Dylan Selterman

Conspiracy beliefs are higher in societies with lower freedom of speech, study finds A series of five studies found that people are more likely to endorse conspiracy theories in societies with restricted freedom of speech, even after accounting for the country's overall level of democracy.

Conspiracy beliefs are higher in societies with lower freedom of speech, study finds

What is Viewpoint Diversity? YouTube video by Heterodox Academy

Great ideas here!

Moral reframing accuracy is enhanced through an educational intervention: Evidence from the Perspectives program With data from 2 studies, we employed an online educational program called Perspectives as a method to foster moral understanding and reasoning. Participants learned about individual and group diff...

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

We concluded: "These results show promising evidence that educational modules such as Perspectives can promote accuracy in moral messaging, with implications for bridging ethical divides in educational settings."

Second new publication of the summer! In this paper, Keith Welker, Mylien Duong and I ran 2 studies to gauge the effectiveness of Perspectives (an online program that teaches people about psychology) in getting participants to correctly identify morally re-framed messages.

Moral Judgment Toward Individuals in Consensually Non-Monogamous Relationships as a Function of Moral Foundations and Disgust Sensitivity - Archives of Sexual Behavior In two experiments we demonstrate how participants perceive individuals in consensually non-monogamous relationships (e.g., polyamory) more negatively compared to those in monogamous relationships, as...

Happy to share this newly published paper co-authored with Jeff Bowen, Amy Moors, and my former undergraduate student Ria Datwani. We ran some experiments to test the role of moral foundations in people's perceptions of consensually non-monogamous relationships.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. May their memory be a blessing.

Why Faculty Hate Teaching Evaluations On paper, student teaching evaluations make a lot of sense. Who is better positioned to say whether a professor did a good job than the students who took the course? But dig a little deeper, and there...

This podcast very well captures professors' concerns (including mine) about student course evaluations www.chronicle.com/podcast/coll...

Gladiator He will bring them death and they will love him for it YouTube video by Yet Another Old White Guy

Thinking about this quote a lot lately for some reason...
youtu.be/qMDvSOyODnQ?...

The cartoon of this admin:

The statements the government has released suggest its decision may be based on his constitutionally protected speech."

Statement from FIRE: "Demonstrations occurring on Columbia's campus since October 7, 2023, have included both constitutionally protected speech and unlawful conduct, but the government has not made clear the factual or legal basis for Mr Khalil's arrest.

Please join #HopkinsDSAI and @jhuartssciences.bsky.social tomorrow (3/6) from 4-6:30 p.m. for the Is AI Good or Bad for the Humanities? symposium.

Details and registration information: ai.jhu.edu/event/data-s...

The top 20% of political science departments produced 75% of all tenure track research university faculty & the bottom 50% accounted for less than 5%
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Mood

Mazel tov Bill!

For anyone doing democracy-relevant work in any domain, the SNF Agora Institute is accepting applications for our Visiting Fellows program for next academic year: snfagora.jhu.edu/visiting-fel...

Explicit antisemitic attitudes are now much more common among young voters - 18 year old registered voters are now ~5x more likely to say that they have an unfavorable view of the Jewish people than 65 year olds.

NEW PAPER: What do teenage girls think is causing the rise in depression & anxiety in their demographic?

I was struck, during the analysis, about how often 'pressure' came up. Girls are under so much pressure to look and behave in certain ways 😔

Well done to Ola on her thoughtful leadership here

If you live in #Baltimore or the #WashingtonDC metro area, come join me this evening at Johns Hopkins!

Steve Teles and I will be discussing #WeHaveNeverBeenWoke, with opening remarks by @seltermosby.bsky.social, in an event co-sponsored by @snfagora.bsky.social and the JHU HxA campus community.

Very excited for this!

😂

Americans agree on key issues despite partisan narratives Despite relentless media portrayals of division, Americans might not be as polarized as they seem. Surveys reveal significant agreement on core values and political priorities.

Despite relentless media portrayals of division, Americans might not be as polarized as they seem. Surveys reveal significant agreement on core values and political priorities. #AmericanPolitics #PoliticalUnity #PartisanDivide #CoreValues #PublicOpinion

Differences in misinformation sharing can lead to politically asymmetric sanctions - Nature We find that conservatives tend to share more low-quality news through social media than liberals, and so even if technology companies enact politically neutral anti-misinformation policies, political...

🚨In Nature🚨
Meta is dropping fact-checking to avoid anti-conservative bias- but is there actually evidence of bias?
We this test empirically & find that conservatives
* ARE suspended more
* BUT share more misinfo
So suspension isn't necessarily evidence of bias www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New study challenges assumptions about social media’s harm to mental health Recent research found that heavy social media use has little impact on mental health, with no strong links to depression, anxiety, or stress. Social media’s effects might even be slightly positive in some cases.

Recent research found that heavy social media use has little impact on mental health, with no strong links to depression, anxiety, or stress. Social media’s effects might even be slightly positive in some cases. #MentalHealth #SocialMedia #Research #Depression #Anxiety