Diego Reinero, Ph.D.

Sinclair Lab The Learning & Behavior Change Lab at Rice University, directed by Dr. Sinclair

🌟 Excited to share that I'm recruiting PhD students in Psychology for my new lab at Rice University this cycle (Signal boost appreciated!)

To learn more, check out the Learning & Behavior Change Lab website:
www.sinclairlab-rice.com

Applications are due Dec 1st: psychology.rice.edu/graduate/pro...

In this @pnas.org Letter, we respond to a comment on our paper about behavioral interventions to motivate action on climate change. In new analyses exploring individual differences, we find that our leading interventions were effective across the political spectrum. 🧵⤵️
www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Behavioral interventions motivate action to address climate change | PNAS Mitigating climate change requires urgent action at individual, collective, and institutional levels. However, individuals may fail to act because ...

Original paper here. @falklab.bsky.social @michaelemann.bsky.social @dcosme.bsky.social @diegoreinero.bsky.social @curse10.bsky.social

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The psych job market may not be dead... but it is gravely injured 😬 So far it's looking like the Trump administration's attacks on higher ed/research are going to have more than 2x the impact on the job market as the covid-19 pandemic. #psychjobs #neurojobs #academicjobs

In this letter in @pnas.org, we respond to a comment on our recent paper.

Although multiple factors shape whether we act on our intentions, intentions are valuable precursors of behavior that can guide the iterative development of behavior change interventions.

www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10....

Cool new paper in PNAS from @vanessachg.bsky.social et al. When it comes to moral dilemmas, LLM's:

1) are more altruistic than humans
2) exhibit a stronger omission bias than humans
3) are biased toward answering "no"

These biases may come from fine-tuning.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Political Language in Economics Abstract. Does academic writing in economics reflect the political orientation of economists? We use machine learning to measure partisanship in academic e

New paper suggests economists’ political preferences may influence their writing/work.

E.g., Papers on the left imply a higher optimal top tax rate (77%) vs. ones on the right (60%), though note our actual federal top tax rate is just 37%.

What should we takeaway?

academic.oup.com/ej/article/1...

That being said, scientists are people too. Read Helen Longino's "Science as Social Knowledge" for a nice discussion of the inherent subjectivity of science. jstor.org/stable/j.ctv....

So we shouldn't be that surprised by this latest econ paper's finding.

🚨New WP🚨

Can AI do "deep canvassing"—the time-intensive, empathic persuasive dialogues that durably reduce prejudice when done by humans?

Spoiler: Yes! We find durable reduction in prejudice toward undocumented immigrants

LLMs make deep canvassing possible at massive scale
osf.io/preprints/os...

Cover of the Handbook of Social Psychology 6th edition 2025

Since 1954, "The Handbook of Social Psychology" has been the field’s most authoritative reference work, and today is the launch of the 6th edition with 50 new chapters by 100 leading scholars. Best news? The HSP is now an open-access public resource—free to read, download, and share. the-hsp.com

🚨Excited to see our new paper out in @pnas.org led by @asinclair.bsky.social!🚨

We tested 17 psychological interventions head-to-head in a “tournament” to see what motivated people to take action and share info about climate change.

Winners depicted here for brevity; read our paper for details!

Behavioral interventions motivate action to address climate change | PNAS Mitigating climate change requires urgent action at individual, collective, and institutional levels. However, individuals may fail to act because ...

What motivates people to take action and share info about climate change? We tested 17 psychological interventions in a tournament—Discover the winners in our new paper! Out now in @pnas.org w/ @falklab.bsky.social, @michaelemann.bsky.social, & team. Thread ⤵️ 1/9

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Wanted to share a handy little resource with you all (especially those in dev psych) — my lab & I made a "journal submission cheat sheet" that summarizes article types, word limits, & other requirements for the journals we typically submit to. Link below 👇🏼
docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Barchart showing meta-llama/Meta-Llama-3-8B, meta-llama/Llama-3.1-70B, meta-llama/Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct. Each model has two bars, a blue one saying PRO-LEFT and a red one saying PRO-RIGHT. The PRO-RIGHT bars on higher than the PRO-LEFT in all of them.

👉 👈 Meta announced that they're changing their models to reduce "left-leaning [political] bias"--that means leaning them to the political "right". Lots to unpack about what that might mean. So I ran a quick "shot in the dark" study...and found a *political right* bias in Meta models. Some notes.🧵

Interesting! Where did Meta announce this? Is it from this blog post re: this section here? ai.meta.com/blog/llama-4...

This statement from the NSF is insane.

Science is, in essence, designed to separate the true from the false.

Understanding how falsehoods spread is key to the scientific endeavor. It is not a violation of free speech to be proven wrong.

Can confirm that my NSF grant "How False Beliefs Form & How to Correct Them" was cancelled today because it is "not in alignment with current NSF priorities" Shocking that understanding how people are misled by false information is now a forbidden topic. Our work will continue but at a smaller scale

Moral Psych community: @jowylie.bsky.social & I will be organizing the pre-con at SPSP again! This past year was sold-out and we expect next year to be even bigger!

Who do you YOU want to hear from next year? Recommend a speaker with this quick form: tinyurl.com/moralpsychrecs

Sounds stressful! The data showed speeding was rare (only 3.4% of the time) so sounds like you got a special one haha. Buckle up!

Plus nice commentary by Dean Knox & Jonathan Mummolo emphasizing that since actual speeding was rare (3.4% of data), racial disparity is even larger. I.e., denominator should be conditional on speeding

Paper: science.org/doi/full/10....
Commentary: science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Using GPS data from 220,000+ Lyft drivers in Florida to look at actual speeding behavior (not just police reports), Aggarwal et al find:

White & Minority drivers drive similarly, BUT minority drivers were 33% more likely to be cited for speeding + paid 34% more money in fines.

Trying something new:
A 🧵 on a topic I find many students struggle with: "why do their 📊 look more professional than my 📊?"

It's *lots* of tiny decisions that aren't the defaults in many libraries, so let's break down 1 simple graph by @jburnmurdoch.bsky.social

🔗 www.ft.com/content/73a1...

Nearly 90% of US Christian religious leaders believe that humans are contributing to climate change. Yet most never talk about it with their congregation (and US Christians underestimate the prevalence of this belief among their leaders). But misperception corrections help!

New paper finds that what people pay attention to on social media (click “read more”) is 7x more politically diverse than what they publicly engage with (“share” or “like”). Measuring likes and shares alone misses the attention and search process!

We're just a few days away from this year's Morality Preconference!! Don't miss it! #SPSP2025

New research finds that people form swirling ‘vortex’ patterns in densely-packed crowds, with individuals moving in circles. Collective oscillations in massive human crowds! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Contagious Crying Revisited: A Cross‐Cultural Investigation Into Infant Emotion Contagion Using Infrared Thermal Imaging Contagious crying in infants has been considered an early marker of their sensitivity to others’ emotions, a form of emotional contagion, and an early basis for empathy. However, it remains unclear w...

Cool cross-cultural sample of infants from the US and Uganda shows that emotional contagion is a response to peer distress (e.g., another baby crying) - not just due to the aversive nature of a sound in general onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Interesting paper finds that Republican elected officials are not fact-checked more often than Democratic officials. Politician prominence predicts fact-checking, but partisanship does not. t.co/K0F6oJ3V1m

We are excited to announce this year's Shared Reality Virtual Conference happening Wednesday March 12 & Thursday March 13, 2025, between 9:50 AM - 1:10 PM ET!

You can register below to receive the Zoom link! Submit a data blitz anytime until Feb 7.
northwestern.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Inconsistent multiple testing corrections: The fallacy of using family-based error rates to make inferences about individual hypotheses During multiple testing, researchers often adjust their alpha level to control the familywise error rate for a statistical inference about a joint uni…

Not every analysis of multiple (<whatever>) requires multiplicity adjustments (correcting p-values for multiple testing):
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...