Mikey Pasek

Interested in learning more? Here's a free-access link! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author...

Also a big shout out to @jeremyginges.bsky.social and Yul Kwon for their huge parts in this research and paper; to the National Science Foundation for funding this project; and to Fiji's Ministry of Education, Heritage, and Arts, as well as the Ministry for iTaukei Affairs for partnering with us!

Cheif among many pride points is that this work was conducted in partnership with iTaukei and Indo-Fijian team members, who are authors on our manuscript. They played an essential role in shaping our thinking, designing methods, & interpereting results. Shout out to Adaima Israel and Reshmi Wati!

On the whole, this work suggests that historical experiences of colonialism can shape how different subjugated groups reason about rights and governance, with possible implications for where fault lines emerge between formerly colonized populations who now live together.

While both iTaukei and Indo-Fijians tended to dissaprove of blatantly undemocratic behavior committed by ingroup members (throwing out ballots), both groups expressed a greater tolerance of such behavior when it advanced their interests (see figure).

In Study 3, we probed potential consequences for democracy—a system of governance imposed upon FIjians after colonial rule. Here, we asked whether Fijians thought democratic principles themselves were sacred, or whether they instead viewed them as sacrificable to advance broad political goals.

In Study 2, we experimentally probed iTaukei's views of land ownership by asking what they thought would happen if ingroup members sold (vs refused to sell) land to Indo-Fijians. iTaukei felt that losing control over their indigenous land would lead to existential harm.

By contrast, >90% of Indo-Fijians tended to think everyone—iTaukei and Indo-Fijians should have equal rights across issues.

In Study 1, most iTaukei thought land ownership should be reserved exclusively for iTaukei, & roughtly half thought only iTaukei should have the right to be called Fijian. Notably, this preference for inequality was not universal, as iTaukei thought some rights, like medical care, should be equal.

By contrast, we reasoned that Indo-Fijians, who are largely descendents of indentured servents brought to Fiji by the British, might prefer an individual-based rights framework that provisions equal rights to all people. We find strong support for this theory!

We asked whether preferences for individual vs collective rights are shaped by colonialism. Because the British stripped collective rights from iTaukei, we reasoned they might prefer provisioning group-based rights (particualrly on issues tied to colonial harm) to protect indigenous sovergienty.

📣 Excited to share new work led by @anneleh.bsky.social and Star Hartley in @spssi.bsky.social's Journal of Social issues! We report studies w/ indigenous iTaukei and Indo-Fijians (displaced under colonial rule) investigating how each reasons about equal rights and democratic governance in Fiji.

I’d like to point out that the OU girl’s paper would have gotten a failing grade in every one of my many many theology courses at three different schools, and invariably with far harsher commentary from the profs.

An Audit of Social Science Survey Experiments Abstract. Survey experiments have become a popular methodology for causal inference across the social sciences. We study the efficacy of survey experiment

Needed - larger samples, more realism about (the lack of) heterogeneous treatment effects:
-"less than a third of proposed hypotheses were supported... the largest predictor of positive exp. results was sample size"
-"moderation hypotheses were rarely significant"
academic.oup.com/poq/advance-...

Congress better re-install its spines immediately and do its job.

He and his people are out of control.

"Trump says US will pause migration [of people with the wrong skin tones] from Third World countries"

🚨 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

🚨NEW PUBLICATION🚨 in @cp-iscience.bsky.social l together with @lukeglowacki.bsky.social, @hannesrusch.bsky.social and Isabel Thielmann: “Untangling altruism and parochialism in human intergroup conflict” doi.org/10.1016/j.is... (1/7)

📈 What predicts increased support among ultra-Orthodox Israelis for a regional peace agreement amid the Israel-Hamas war?

This 🆕 study finds that mainstream news consumption and empathy do

📖 Read more doi.org/10.1037/pac0...

#PeacePsych #AcademicSky #SocialPsych #MiddleEast #ConflictResolution

ASU Psychology is hiring a Postdoctoral Research Scholar to study contemporary antisemitism (supervised by Drs. Neuberg & Barlev). Full-time research, NIH salary scale, start date Jan 12, 2026 (flexible).
Deadline: Dec 17, 2025.
More info: apply.interfolio.com/177756

My piece has been published in PNAS today!!! "The importance of local racial demographic changes in democratic erosion in the mass American public" www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

A few takeaways...

Postdoctoral Researcher Positions!

Unprecedented nepotism & corruption at the highest levels of American government

Charges dropped against Utah doctor accused of throwing away $28,000 in COVID vaccine doses The federal government has dismissed charges against a Utah plastic surgeon accused of throwing away COVID-19 vaccines worth thousands of dollars during the pandemic.

This is fu*king outrageous!

The federal government on Saturday dismissed charges against a Utah plastic surgeon accused of throwing away COVID-19 vaccines, giving children saline shots instead of the vaccine and selling faked vaccination cards.

apnews.com/article/utah...

Trump’s Peace Plan for Ukraine, Annotated Here’s a breakdown of some of the key points in the plan and how Ukraine and its European allies might respond.

This excellent WSJ annotation of the Molotov/Ribbentrop … sorry, Witkoff/Dmitriev … “peace deal” for Ukraine shows how ridiculously vague and utterly unworkable this thing is

Free link

www.wsj.com/world/europe...

Withholding our own tax dollars from us. Intolerable.

BREAKING:

Sen. Elissa Slotkin says police responded to her home tonight in response to a bomb threat. Slotkin wasn't at home at the time.

This is two days after Trump said Slotkin and other Democrats committed "seditious conspiracy, punishable by death."

Zohran Mamdani doesn’t make me, an American Jew, feel unsafe.

Having the Coast Guard, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, decide that a swastika isn’t really a symbol of hate? That makes me, an American Jew, feel pretty damn unsafe.

I'm excited to share that I’ll be reviewing PhD applications this cycle for students interested in working with me starting Summer/Fall 2026.

I’m especially looking for applicants excited about research on trust/persuasion, responses to historical harm, addressing inequality, and/or mindsets.

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: