Jessie Sun

New episode of Opinion Science! This month features TWO social psychologists--@pauleastwick.bsky.social and @elijfinkel.bsky.social.

We talk about the pile of research showing just how bad people are at knowing which attributes they care most about in potential romantic partners...

A personal lesson I’ve learned from my overwork in journalism, the adjustment to a humane workplace in public relations, and my subsequent layoff is the company will not care about me when I die. My family, friends, and community will, and my primary responsibility is to prioritize accordingly.

A thread about being wrong:

5 years ago, we wrote a paper about how how newly enfranchised 16-year-olds vote in Austria. But we were wrong.

This year, @elisabethgraf.bsky.social, @schnizzl.bsky.social, Sylvia Kritzinger and I are setting the record straight: authors.elsevier.com/c/1juT5xRaZk...

Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences

🚨Two postdoc positions @tse-fr.eu @iast.fr 🚨

We are recruiting two postdocs as part of the ANR-funded project ENFORCE.

Join me, @giuliandr.bsky.social, & @zhgarfield.com, to study punitive systems across societies.

Full time, 2 years, no teaching.

Deadline: Jan 23

www.tse-fr.eu/groups/depar...

Happy "let's circle back in the New Year" season to all who celebrate.

**JOB OPENING: Assistant Professor in Social Psychology / Environmental Psychology**

Deadline: 25 January

Details here: jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/I/...

Psychopathy, Narcissism and Machiavellianism are implicated in many of the most significant societal issues we face, including crime, destructive leadership, bullying and even terrorism. However, debate persists about how effectively they are captured by existing measures.

Really interesting thread. I’ve experienced some of this in my classes, too. About 15-20% of my students are really struggling. I’ve seen some universities implement a first year seminar to help students with some of the more fundamental skills of university work. I think this is a great idea.

Universities are assembling larger and larger teams to deal with academic integrity issues--mostly focused on AI--while simultaneously holding AI "writing" contests, AI-themed events, "hey, come play with these fun tools!" The messages are so mixed, it's criminal. Because AI is bloated with money.

An issue we're seeing at all levels of university is that many students are simply refusing to do *anything*. They aren't reading the syllabus, aren't following assignment guidelines, aren't engaging with material, ignoring deadlines. And this might seem like old news, but it truly has ramped up.

Building the evidence base for narrative CVs | DORA Four research groups shared their work on Narrative CVs, offering perspectives on: applicant experiences, reviewer behavior and decision-making in NCV-based assessments, and systemic challenges in dri...

Each quarter, DORA hosts a Community of Practice (CoP) for International Initiatives advancing RRA. Four research groups shared insights on narrative CVs - applicant experience, reviewer behavior & cultural change.
Watch & read here 👉 sfdora.org/2025/11/30/e...
#ResearchAssessment #NarrativeCV

To me this is a depressing theme in modern academia.

There is so much work being produced, and so many competing demands on our time, that people rarely seem able to just closely read work and frankly say "yes, I believe this" or "no, I don't."

If we aren't doing this, what _are_ we doing?!

I Used Lidocaine Spray on My Feet for Pain-Free High Heels The topical anesthetic is a longtime Hollywood styling secret—but does it actually work?

I kinda love how deranged this feels — “your shoes are uncomfortable? Just apply a local anesthetic!”

www.glamour.com/story/lidoca...

My hot take is that in the era of easily-generated AI nonsense papers journals that want to ensure high quality will need to start hiring full-time professional editors and reviewers instead of relying on volunteer labor from overworked academics.

It's easy to see shoddy research as a bad actor problem. But if AI slop like this can make it through editors and peer reviewers, it means there are systemic problems at work. And I'd argue that at least part of the problem is the overwork culture in academia-- pressure to do more while caring less.

"Prestige bias" is one of the strongest forms of bias in academia.

Reviewers rank paper submissions from top-20 institutions and non-students higher, but this goes away with blinded reviews.
haruka-uchida.github.io/websitefiles...

Even the the damn twitter card for this Nature Scientific Reports is clearly AI Slop.

Two posts from Bluesky. The first one shows a figure from a paper published in Nature Scientific Reports full of totally incoherent AI fabricated gibberish words. The other a comment on a recently published paper by eLife discussing the paper and its peer reviews which were published along with the paper.

Nature Sci Rep publishes incoherent AI slop. eLife publishes a paper which the reviewers didn't agree with, making all the comments and responses public with thoughtful commentary. One of these journals got delisted by Web of Science for quality concerns from not doing peer review. Guess which one?

Stop submitting AI slop to journals and preprint servers

This is anti-social behavior. It is making life harder for everyone involved except for the person submitting the slop

METRICS is accepting applications for the 2026–27 postdoctoral fellowship in meta-research at Stanford. Deadline: Feb 15, 2026. Start date will be around Oct 1, 2026 (+/- 2 month flexibility). See: metrics.stanford.edu/postdoctoral... #MetaResearch #postdoc

“The articles in AMPPS offer, month in and month out, the invitation to practice aligning your values, intentions, and actions to do less scientific harm and reach for the methodological ceiling”

Grateful to @dsbarra.bsky.social for continuing what @profsimons.bsky.social & co started at AMPPS!

This sounds amazingly useful!!

🚨 SynthNet is out 🚨
Researchers propose new constructs and measures faster than anyone can track. We (@anniria.bsky.social @ruben.the100.ci) built a search engine to check what already exists and help identify redundancies; indexing 74,000 scales from ~31,500 instruments in APA PsycTests. 🧵1/3

Waiting time during admission procedures increases social inequalities in higher education | PNAS Many domains in life require people to wait to access better outcomes, such as waiting in line to access prized tickets for a show, waiting to obta...

Happy to share our latest study published in PNAS.

Using data from 274,316 French students, we find that lower-SES students are less likely to wait for better university offers, even when waiting would lead to more prestigious or better-fit programs.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Students applying for grad school, or reaching out to professors. I have an important piece of advice for you: STOP DOING THIS 👇 (a thread) #STEM #PhD #gradschool #academictips

ZPID Trier: Junior professorship (W1-equivalent) Psychological Metascience (with tenure-track to W2 LBesG-equivalent) (f/m/d) leibniz-psychology.onlyfy.jobs/job/10kku5n7 #Stellenangebot

Social psych friends, please help me out with a class discussion by responding to the following (and sharing):

What do you see as the biggest challenge for social and personality psychology in the immediate future? What should we as a field be doing better than we are now?

Colorful hands raised against a vibrant abstract background symbolizing unity and diversity.

📊New research finds that Americans widely support institutions and policies designed to provide political representation for future generations, though they often underestimate the support of their peers for these initiatives.

Read more in #PSPB: ow.ly/Ml6z50Xw1OX

I mentioned this approach to a colleague who does research on the use of AI in education. She replied, “Guess what some students do in this situation. They prompt ChatGPT to write a report on the subject and an accompanying report explaining how and why the first report is wrong.”

I think it's hard to overstate how much Simine has changed research practices and standards in psychology for the better, despite at times massive resistance from powerful parties with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Very well deserved award imho 🥳