Dr. Cait Cavanagh

AI presents a fundamental threat to our ability to use polls to assess public opinion. Bad actors who are able to infiltrate panels can flip close election polls for less than the cost of a Starbucks coffee. Models will also infer and confirm hypotheses in experiments. Current quality checks fail

A developmental psychological perspective on youth trust - Discover Psychology Discover Psychology - Adolescence is a critical developmental period marked by significant social, emotional, and cognitive changes that profoundly impact trust. This paper examines how these...

🚨New article alert! This review explores how adolescent development shapes youth trust as a distinct precursor to adult trust, highlighting the need for more ecologically valid and interdisciplinary approaches to studying trust.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Frontiers | Editorial: Resources for developmental ecological psychology: organicism, epigenetics, relational development, dynamic systems Phenomenology, exemplified, for example, by Colwyn Trevarthen's (1978) and Dan Zahavi's (2015) work.It is now widely accepted that the frameworks gu...

Want to know more about how Developmental Psychology and Ecological Psychology go hand in hand?

Read our new paper!

www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy...

This paper marks finishing our special issue on Resources for Developmental Ecological Psychology. The issue includes nice and diverse studies.

TAKE-HOME MESSAGE FOR PRACTITIONERS:
JJ-involved girls with histories of sexual victimization may be perceived as more aggressive depending on who conducts the assessment; trauma-informed training could help prevent defensive, trauma-related behaviors from being misclassified as criminogenic risk.

TAKE-HOME MESSAGE FOR RESEARCHERS: juvenile risk assessments can reflect assessor bias; officer characteristics (like gender) may alter how trauma-exposed girls are evaluated in the justice system.

Male POs (but not female POs) rated sexually victimized girls as having more serious personality risks than girls without victimization histories. The effect was marginal because of power issues (few victimized girls were supervised by male officers) but consistent.

Using official records, we examined how probation officers scored girls on the “personality” domain of the YLS juvenile risk assessment (e.g., impulsivity, aggression, lack of remorse). Sexually victimized girls were NOT rated as having worse personality problems once accounting for other risks.

The Effect of Sexual Victimization on Juvenile Probation Officers’ Perceptions of Justice-Involved Girls’ Personality - Natasha Chlebuch, Caitlin Cavanagh, 2025 There is growing evidence that sexual victimization is a robust predictor of delinquency among girls. Histories of trauma and victimization are closely tied to ...

🚨New article alert! Led by doc student Tash Chlebuch, we tested whether girls in the JJS who have experienced sexual victimization are judged differently by probation officers, and whether this differs by officer gender.

journals.sagepub.com/eprint/3WQDH...

Also, follow me on Goodreads for some “legendary reviews”*

*journal editors, note that my reviewer skills do not extend outside leisure reading 😉

I read 66 books in 2025! I circled my favorites.

What did you enjoy reading this year? I’m looking for recommendations!

Top researchers consider leaving U.S. amid funding cuts: 'The science world is ending' A poll from the journal Nature found that 75% of researchers in the U.S. are considering leaving the country. That includes a man who’s been dubbed the "Mozart of Math." Stephanie Sy examines what’s b...

A Nature poll found that 75% of U.S. researchers are considering leaving the country.

Guyz, even the *historians* are leaving or contemplating / likely to go. Including, at least 3 historians that I know of in my subfield. 😢

I had so much fun talking about career path, approach to research, and current projects with the MSU Psychology Club! Plus I honestly got some of the toughest questions I’ve ever gotten in my career— these students are deep thinkers!

a man in a suit and tie is standing in front of a door that says meeting in progress ALT: a man in a suit and tie is standing in front of a door that says meeting in progress

Why yes I did get not one but two desk rejects this morning

Happy fall semester from the ADJust Lab!

Detroit parents face fines if their children break curfew − research shows the policy could do more harm than good The fines of $250 for a first offense and $500 for a second hit low-income families the hardest.

Check out my piece in The Conversation about a new law in Detroit aimed to curb youth violence. But might it have unintended negative consequences? And what approaches might be more effective? Learn more here: theconversation.com/detroit-pare...

What this means for practitioners (*cough, cough* law makers and enforcers at all levels): Alienating immigrants from the justice system via draconian local immigration enforcement may have the unintended consequence of reduced public safety and inequitable access to resources.

What this means for academics: General and specific attitudes toward legal actors may be informed by distinct experiences and should be considered separately. Immigrants may see police, not judges, as the “face” of the law, so legal actors should also be considered separately.

Attitudes toward judges were neither associated with documentation status nor family deportations, suggesting that the association is unique to police during an era when police are increasingly involved in immigration enforcement.

Undocumented women had negative SPECIFIC attitudes toward police (i.e., stemming from their experience with police), while undocumented women who had experienced family deportations had negative GENERAL attitudes toward police (i.e., considering the police as an abstract group).

🚨New article alert! Aaaand it’s a timely one!

We tested how Latina immigrants' attitudes toward police and judges differed based on their documentation status and history of family deportations.

Check it out here: journals.sagepub.com/eprint/BNE9D...

Or read the explainer 🧵 below...

The capitulation of universities—one after another after another after another without a shared strategy to fight the fascist assault together—is a historical blunder that will also end these elite institutions as ostensible places of genuine knowledge seeking.

Science is effectively dead in the US for at least the next 3½ years, and will then take another several years to even get started again. Canceled research doesn’t just uncancel itself, and scientists who find opportunity elsewhere won’t just come flocking back.

The damage is generational.

If you missed @caitcavanagh.bsky.social’s discussion of adolescent development & legal system issues, her Law & Mental Health Series talk is available on our YouTube channel:

youtu.be/RlFj6bu0A3E?...

Great discussion today as part of the University of New Mexico Law & Mental Health series! Thanks @anthonyperillo.bsky.social for the invite and to the participants for joining the conversation.

I’m very proud of Dr. LaBerge and we will all miss her in the lab. Can’t wait to cheer her on as her career develops!

Her dissertation examines the predictive validity of a commonly used juvenile risk assessment tool for dual-system youth. As with all her work, it was rigorous (collecting/cleaning the data took months, let alone all the new analyses she self-taught for post-doc robustness checks) and actionable!

Alyssa is a natural leader and a hard worker. Although this early bird will never understand her night owl ways, she has been incredibly productive, balancing many publications, community-engaged research, and a passion for teaching so strong that she earned a fellowship to train others in pedagogy!

A huge congratulations to the newly-minted DOCTOR @alyssa-laberge.bsky.social!

Alyssa has worked with me for 7 years, first as a master’s student and then as a PhD student. Her growth as a scholar, teacher, and person has been such a joy to witness.

She’s on to a TT position at UW LaCrosse!

The Texas Flash Flood Is a Preview of the Chaos to Come Climate change is making disasters more common, more deadly and far more costly, even as the federal government is running away from the policies that might begin to protect the nation.

The number of extreme weather disasters has jumped fivefold worldwide over the past 50 years, and the number of deaths has nearly tripled, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

Deporting childcare workers is a backhanded way to force US-born White women out of the workforce and into stay-at-home motherhood, where they'll become easier targets for conservative propaganda campaigns.