of listening data shows that musical taste becomes more…

That's because newer music sounds like shit.

The older we get, the fewer favorite songs we have, study shows. Via @sciencex.physorg #sociology #Music 🎵📻🎼🎧🎙️

Do you sometimes feel torn when making decisions, like whether to eat unhealthy food or recycle? This is called felt ambivalence: a psychological discomfort from having mixed feelings about something. Check out our new work to know how people resolve such conflicts: doi.org/10.1016/j.je... 🧠💥 1/10

Bottom line: Tightness mattered for mask use during the Covid pandemic (and after!). Tightness is a characteristic of cultures AND situations. Both matter. Mask use could explain why tight cultures had fewer deaths on average: journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1... @sagepublishing.bsky.social

Should you text or meet face-to-face to have a conversation? Our research shows greater benefits when talking in-person. If it is necessary to text, have more intimate conversation when possible.

New paper lead by @cmleckfor.bsky.social is out in @josoperrel.bsky.social now: doi.org/10.1177/0265...

Did I finish all my summer research? No.

But did I get a jump on new projects? Also, no.

BUT: am I ready for the semester to begin next week? Extremely no

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...

Guilt drives prosociality across 20 countries Nature Human Behaviour - This Registered Report of 7,978 people in 20 countries found that guilt and information about consequences drive prosocial behaviour. Guilt-prone individuals gave more when...

📣 New registered report in @nathumbehav.nature.com with Ivan Soraperra, @jonathanschulz.bsky.social, and Shaul Shalvi: rdcu.be/eAcMA

With data from 7,978 participants in 20 countries, we find that information about negative externalities promotes prosociality, especially in guilt-prone individuals.

As always, Ted Chiang is great in this interview.
cdh.princeton.edu/blog/2025/08...

For folks course prepping, I wanted to give a quick plug for my recent pub in PSPB on the psychology of guilty pleasures. The research is a great example of discrete emotion theory and self-conscious emotions, but would also work well for discussing self-presentation, dissonance, and norms.

Big cities are vibrant hubs of culture, but why exactly is that? Now out in @natcomms.nature.com, we analysed music listening patterns of over 2.5 million people and demographics to examine mechanisms driving cultural diversity. With @researchdeezer.bsky.social @norijacoby.bsky.social

Highlights ⬇

Perceptions of Safety and Threat in the Environment: The STEP Scale - Lora E. Park, Deborah E. Ward, Kristin Naragon-Gainey, Elizabeth A. Canning, Nicole Koefler, Zaviera A. Panlilio, Valerie Vessels,... The Safety and Threat in Environment Perceptions (STEP) scale assesses perceptions of environments as safe (welcoming, inclusive) or threatening (critical, inti...

New paper out from the Self & Motivation Lab on Safety and Threat in the Environment Perceptions (STEP). The STEP scale assesses people's overall, gut-level impressions of any given space and uniquely predicts engagement, interest, & desire to recruit others
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Psych Academic Job Market Slack Interest Form

(please share widely!) With the start of August quickly approaching, I wanted to announce that the usual slack for fellow people on the Psych Academic Job Market for the coming cycle has been activated. If you are interested, feel free to fill out this form to join!
forms.gle/2DBgs8S1fktS...

I've had a great time discussing this research in undergrad classes on social psych and research methods, so I hope others are able to find similar success. :)

Full paper can be found here: sites.lafayette.edu/togansl/res/

For folks course prepping, I wanted to give a quick plug for my recent pub in PSPB on the psychology of guilty pleasures. The research is a great example of discrete emotion theory and self-conscious emotions, but would also work well for discussing self-presentation, dissonance, and norms.

Family gathered at a kitchen table reviewing bills and receipts with a laptop open nearby and fresh vegetables on the counter.

📈 New research: Financial scarcity is associated with less perceived control over one's life, but cultural values may be more effective than formal institutions in buffering individuals against these psychological effects.

Read more in #SPPS: ow.ly/uB6050WuAAb

With more opportunities for diverse interactions, little is known about how social interactions involving people of different socioeconomic status (SES) may unfold. We investigated social-attunement patterns in dyadic interactions involving SES. Unacquainted adults recruited from a community in the United States interacted with similar-or-different-SES partners in the lab ( N = 130 dyads). Attunement was assessed throughout the interaction by examining physiological linkage —how much a person’s physiological change is predicted by another’s physiological change over time. Overall, low-SES participants showed stronger physiological linkage—indicating greater attunement—to partners across SES. Participants also appeared more comfortable when interacting with low-SES partners. There were no SES differences in dominance during the conversation. After the interaction, participants reported liking similar-SES partners more than different-SES partners. These patterns suggest that during interactions, lower-SES individuals are more other-focused than high-SES individuals, and in-group preference prevails. We note limitations in the racial representation of our sample.

Socioeconomic Status in Social Interactions

"Low-SES individuals exhibited greater attunement to others and elicited greater comfort in others than high-SES individuals, but impressions were formed in line with homophily effects."

doi.org/10.1177/0956...

#SocialPsyc #Sociology

The June 2025 special issue of Social Cognition -- Tutorials on Novel Methods and Analyses in Social Cognition, Part 1 -- was guest edited by Jimmy Calanchini, Juliane Degner, and Colin Smith, with support from Bertram Gawronski.

The introduction is linked here: doi.org/10.1521/soco....