Bastian Jaeger

Data, analysis code, and study materials available here: osf.io/s9nj8/

We suggest that physiognomy is an appealing (and historically persistent) idea because of the quick & automatic way in which first impressions come to mind.

The more people trust their intuitions, the more confident they are that they can read character traits from faces.

However, belief in physiognomy was most strongly associated with an intuitive thinking style. This replicated in our British, Dutch, & Nigerian samples.

In Study 2, we examined various psychological correlates.

For example, we found that belief in physiognomy was positively related to the belief that personality traits are biologically determined.

Our main goal was to better understand *who* believes in physiognomy.

In our large Dutch sample, we found negligible differences across gender, age, education, and income. Belief in physiognomy does not seem to vary much across sociodemographic groups.

Across 4 studies, we found that belief in physiognomy is common in British, Dutch, & Nigerian samples.

In a representative sample of the Dutch population (n > 2500), around 50% at least somewhat endorsed the belief.

The practice of physiognomy dates back to ancient Greece and ancient China.

Today it's mostly seen as pseudoscience in academic circles.

🐶Now out at JNB🐶

We examine the prevalence and psychological correlates of lay beliefs in physiognomy - the idea that a person's character is reflected in their facial appearance.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

100% this, especially with Wiley given their anti-preprint stance.

Are There Ideological Differences in Science Denial? Debates about issues such anthropomorphic climate change have raised alarm that there may be systematic differences in liberals’ and conservatives’ tr…

"In countries with multiparty systems or less polarized media ecosystems than the U.S., ideological and partisan gaps in self‐reported trust in science are typically substantially weaker than in the U.S., if they exist at all... not a stable characteristic of conservativism"

We already know that lagged effects in CLPMs are likely to be upwardly biased, but just how easy is it to find significant effects? Way too easy. I tested CLPMS in 100 randomly selected pairs of correlated variables and found significant effects in 98 of them. New preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Interesting summary of the tactics used by the animal agriculture industry to counteract efforts to advocate for dietary shifts as a climate change mitigation strategy.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Evidence of convergent validity among thin-slice behavioral coding metrics

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

🚨I4R is looking to hire postdoc fellows in public health and computer science!

The postdoc will join a team of researchers and help mass reproduce studies in leading public health journals or develop AI replicator agents.

Info 👇

A chart of "Major concerns of PhD candidates." The top text says, "Financial pressures top the list of concerns faced by PhD candidates, but concerns differ among the sexes. Those studying in the United States rank the political landscape as their main worry." The chart shows that in the full survey, political landscape is the biggest concern for about 20% of students (a bit higher for women than men) but there's an annotation saying "In US PhD students, this rose to 64%". Overall, the highest-rated concern was financial pressures at around 40%.

That's quite the chart annotation.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

#AcademicSky #PhDLife

Cross-national graduate student survey finds 43% (overall) experience discrimination/harassment as part of their studies

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

My Ask #1: check in with your students. They okay?

My Ask #2: check yourself. Are you causing their problems?

Fingers crossed for "yes"! 🙃

"When a stereotype-inconsistent group member was presented, those with both greater inhibitory and greater updating ability showed more stereotype reduction, suggesting that these executive functions are jointly important for regulating stereotype accessibility"

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

Life satisfaction mostly declines with age. Previous findings (esp. the famous U-shaped age-SWB trajectory) were artifacts of misspecified models. doi.org/10.1093/esr/...

🚨 New paper in @thejop.bsky.social

Why do politicians often misperceive what citizens' policy positions are?

@simonotjes.bsky.social and I study ~10,000 estimates of public opinion by politicians in Denmark & the Netherlands to uncover the sources of these (mis)perceptions

Thread 🧵1/10

Thrilled to announce a new paper out this weekend in
@cognitionjournal.bsky.social.

Moral psychologists almost always use self-report scales to study moral judgment. But there's a problem: the meaning of these scales is inherently relative.

A 2 min demo (and a short thread):

1/7

I'm teaching a master course on pretty much this topic. There are many good books out there that vary a lot on how accessible vs. technical they are and whether they focus on descriptive vs. normative theories. Some examples:
- Rational Choice in an Uncertain World
- Risk Savvy
- Rationality

Measuring the semantic priming effect across many languages - Nature Human Behaviour In this Stage 2 Registered Report, Buchanan et al. show evidence confirming the phenomenon of semantic priming across speakers of 19 diverse languages.

@clauslamm.bsky.social & I contributed to a global study that analyzed 21 million trials across 30 languages, revealing semantic priming [SP] as a robust cognitive mechanism across cultures and writing systems.
Lead by @aggieerin.bsky.social and @slewis5920.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Hostile and benevolent sexism are both on the decline in 1,097 studies, N = 339,740 since 1996.

Note that "3" on these scales is already a neutral response. Even bigger progress in countries with more hostile sexism.

From Matthew D. Hammond

psycnet.apa.org/psycarticles...

#phdsky #psych

🚨 new paper out w/ @simonchauchard.bsky.social in BJPS @bjpols.bsky.social on the link between misinformation and religiosity- does religious belief cause people to endorse more misinformation? And if so, what can we do about it?

thread below ⬇️

Giving to a good cause is a complex decision: (1) how much? (2) to which charity?

Research by Kretschmer & Smeets suggests separating them (in that order) leads to larger, more cost-effective donations:

buff.ly/nnI3AAB

TL;DR:🧵 buff.ly/uv7Rgqa

Experimentally reducing the relevance of sexual desire in participants' partner preferences decreased prioritization of attractiveness for both men and women

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New review! We synthesized literature on empathic AI: AI-generated emotional support is rated higher than human responses, but people's knowledge of the source shapes their perceptions. W/ @desmond-ong.bsky.social @amit-goldenberg.bsky.social @anatperry.bsky.social

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Next up, @dirkwulff.bsky.social talks about conceptual clutter and jingle & jangle in psych #DPPD25

This review suggests that the average effectiveness of choice architecture interventions on behaviour is smaller than often reported and that there is substantial heterogeneity in their effects
@szaszibarnabas.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s44...