Veel Nederlanders willen best groener leven – maar dit staat ze in de weg Nederland moet klimaatvriendelijk gedrag van burgers eindelijk eens echt gaan aanmoedigen, stelt de Wetenschappelijke Klimaatraad in een opvallend pinnig rapport. ‘We laten hier veel liggen.’

Nederland moet klimaatvriendelijk gedrag van burgers eindelijk eens echt gaan aanmoedigen, stelt de Wetenschappelijke Klimaatraad in een opvallend pinnig rapport. ‘We laten hier veel liggen.’

Interview met Linda Steg @klimaatraad.bsky.social in @volkskrant.nl

www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/v...

Paper on statistical power necessary for interaction effects
doi.org/10.1177/2515...

Giving less power to statistical power (Higgs & Amrhein)
doi.org/10.1177/0023...

Are we crazy or what?

We keep on inventing and adopting labour saving technologies… while work turns out to actually be a major contributor to our wellbeing.

The paradox, in the age of AI, is not lost on @timharford:

buff.ly/D4byoAj

Papers I learned from (Part 8: Somebody should do something) - Reflective altruism Brownstein, Madva and Kelly examine the role of personal choices in systemic change.

New short essay out today with @madva.bsky.social and @dryan149.bsky.social on all kinds of ways to do good visibly. Thanks to @reflectivealt.bsky.social for the opportunity to share ideas with the EA crowd.

reflectivealtruism.com/2026/02/20/p...

Yes, of course they might be wrong. Heck, they are probably wrong.

But the AI Labs have been more right so far in their predictions than I think most people expected, so it is worth paying attention to.

38 minutes into this video from six hours ago: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH7t...

The Big 5 test is about twice as accurate as the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator for predicting life outcomes, placing the usefulness of the MBTI test halfway between science and astrology.

Any psychologist will tell you, the Meyers-Briggs is mostly bullshit.
powerofusnewsletter.com/p/why-are-we...

🚨 New paper! Think of a place you feel deeply attached to. When you're in that place, do you feel like your life is more meaningful? New work from @ashleykrause.bsky.social suggests you probably do!

Just accepted at Journal of Environmental Psychology, we find places can give our life meaning 🧵

What we believe about each other matters, so what happens when half the population makes a choice we think is unreasonable?

https://tomstafford.substack.com/p/the-effects-of-political-disappointment

I have some work in progress which I lay bare in my latest post, feedback really appreciated […]

Exercise helps with depression and anxiety.

But how it helps depends on how, how much and with whom.

Context matters. wp.me/p2nWPo-5HT

Influencers have discovered what turned consumers off in the past, and are deploying new consumer psychology turn-ons.

But consumers are savvy. @neuroscienceof.bsky.social documents the evolving arms race between influencers and consumers:

buff.ly/7qQxO5p

New paper in Current Directions in Psych Science: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

After countless arguments about what tasks ppl should/should not offload to AI, we instead argue that genAI can be used *augment* research protocols in novel ways. I.e. use AI to make better psych experiments!

You're Doing Conferences Wrong I love conferences.

Conference season is here. Many of you are doing it wrong. You flew across the country to check your email in a different city. New post on what conferences are actually for.

open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

This new paper offers practical solutions for pluralistic ignorance (when people assume their opinon is unpopular when many others share it):

-in loose cultures, share accurate information
-in tight ones, lowering the costs of speaking up can spark social change.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Are people rational? And is that even a meaningful question? Or why I think expertise is the better way to understand normative decision-making

I don't post everything I write on BlueSky, but I think this piece may resonate with a few of you. It is for those interested in the backstory of the debate, why it matters, and whether it is even a scientific question to ask whether people are rational.

Contrary to common wisdom and a sizeable literature, longitudinal research (with a natural experiment) in Australia by @maximananyev.bsky.social et al suggests there is no causal effect of getting a pet on life satisfaction, loneliness, mental health, and general health:

buff.ly/iYkVfCQ

Problem about the loneliness epidemic is, it's everywhere except in representative survey data. Let's look at where the claim comes from. 1/

If your priors are such that you’re less than 100% confident you understand Bayesian reasoning, crank up your posterior by checking out this little video with none other than @d_spiegel as contributor and narrator:

buff.ly/HVzVovp

The drunk uncle theory.

You don’t argue with the casually homophobic uncle at Thanksgiving dinner to change his mind; you argue so that the closeted cousin at the kids table knows there’s safe people and better possibilities out there

A new article in Nature Medicine found that social connections were a surprisingly powerful predictor of a long life.

Living with a partner was roughly as beneficial as exercise.
www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/debunking-...

It’s not just climate: rethinking ‘climate emotions’ in the age of burnout capitalism Just as political ecologists have critiqued narratives of ‘climate migration’ and ‘climate conflict’ for their implicit climate determinism, this article argues that scholars should move beyond cli...

As a climate-focused psychologist, my paper introduces the "Capital-Climate Nexus" to examine how capitalism and climate change converge to shape the human experience.

My new article came out before this one👇, but Albert (2025) offers a similar analysis. 7/n

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

Where Is Capitalism? Unmasking Its Hidden Role in Psychology 90252 I critically examine the pervasive yet often-neglected influence of capitalism on psychological processes and human behavior. While capitalist ideologies…

"Capitalism, despite being one of the most dominant and pervasive forces in contemporary society, remains remarkably invisible within mainstream psychological discourse," Bettache notes in the below video.

A "Big Idea" to be overlooked in psychology, indeed. 🧵 5/n

vimeo.com/1069464662

Where Is Capitalism? Unmasking Its Hidden Role in Psychology - Karim Bettache, 2025 This article critically examines the pervasive yet often-neglected influence of capitalism on psychological processes and human behavior. While capitalist ideol...

Simultaneously, Bettache (2025) was making the same argument beautifully in the journal Personality & Social Psychology Review.

Importantly, he distinguishes between neoliberalism and capitalism. Whereas the former has made it into mainstream psych, the latter has not. 🧵4/n
doi.org/10.1177/1088...

Ecopolitical Psychology at the Capital-Climate Nexus: A Research Agenda for the Capitalocene - Carlie D. Trott, 2025 Psychology as a discipline has been slow to engage with capitalism as a lens through which to understand and explain the human experience, yet neoliberal capita...

🚨New Publication Alert! 🚨

Ecopolitical Psychology at the Capital-Climate Nexus: A Research Agenda for the Capitalocene - by yours truly*

Article in Special Issue on "The Next Big Ideas in Psychology" in Review of General Psychology

*Link to free download, end of 🧵 1/n

doi.org/10.1177/1089...

Are you part of a grassroots football club, sustainable clothing initiative or sports apparel company?

Join our upcoming workshop for a collaborative discussion on how to make grassroots football kit more sustainable.

If you'd like to attend, please e-mail our researchers on iz229@bath.ac.uk.

Research by Nisbet & Wilson suggest when people report on why they made a particular choice, they do not rely on true introspection, but refer to a priori, implicit causal theories or judgments about the plausibility that a particular stimulus caused it:

buff.ly/1wUmUyV

Advancing representations of equity and justice in climate mitigation futures In this work, we conduct a narrative review of pressing equity and justice issues within global modelled scenarios and propose a new research agenda to strengthen their consideration in future model d...

New Essay by @shonali-p.bsky.social & colleagues:

"Advancing representations of equity and justice in climate mitigation futures"

journals.plos.org/climate/arti...

@kikstra.bsky.social @joerirogelj.bsky.social @karlscheifinger.bsky.social @vruijven.bsky.social @adrivinca.bsky.social @iiasa.ac.at

Items in Sheng et al.'s (2026) new Fundamental Follower Needs Inventory

www.researchgate.net/publication/...

#SocialPsyc

Circular citizenship behaviours to promote systemic change: Influences of values, beliefs, norms, and personal agency Environmental problems arise from our current societal and economic systems and could be alleviated by transforming such systems towards more sustaina…

PhD Isabel Pacheco and co-authors Ellen van der Werff and Linda Steg found that people rarely engage in #circular citizenship behaviours. How can we access all that untapped potential for #systemicchange through more citizen action in the future?

Here's a thread on one of our recent papers🧵

Proud advisor moment. Check out my student, Emily Zohar's, new paper (her first first-authored paper) on how norms shape how effort. Yes, when we see hard workers around us, we work harder. But...when we see lazy people around us, we also work harder. Check it out!

psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-...