Jay Van Bavel, PhD

A Twitter account called Ivanka News tweets an AI image of a young woman wearing Muslim garb. The woman is holding a sign that says "I came here illegally. Should I be deported?" Ivanka News writes: What is your response to this person ?? In the "About this account" tab, it appears the account is based in Nigeria

An account called MAGA scope writes: Who, in your view is the great enemy of the United States? Communism, Islam, Democratic Party, or Satan? The account is based in Nigeria.

An account called MAGA Nadine writes: You go to work and find this. What would you do? The attached pic is an AI image that shows a microwave. The microwave has a sign that says "For religious reasons, this microwave is now making halal food only." The account is based in Morocco.

An account called America First posts an AI image of Tulsi Gabbard. They wrote: How would you rate your trust in Tulsi Gabbard on a scale of 1-10?

Twitter pays people based on engagement (views, retweets, comments, etc). It appears that many MAGA accounts are based abroad and they use AI technology to generate low-effort rage bait.

My guess is that this will get worse as AI tech improves. For instance, fake videos of minorities doing crime.

One of the giants of social psychology was a serial sexual harasser.

This new report reveals how Miles Hewstone touched, bullied, and sexual harassed numerous women during his 18 years at the University of Oxford. It's amazing how often bullying and sexual harassment go together in academia.

I gave a workshop about using social media to faculty at the UT Austin. Here are some tips:

-Stay in your lane (share what you know)
-Avoid fights
-Use plain language
-Including clear visuals
-Follow quality accounts
-Leverage trends
-Have some fun
-Embrace your natural workflow

The Professors Who Stayed Close With Epstein

The Professors Who Stayed Close With Epstein www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/u...

I gave a workshop about using social media to faculty at the UT Austin. Here are some tips:

-Stay in your lane (share what you know)
-Avoid fights
-Use plain language
-Including clear visuals
-Follow quality accounts
-Leverage trends
-Have some fun
-Embrace your natural workflow

A field experiment (n = 2,628) compared a personal agency versus a relational agency intervention.

Only relational agency caused significant improvements in economic outcomes over 12 months among a sample of women in rurlal Niger, where interdependence is valued www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

My wife was sexually harassed by Miles Hewstone as a phd student. He was still asked to review her (and other women he harassed) for jobs and promotions. This is so fucked up.

Thankfully, she and many other women testified against him and something was finally done. This is her take on his case:

We spent a year investigating billionaires for @washingtonpost.com.

We found: the wealthiest 100 Americans gave $1.1 billion to influence the 2024 elections — 140x more than they did in 2000. And almost all of that giving boosted Republicans.

washingtonpost.com/politics/int...

Advice on how to be miserable: the key is insecure selfishness

U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify swastikas, nooses as hate symbols The military service, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, has drafted a new policy that classifies such items “potentially divisive.”

Exclusive: The U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify the swastika, nooses and the Confederate flag as hate symbols.

The military service drafted a new policy that classifies them as “potentially divisive.”

I know at least 4 women he harassed--several of them reached out to the department to find out what happened and also to EASP, to little avail.

Beware the Funhouse Mirror: How Social Media Misleads Us about Public Opinion

I gave a talk to the @nationalacademies.org last week about how social media fuels misperceptions and false polarization.

You can watch it for free here:
www.nationalacademies.org/event/45948_...

We need to be more tolerant of hypocrisy Why hypocrisy is so intuitive and why attacking it can backfire--an interview + book giveaway with Michael Hallsworth

Our furious reaction to hypocrisy often has less to do with moral principle and more to do with status competition. We enjoy taking hypocrites down because it gives us a hit of “sudden glory,” as Thomas Hobbes called it. We gain status when they lose it.
www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/we-need-to...

My wife was sexually harassed by Miles Hewstone as a phd student. He was still asked to review her (and other women he harassed) for jobs and promotions. This is so fucked up.

Thankfully, she and many other women testified against him and something was finally done. This is her take on his case:

Not the point of @gelliottmorris.com piece, but look at this divide among Republicans on social issues. Half of them look like normal people and the other half are way out of step with the rest of the country. There’s a bit of a mirror on the left but much smaller.

It's time to remove laptops from classrooms.

24 experiments: Students learn more and get better grades after taking notes by hand than typing. It's not just because they're less distracted—writing enables deeper processing and more images.

The pen is mightier than the keyboard.

Hahaha, sounds pretty epic

Oxford University Has Failed Women Over Harassment Concerns, Staff Say The university has repeatedly been slow to act against male academics accused of sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior, a Bloomberg investigation found.

This—on my former university, department, and advisor—is harrowing but required reading for all social psychologists. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

If you want to do a PHD in social psychology at New York University, I strongly urge you to apply to Michael Muthukrishna!

He does fantastic research at the interface of culture, economic decision making, & cooperation and is looking to build a brand new lab.

Oxford University Has Failed Women Over Harassment Concerns, Staff Say The university has repeatedly been slow to act against male academics accused of sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior, a Bloomberg investigation found.

But the truth will always out. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Here is the full article from Bloomberg:
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

I know several of the women who were harassed by this guy. They had real courage to testify. He engaged in serious professional retaliation against women.

This needs to end. I've seen how many people curry favor with known sexual harassers and how the worst can still manage to leap from job to job.

One of the giants of social psychology was a serial sexual harasser.

This new report reveals how Miles Hewstone touched, bullied, and sexual harassed numerous women during his 18 years at the University of Oxford. It's amazing how often bullying and sexual harassment go together in academia.

Oxford University Has Failed Women Over Harassment Concerns, Staff Say The university has repeatedly been slow to act against male academics accused of sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior, a Bloomberg investigation found.

Horror stories of sexual harassment from Oxford University

'Prof Hewstone turned up unannounced & dropped his trousers ... touched women inappropriately ... made comments about relationships with students'

Oxford will do nothing, betcha

Brutal from Bloomberg

www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Across borders and time: Testing the competing perspectives of system justification Why do people defend societal systems that perpetuate inequality and injustice? This question is increasingly relevant in today's geopolitical climate, amid growing tensions between calls for progress...

Several recent studies calling into question System Justification Theory have emerged from this dissertation, such as Chapter 2:

"Results [from 42 countries] largely favored self- and group-interest explanations over SJT across cultures."

Long a coveted voice, Larry Summers withdraws from a half-dozen groups amid Epstein ties. Harvard’s not among them. - The Boston Globe Former Harvard president Larry Summers is no longer affiliated with a series of centers and think tanks with which he’s long been involved, officials confirmed Tuesday.

I spoke with the Boston Globe about the Summers situation

TLDR: other professors like myself can no longer trust Summers to perform a key duty of a university professor, which is to advise & mentor students

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/18/m...

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

Chimpanzees use 22 types of tools in the wild but they are capable of doomscrolling like the rest of us.

This video of Sugriva using Instagram is shocking because it's so similar to how humans use social media--engaging with content that triggers our emotions, like images of our friends and foes.

The Power of Us: How Shared Identities Shape Conflict and Cooperation

I'm giving a public talk on the psychology of conflict & cooperation at NYU on December 4th at 5pm

RSVP if you want to attend: nyuad.my.salesforce-sites.com/NYEvents/ape...

Interesting changes from Grok 4 to Grok 4.1. Decreases in harmful responses but also increases in sycophancy and deception.

It isn’t clear how to interpret the sycophancy score, but the MASK score for deception is quite high compared to big models.

Sycophancy leads to higher LMArena scores…

A Researcher Made an AI That Completely Breaks the Online Surveys Scientists Rely On We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people.”

We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people.”