Paul Stillman

I really enjoyed Ana’s blog post discussing how @add-hawk.bsky.social’s book on value capture relates to research on goal pursuit (and A Box of Matches). I just started the audiobook of The Score and it’s great so far

Postdoc position!

Myself and @jordanaxt.bsky.social are seeking applications for a shared post-doctoral researcher at McGill, beginning Fall 2026.

Topic area broadly centered on intergroup dynamics, prejudice, discrimination

Full description here: hehmanlab.org/ad
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introducing psyop a newsletter about psychology by way of culture

introducing my substack PSYOP! both psychology and art & culture can help us understand better what it's like to be a person in the world. i think they don't interact enough and this newsletter is a place for me to try to pull those two worlds together

anagantman.substack.com/p/introducin...

How Your Group Identity Shapes Who You Become with NYU Professor Jay Van Bavel | POP 1339 - How to Start, Grow, and Scale a Private Practice | Practice of the Practice In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok discusses why your group identity determines so much with NYU Professor Jay Van Bavel, PhD.

You should think very carefully about what groups you join, because that will shape your whole identity and how you think, behave, and what you care about.
practiceofthepractice.com/how-your-gro...

How Higher Ed Staved Off a Research-Funding Bloodbath — For Now Faced with potentially losing billions, colleges rallied behind a compromise plan. It now has a thumbs-up from Congress.

NEW: A year ago, the NIH said it would cap research-overhead costs, a change that would cost colleges billions. A ragtag group rallied behind a compromise plan—and it seems to have traction.

Here's how higher ed staved off a research-funding bloodbath (for now): www.chronicle.com/article/how-...

What should my students read about OPEN SCIENCE?

I'm teaching the second methods class in our MA sequence, and I want them to understand current best practices in open science and why they matter.

What readings would you assign?

Attention Dynamics: Antecedents to Consumer Choice This chapter reviews four decades of research on consumer attention and decision-making, focusing on how visual information influences preferences, attitudes, and choice. It traces methodological adva...

The new book, "Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions" is out! Here is my chapter on consumer attention. 👀Thanks to @dvsmith.bsky.social @thepsychologist.bsky.social @dfareri.bsky.social for their excellent leadership as editors.
#science #attention #eyetracking #marketing

Stop Meeting Students Where They Are What I learned when I finally started assigning the hard reading again.

"...narratives about the 'end of reading' strike me as self-inflicted, the manifestation of a collective depression... The reaction to declining reading skills, poor comprehension & fragmented attention shouldn't be to...compromise but to double down on the cure"

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Rented one of these on a family trip recently. Dogshit to drive (but it can hold a lot of people).

Health-focused frames mobilize Americans to action to address LGBTQ inequality | PNAS “More than 1 in 8 LGBTQ people live in states where doctors can refuse to treat them.” This headline describes a flurry of laws passed in 2025 allo...

New paper, led by Pia Dietze (newly on bsky! @piadietze.bsky.social) and Riana Brown (@rrrianabrown.bsky.social): www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A couple of years ago, I made these nerdy romantic cards in my basement print shop. I still have a few left for anyone looking to send a message this Valentine's Day, grounded in behavioral science.

indispensableprints.etsy.com/listing/1781...

hindsight is 20/20 but maybe selecting university presidents on their willingness to debase themselves for private donor money is related to the current difficulties in defending academia from fascism

So what I’m gathering is a pedophilic billionaire successfully worked to destigmatize race science among the academic, political, and business elite partly by sex trafficking girls. Is that the shape of it so far?

Really interesting work by @aanixel.bsky.social

🚨Thrilled to share I am able to hire someone (PhD preferred) with coding expertise to work on our HAPPE software for EEG! Knowledge of Matlab, Python, and EEG signal processing required. Enthusiasm for teaching/mentoring, collaboration, and developmental science preferred!

Baskets of snacks on a counter in a n airport, with a sign that read “self serve, please put money in money jar. Please no stealing! Thsnks.” The sign is written in marker on a sheet of white office paper.

Hoe small is the Ithaca airport? This small

This is an important paper on social class barriers among faculty in academia.

First-generation college grads earn less and are placed at lower prestige institutions despite being just as productive as other faculty.

Faculty from upper class backgrounds are overplaced for their research records.

Kaleb Horton

A collection of Kaleb's writing put together by his family. www.kalebchorton.com

A sign of good tidings if ever I’ve seen one

You can specify relative position in ggplot with I(x) I(y).

E.g. annotate("text", x = I(.5), y = I(.5), label = "hello!") will place the text in the middle of the plot.
This, combined with alignment arguments is like 87% of the magic for me.

This paper is a fucking gem.

"In the case of social media research, one worry is that industry directs attention to other potential causes of harms created by their platforms, especially by focusing on user choices rather than algorithmic or platform design effects"

lol precisely. The whole article is a parade of delusion but this was the part that almost made me throw my laptop across the room
bsky.app/profile/stil...

An Influential Billionaire Is Funding a Disgraced Scientist’s Fight Against Harvard Bill Ackman said on X that he’s been backing Francesca Gino, the embattled honesty researcher, in her lawsuit against Harvard since June 2024.

Between this and him providing the legal fees for Francesca Gino, I'm starting to think his interest in science may not be genuine

www.chronicle.com/article/an-i...

I spent yesterday talking moral psychology in the modern technological environment to the USC Psych Dept

Although our sense of morality evolved in the context of small groups, the main source of moral content for over 5 billion people now comes from social media and they are often mismatched.

You can sum up the entirety of the good and bad things about the American character in the stories of two Mt. St. Helens victims: David A. Johnston, the pioneering volcanologist who was killed making scientific observations, and Harry R. Truman who was a dumb old dipshit who refused to evacuate.

An email from Martin Peterson to university administrators.

Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).

Project Implicit is facing an existential threat. After almost 30 years, 60 million visitors, and hundreds of published papers, funding for our work has disappeared.

We’ve never held a fundraising drive before, but we need your support to keep our site running. Please consider donating! 🙏

Great news: a decisive ruling in favor of universities that trump admin can't slash indirect costs (which would have required devastating cuts at universities). This was their first broadside against academia and it's a relief it got shot down (fingers crossed the supreme court doesn't take it up)

Anyways, best of luck to Ackman and Gino in finding the real killer. I suppose this is a better use of his money than anything else he's been doing recently.