Olivier Klein

“The paper warned that, in an extreme scenario, a highly persuasive AI chatbot ‘could benefit unscrupulous actors wishing, for example, to promote radical political or religious ideologies or foment political unrest among geopolitical adversaries.’”

(I do not think this is an “extreme scenario”…)

new paper by Sean Westwood:

With current technology, it is impossible to tell whether survey respondents are real or bots. Among other things, makes it easy for bad actors to manipulate outcomes. No good news here for the future of online-based survey research

knowing many directly affected, I personally asked some senior male colleagues to speak out about this during my earlier years as a professor, as i felt too vulnerable due to my stage of career.. it was shocking how much this was 'common knowledge' among women and how few male colleagues knew 😔

Join us for the EASP 2026 Preconference:
"Social Psychological Processes of Collective Memory"
@easp2026.bsky.social ✨

With @olivierklein.bsky.social @jrvollhardt.bsky.social @michelletwali.bsky.social @elifsandal.bsky.social @laurentlicata.bsky.social

Submit here: www.easp.eu/news/itm/cal...

If you are interested in collective memory and plan to attend the EASP General Meeting in Strasburg, don't miss our preconference!

I'm recruiting a grad student! My lab at NYU (psych dept) studies the computational basis of moral cognition and aims to build AI systems that are aligned with human values. Now admitting a PhD student for Fall 2026. Apps due 12/1. sites.google.com/corp/site/sy...

“Deserve” sorry

New publication. Congrats to the whole team, and especially @paulbertin.bsky.social who led this effort. Thanks also to the editor (Nicolas Sommet) and reviewers, who desserve credit for improving our paper.

Yes the BBC edit was poor journalistic form but the research indeed shows that Trump's speech predicted riots, violence, and weapons use on January 6th.

The Impact of Freedom of Speech on Conspiracy Beliefs Conspiracy beliefs are often portrayed as a threat to democracies. However, less is known about the extent to which the state of democracy may affect conspiracy beliefs. Hence, we investigated the im...

Shout-out to the best possible team of co-authors: Elisa Tognon, @kenzonera.bsky.social, @rritabajraktari.bsky.social, Vincent Yzerbyt, @olivierklein.bsky.social, and Klein Pit (who originally started this project).

OA here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

A library director in Wyoming who was fired two years ago because she refused to remove books with sexual content and LGBTQ themes from a library's children and young adult sections has just been awarded $700,000 in a settlement. t.co/EA5L1kOZfV

États-Unis : les antivax prennent le pouvoir sur la santé L’autorité sanitaire chargée de la politique vaccinale se réunit jeudi et vendredi à New York. Mais cinq ans après le début de la pandémie de covid-19, elle est désormais composée d’opposants aux vac…

Cinq ans après la pandémie de Covid-19, l’autorité chargée de la politique vaccinale aux États-Unis se réunit à New York. Mais elle est désormais composée d’opposants aux vaccins nommés par le premier d’entre eux, le ministre de la santé Robert Kennedy Jr. www.mediapart.fr/journal/inte...

Journal publishers *are* bundling your papers up in "data licensing agreements" for big tech companies to use for AI model training. Our publisher, T&F, got £75m from Microsoft for that last year alone.

Results so stunningly clear they inspired this classic xkcd (xkcd.com/2400/):

Wow and wow and WE MUST ALL DO THIS!!

This post has not aged badly unfortunately.

If the University of Chicago Won’t Defend the Humanities, Who Will? Why it matters that the University of Chicago is pausing admissions to doctoral programs in literature, philosophy, the arts, and languages

“Chicago has long helped to keep alive tiny fields & esoteric areas of humanistic study... Without the univ’s support, & the continued training of grad students who can keep these bodies of kn going, entire spheres of human learning might eventually blink out.” www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

Plus envie d'argumenter, plus envie de documenter. Tout est là, sous nos yeux. Mais comment faire prendre conscience de ce qu'est une famine?

Late afternoon sun in Albert park

My dept at the University of Auckland (NZ) will be hiring in social psych at the junior level this cycle. Official ad to follow

It's a big research-active dept with fun colleagues, plus you can commute to uni on a boat, paired with a pleasant walk thru Albert Park (this pic from heading home today)

Cartoon illustrating, how traffic induces more traffic. “There is too much traffic for Billy to walk to school, so we drive him.”

As our kids go #BackToSchool, never forget that we ARE the traffic that we’re afraid of. If more kids walked, biked or rode transit to school, it would erase a massive number of car trips each day, and our kids would be safer, healthier and better at school. HT Ian Lockwood.

Spread the word.

[Job] The Policy Lab at @ulbruxelles.bsky.social seeks to recruit a postdoctoral researcher (full time, 2 years) in the framework of the project 'Metropolitan internet meets post-growth'
Deadline: 30 August

Merci pour ce gigantesque travail, qui n’a pas l’écho qu’il mérite.

What’s in a correlation? Correlation may not imply causation, but let’s just ignore that for a second. Correlations are standardized effect size metrics and as such have some quirks by design. These are benign enough when you...

New blog post! Calculating a correlation is easy enough. But let's say you calculated two of them and they happen to differ. What follows from that? Turns out there are too many moving parts for an easy answer.

www.the100.ci/2025/07/28/w...

AI is transforming how we communicate in relationships ‘All I wanted was to feel seen, heard and understood by him, but instead, he was sending me a robot’s questions’

I'm quoted in this piece. In short: do not use ChatGPT or any generative AI as a “therapist.” It’s not sentient. It doesn’t care. It may even lead people toward harm. And nothing shared is protected by HIPAA or real privacy standards; it's fodder for the machine. www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture...

No Proof Hamas Routinely Stole U.N. Aid, Israeli Military Officials Say

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/w...

"De grâce, que la Belgique ne réagisse pas trop tard. En commençant par manifester une indignation commune devant des menaces envers les magistrats, car cette indignation est le premier bouclier pour protéger les défenseurs de l’Etat."

Great! And thanks for curating this list. Super useful and it’s indeed where the action happen(ed)s.

Clear advice from @catherinedevries.bsky.social on clear writing.

Who could argue with such solid advice? (he naively asks the internet)

Is there a difference between falsification and refutation?

Popper used the former in the book about logic of scientific discovery and the latter in the last (conjecture and refutation). And I never understood the difference.

Dan Simons had one. But not sure it’s still accessible.