Fran Cavanagh

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

Also Pratchett, Red Dwarf

FPP brutally supressed UKIP in 2015 and Reform in 2024, but is boosting up Reform this week - they have passed the tipping point where the electoral system goes from deadly enemy to best friend

"Facebook’s infamous emotional-contagion study" was actually more ethical than this, given that the Facebook feed algorithm doesn't pretend to be a human, and there's no reasonable expectation of such.

Great turnout today on @ducu.bsky.social pickets. On strike to protect professional services staff jobs.

An attack on one is an attack on all!

Management tried to pit academics against professional services staff - they've failed!

We are *all* the university!

Psychological well-being in Europe after the outbreak of war in Ukraine - Nature Communications The Russian invasion of Ukraine has affected the global economy, environment, and political order. Here, the authors show that it also coincided with a temporary decline in psychological well-being ac...

Congrats Dr Patrick Kotzur, Prof Stefania Paolini @durhamuniversity.bsky.social & team for receiving International Best Paper Award from the Society of Existential Psychology for 'Psychological well-being in Europe after the outbreak of war in Ukraine - Nature Communications'👏 go.nature.com/3E5CmiF

AfD overwhelmingly won votes from non-voters and the centre-right. This is a standard pattern. It is a myth that the radical right are mainly winning disaffected centre-left voters.

A new global gender divide is emerging Young men and young women’s world views are pulling apart. The consequences could be far-reaching

NEW: updated long-run gap in voting between young men and women in Germany:

Gender divide continues to widen, but contrary to what is often assumed, young men continue to vote roughly in line with the overall population, while young women have swung sharply left.

www.ft.com/content/29fd...

Germany has swung to the right. What does that mean for the country – and Europe? Our panel responds Friedrich Merz’s CDU/CSU may have won the German election, but all eyes are on the far-right AfD after its huge gains, say Fatma Aydemir, Katja Hoyer and others

Glad to have contributed to this panel of reactions to the German elections yesterday. Also including an important intervention by @casmudde.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Vote choice by birth cohort and gender in the 2024 European election in Germany:
- Increased gender gaps among young voters for several parties.
- AfD share more than twice as high among young men (21% vs. 10%).
- 49% of young men voted for the right-leaning parties, but only 32% of young women.

Alternative models of funding curiosity-driven research | PNAS Funding of curiosity-driven science is the lifeblood of scientific and technological innovation. Various models of funding allocation became instit...

Since everyone is talking about research funding, this perspective by the vice-president of the European Research Council might be of interest.

Blue states: Consider joining a multinational research council.

With <4 weeks until election day, how strong is #Germany's #farright #AfD? I have compiled 19 months of polling data so that you don't have to. Several major scandals have done no lasting damage to their support. And the events & debates of the last 12 weeks have been a boon for them.

Screenshot of a paper in the International Journal of Press/Politics. Title: When Do Parties Lie? Misinformation and Radical-Right Populism Across 26 Countries. Authors: Petter Törnberg and Juliana Chueri. Abstract: The spread of misinformation has emerged as a global concern. Academic attention has recently shifted to emphasize the role of political elites as drivers of misinformation. Yet, little is known of the relationship between party politics and the spread of misinformation—in part due to a dearth of cross-national empirical data needed for comparative study. This article examines which parties are more likely to spread misinformation, by drawing on a comprehensive database of 32M tweets from parliamentarians in 26 countries, spanning 6years and several election periods. The dataset is combined with external databases such as Parlgov and V-Dem, linking the spread of misinformation to detailed information about political parties and cabinets, thus enabling a comparative politics approach to misinformation. Using multilevel analysis with random country intercepts, we find that radical-right populism is the strongest determinant for the propensity to spread misinformation. Populism, left- wing populism, and right-wing politics are not linked to the spread of misinformation. These results suggest that political misinformation should be understood as part and parcel of the current wave of radical right populism, and its opposition to liberal democratic institution.

This multi-year, multi-country analysis shows that right-wing populist politicians spread more online misinfo than their mainstream counterparts and explains how “the rise of political misinformation is associated to the recent wave of radical-right populism.”

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Scholars argue whether rightists or extremists are more prone to conspiracies. A new analysis across 77 samples (and 18 countries) concludes "there is no single functional form" of the ideology-conspiracy relationship.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

#socialpsych #psychscisky #polisky

Very interesting and accessible take on probability worth a read!

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

Revisiting Stereotype Threat A Reckoning for Social Psychology

Stereotype threat: a once-dominant idea in social psychology that shaped how we think about identity and performance. But what happens when the evidence crumbles? A deep dive into the failed replications, the myths, and what it all means. Read my latest essay: open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

Never assume your measures are doing what you think they’re doing, especially if you haven’t validated them using multiple populations.

Lots of puzzles to unpack here but not talked about so much is the shift in far right (recall) among young women

Young men increased ~50%
Young women increased ~100% (19v24)

Gender gap remains (larger in consid. set) but trend is clear: rising far-right support among both young men & women

A scientist new to Bluesky? @steveharoz.com and @markrubin.bsky.social have put together some great resources to get you started!

Django Reinhardt, Jerry Garcia and Tony Iommi are all successful guitarists with limb differences

Maybe SAD is to blame. A lot of people struggle with the cold and dark months and for most people in the UK there are no big celebrations between the fireworks at the start of November and Christmas a month and a half later. It makes sense to me that winter festivals of light are so popular globally

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I am happy to stop saying Psych has a replication crisis. Instead I would say we are having a Methodology crisis where every aspect of the way we design studies, collect data and provide evidence for our results needs to be carefully examined and reconsidered in relation to the questions we ask

One of the most memorable First Doctor serials for me, for whatever reason. The hiding in a museum thing feels so Scooby Doo, it's great. Look forward to hearing your thoughts on The Time Meddler!

UK Government invests £10M in a new metascience unit to investigate issues like:

🔹️ "What makes a researcher more likely to make bold discoveries?"

🔹️ "How do we best incentivise replicable research?"

#MetaSci #PhilSci #HistSci #STS 🧪

Special issue: "Is psychology self-correcting? Reflections on the Credibility Revolution in Social and Personality Psychology." Edited by @simine.com and I.

Check out the nine articles with diverse perspectives and approaches to examining the reform movement:

spb.psychopen.eu/index.php/sp...

Full course details at https://github.com/rmcelreath/stat_rethinking_2023Chapters:00:00 Introduction03:30 DAGs (causal models)17:50 Golems (stat models)43:06... Statistical Rethinking 2023 - 01 - The Golem of Prague

Yes I will offer my online science-focused Statistical Rethinking course again starting in January 2024. Registration going up at the end of this month. All the course materials are already online though, so why wait? Update your posterior starting today 🧪 #stats www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdnM...