@williambrady.bsky.social
Assistant prof @ Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Studying emotion, morality, social networks, psych of tech. #firstgen college graduate
Great work by @natematias.bsky.social & Megan Price: public involvement in AI is an important part of rigorous science. AI systems are sociotechnical, meaning that the lived experience of the public is essential for validation, etc.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
New preprint out π
βWhy Reform Stalls: Justifications of Force Are Linked to Lower Outrage and Reform Support.β
Why do some cases of police violence spark reform while others fade? We look at how people explain themβthrough justification or outrage.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
π¨Out in PNASπ¨
Examining news on 7 platforms:
1)Right-leaning platforms=lower quality news
2)Echo-platforms: Right-leaning news gets more engagement on right-leaning platforms, vice-versa for left-leaning
3)Low-quality news gets more engagement EVERYWHERE - even BlueSky!
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Excited to share a new preprint, accepted as a spotlight at #NeurIPS2025!
Humans are imperfect decision-makers, and autonomous systems should understand how we deviate from idealized rationality
Our paper aims to address this! ππ§ β¨
arxiv.org/abs/2510.25951
a π§΅β€΅οΈ
See preprint for more details on (1) development of our taxonomy, (2) how we measured motive inferences in natural language and (3) how our intervention worked!
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
They also show we might be able to people more receptive to political dialogue with a political opponent even when outrage is clearly expressed against peopleβs own political views.
11.11.2025 16:34 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0These results help solve a puzzle (cc @steverathje.bsky.social). Why do people express outrage when reporting they don't want to see it in their feeds? We suggest because when they express it they typically have behavioral motives, but they think others have contra-hedonic motives!
11.11.2025 16:34 β π 3 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0
Key result #3: Motive inferences were malleable: we developed an intervention that corrected peoplesβ motive inferences - increasing peopleβs inference of behavioral motive to out-partisan caused them to be more willing to have a political conversation even in context of outrage
11.11.2025 16:34 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0Key result #2: Biased motive inferences predict greater partisan animosity, and specific inferences of behavioral / contra-hedonic motives predicted willingness to have a conversation. π behavioral motive inference = π willingness to converse, even if it was an out-partisan expressing outrage!
11.11.2025 16:34 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0
Key result #1: People largely reported their in-partisansβ (and their own) motives for outrage was to raise awareness or inspire action (behavioral motive), but thought political opponents motives were to shame or troll (contra-hedonic motive), which was a vast overestimation.
11.11.2025 16:34 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0
In online experiments and a field study on Reddit, we asked users to report their motives for posting outrage and then had observers infer the motives.
11.11.2025 16:34 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0
β¨New preprint! Why do people express outrage online? In 4 studies we develop a taxonomy of online outrage motives, test what motives people report, what they infer for in- vs. out-partisans, and how motive inferences shape downstream intergroup consequences. Led by @felix-chenwei.bsky.social π§΅π
11.11.2025 16:34 β π 39 π 18 π¬ 1 π 1
These has been sharp rise in moralized language on social media
Two processes explained this shift:
(1) within-user increases in moral language over time
(2) highly moralized users became more active while less moralized users disengaged osf.io/preprints/ps...
Posting is correlated with affective polarization:
π‘ The most partisan users β those who love their party and despise the other β are more likely to post about politics
π₯ The result? A loud angry minority dominates online politics, which itself can drive polarization (see doi.org/10.1073/pnas...)
Reminder to apply to the DRRC postdoc fellowship! Deadline is this week.
28.10.2025 16:56 β π 6 π 3 π¬ 0 π 0Re-posting this because I really like it and I think we need to understand identity from a functionalist perspective more than ever.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
Three schematic diagrams. The first illustrates selective publishing of internal resection, the second selective causal focus, and the third selective access and funding for researchers.
1. We ( @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social, and I) have a new preprint up on the arXiv.
There we explore how social media companies and other online information technology firms are able to manipulate scientific research about the effects of their products.
Great piece on the absurdity of brute force multiverse analyses.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Can AI simulations of human research participants advance cognitive science? In @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social, @lmesseri.bsky.social & I analyze this vision. We show how βAI Surrogatesβ entrench practices that limit the generalizability of cognitive science while aspiring to do the opposite. 1/
21.10.2025 20:24 β π 281 π 117 π¬ 9 π 25Last call for data-blitz and poster submission for the Computational Psychology preconference @spspnews.bsky.social! See thread below for details and hope to see you in Chicago!
20.10.2025 15:04 β π 9 π 6 π¬ 0 π 0Very difficult indeed. We study these types of issues empirically:
osf.io/preprints/os...
Abstract and results summary
π¨ New preprint π¨
Across 3 experiments (n = 3,285), we found that interacting with sycophantic (or overly agreeable) AI chatbots entrenched attitudes and led to inflated self-perceptions.
Yet, people preferred sycophantic chatbots and viewed them as unbiased!
osf.io/preprints/ps...
Thread π§΅
Cool work! Did y'all look at how people update when they discover AI makes an error?
30.09.2025 14:12 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0
Our new paper finds that AI can overcome partisan #bias
We find that AI sources are preferred over ingroup and outgroup sources--even when people know both are equally accurate (N = 1,600+): osf.io/preprints/ps...
missed you @baixuechunzi.bsky.social !
29.09.2025 18:35 β π 2 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0Thanks to our rotating organizers: lead organizer Tessa Charlesworth & co-organizers: @chujunlin.bsky.social Brent Hughes Xuechunzi Bai
Post any questions here!
We are now accepting submissions for posters and data blitz! If your research is computational (broadly construed) you should apply! We try to program for a wide range of topics and computational approaches.
Submission guide here: spsp.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/EdvejV...
Deadline: October 23rd π
The computational psych preconference is back @spspnews.bsky.social for a full day! This year's lineup:
πtheory-driven modeling: Hyowon Gweon
πdata-driven discovery: @clemensstachl.bsky.social
πapplication: me
π panel: @steveread.bsky.social Sandra Matz, @markthornton.bsky.social Wil Cunningham
Only a small % of people engage in toxic activity online, but theyβre responsible for a disproportionate share of hostile or misleading content on nearly every platform
Because super-users are so active, they dominate our collective impression of the internet www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...
New dataset that describes social media activity of a very large group of US elected officials: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
28.09.2025 17:10 β π 39 π 17 π¬ 1 π 1
