Out in
@TrendsCognSci
: when we make choices about war, terrorism, and political violence, we are making deontological moral (what is right?) rather than instrumentally rational judgements (what are the consequences?) . Preprint:
New paper in
@pnas
with
@salarrad
and AJ Martingano shows the continuing WEIRDness of the psych science literature and offers some recommendations to resolve the problem. We would be interested in feedback and comments! Paper can be found here:
1/8
Some exciting news to share! This summer I will be moving my lab to the London School of Economics where I will be a professor of psychological and behavioral sciences. Looking forward to joining the amazing group of people
@LSE_PBS
and the broader community of scholars
@LSEnews
The news regarding Ariely and Gino is only getting worse. I feel sad particularly for people they have mentored. I also wonder whether the discussion is getting too personal. Are we thinking enough about the system in which they thrived?
It feels obscene these days to teach about implicit prejudice. Much of this work is important, but I cannot teach things like the shooter bias anymore. The problem is conscious and systemic prejudice. The implicit stuff is a sideshow in comparison.
This thread feels very important for social psychologists to read. Many of the anecdotes we tell about the role of dehumanizing propaganda influencing hate crimes and genocide may be wrong
Let’s please pay attention to this. All APS and APA conferences have to accommodate remote participation. We can’t change discriminatory visa practices but we can assist those who are the victims of such practices
#easp2023krk
is over and I'm seeing so many tweets about how great it was. No denying the truth to that, but there's also the not so great truth about how
#visa
issues were handled.
A doctoral student of mine who spent the last six weeks doing fieldwork in the West Bank was detained while leaving Ben Gurion Airport and prevented from boarding her flight - this after exhaustive interrogation and searches
Happy to announce that
@salarrad
has just published his dissertation work on folk theories of nationality and attitudes towards immigrants in Nature Human Behaviour. I think it is an important and timely piece.
The thing about Israel and Palestine is that the present is not complicated. The past, how we got here, is complicated. But the present is not. The oppression of Palestinians is a horrendous human rights violation that needs to end right now. It lacks any justification. Enough.
Happy to announce that the New School for Social Research is advertising a new tenure track position. Come join us in NYC! Happy to answer any questions about the university, department, and the position- just DM me.
The system that promotes people as “stars” (hot tip: if you want to be a rockstar take up an instrument), that gives early career shooting star awards primarily to people located within self congratulatory networks
This is such an important point. We need to facilitate collaborations and go beyond an expansion of our sampling procedures. Our cross cultural research has not always done a great job in creating collaborative research. Sometimes it can feel like colonialism in another form.
Today my thoughts go out to ordinary Ukrainians and Russians. I am also thinking of everyone here who has lived through this type of violence, and for whom any news of war must trigger their own suffering.
This seems a deeply thought out response to the Clark et al paper. I remain astonished that editors did not see what many others who read the paper saw clearly. It shows the value of a more diverse editorial board. This is the easiest substantive change psych science can make
I am an academic working in the U.S. on an H1b visa. There are many of us. I wonder what our community thinks of President Trump's "Proclamation Suspending Entry of Aliens Who Present a Risk to the U.S. Labor Market". Really interested in diverse views.
Hugely proud of this work showing that religious people thinking about God give more money to outgroups . This project took a lot of time from conception to publication (I applied for funding to run these back in 2017!). Read the great thread from
@MikeyPasek
below for deets.
JPSP - you have made a considerable shift to open science.
Why not *describe your samples*?
Out of the first 5, all but 1 has all samples from the US and yet titles/abstracts claim generalizability.
It is *ok* to be a regional journal, JPSP, but be honest about what you do.
It’s difficult for me to see opposition to an organization taking an anti-racist stance as anything other than … you know that opposite thing to anti-racism - forget what it’s called
@OdedRechavi
@eLife
Do you think this tweet is necessarily antisemitic or promoting violence? Could it not just be opposition (however inarticulate) to Israeli policies? I don’t know this person - no stake in it. Just wondering about the inferences being drawn
I think it’s a ridiculous notion. Scientists and artists do not represent their governments, and are not responsible for their actions. Particularly in authoritarian countries. Also…I’m guessing most of us belong to nations responsible for morally reprehensible actions…
With Russia facing economic sanctions, removal from international sports, Eurovision, arts & more, I'm interested to hear your views on whether academic journals should or should not be considering submissions from authors based in Russia.
Your Jewish Israeli colleagues and friends are probably not ok now. The same is true for your Palestinian friends and colleagues. So much despair and worry about loved ones and the future.
Many psychologists study inequality, but rarely take into account systemic causes. As this review shows, focusing on individual level causes is misleading and probably harmful. Policy is primarily a result of policy
Poverty, not the poor | Science Advances
My new article just got released in Science Advances today. The article is open access. I try to both describe the nature of America's "systemically high poverty" and review explanations of it.
I am shocked by our friends on the left who “can’t maintain the critical faculty to distinguish opposition to Israeli occupation and war crimes, and who turn a blind eye to what Hamas did in southern Israel”
@zakijam
@PsychScience
This seems part of a movement in our field to oppose efforts to increase diversity. Troubling indeed. For what its worth, I think the paper being commented on is superb and it is a standard reading in many of my courses.
It sickens me when people rejoice in violence and suffering - and it happens on both sides of the Israel-Palestine divide. I stand on the side of people who are driven to despair by this type of suffering, and against those who enjoy it. I don’t care about their justifications.
Look what I found at my place of work! Based on what I’ve been reading I would have assumed that I would feel terror and call the police. Perhaps surprisingly to some, I didn’t take it as a call to genocide. Nobody is free until everyone is free.
So happy for both Mikey and
@UICPsychology
! Mikey has been such a great member and leader of my lab
@NSSRNews
over the last few years. We have been so lucky to have him as a colleague. Looking forward to what is to come!
Our lab recently published a paper looking at how religious Jewish Israelis and Muslim Palestinians in the WB view the religious beliefs of the other. A short thread …
All the academics I know (mainly social psychologists) are well meaning. But I’m not sure if we have stopped to consider how our discourse here affects our students. How welcome will Arab, Palestinian or Jewish students feel working with us, or studying in our department?
This violence in Gaza will prove senseless as well as cruel. I’ve spent most of my life studying violence and I understand what is happening. We must stand against it. While we mourn our dead. While our families are held hostage.
The student is doing research into religious belief and cooperation funded by
@templeton_fdn
. I call on
@israelinusa
and
@israelpm
to stop intimidation of academic research in the West Bank and Israel
Great advice for grad students: "In this environment, there is no reliable advice for how to publish in order to secure a faculty position, but there may be advice for how to pursue the most satisfying academic career ... write the papers you wish to write now."
I wrote a short blog thing for NHB's publish or perish series about life on the job market. Sometimes its good to just say it out loud.
Leaving the Lottery
Nice to see psych science upping it’s open science game. However, generalizable knowledge requires more than good methods. It requires greater diversity of samples, authors, and especially editorial teams
Truth:
#PsychologicalScience
, the flagship journal of APS
@PsychScience
, "the leading **international** organization dedicated to advancing scientific psychology across disciplinary and **geographic borders**", has only 2/82 editorial member from Global South🤦♂️
I’m not saying awards lead to fraud, but a culture where rewards are so disproportionate must contribute. We often talk about who gets academic positions but less about how unequal those positions are.
@social_brains
I’m not calling for anything, but Lebanon is a multi-ethnic state and Pakistan was partitioned off from India with a lot of accompanying violence and pain. Lebanon probably shows some of the problems to be solved if a one state solution is to be reached… but the basic argument
No disrespect to those who are named stars (I greatly admire all of those in my field), but I don’t think they are particularly superior to many others who do not get them
Important post on “passport privilege”. Discrimination based on nationality is often invisible to those of us who are privileged thanks to an accident of birth. We need to consider our privilege, and the barriers faced by many of our colleagues and students.
Arrests of peaceful protestors is unbelievably stupid. See the work of Reicher and Drury or Sprinzak. These actions alienate and radicalise. They teach that peaceful engagement in political discourse is not available to some people, and delegitimise the institutions involved
People often make prejudiced remarks that are unintended. They can be the result of hubris, or just reflect the culture in which we grew up. The problem often isn’t the original offense. It’s the reaction when it is pointed out.d.
What is really disturbing to me (among other things) is when prejudiced behavior is pointed out, victims are required to endlessly defend themselves. If offense is unintended, apologize, say thank you for pointing it out, and move on.
If human life is sacred, all lives are equally sacred. We mourn the dead in Israel, worry about the wounded and the hostages and despair at inhuman acts. We also mourn the dead in Gaza, worry about Palestinians who are effectively hostages and despair at inhuman acts of revenge.
As someone who knows quite a bit about the relationship between religion and conflict this poster seems like both junk science and Islamophobic. It should be taken down and
@SPSPnews
should apologise
I am so scared and angry about events in Israel and Palestine right now. My professional life is about trying to understand these behaviours. Yet, on a deep level I am as bewildered as ever.
I’m sure these aren’t the only answers (and maybe they are wrong). I think though that we should focus less on personalities and more on systems/cultures that encourage this type of fraud.
Our lab's newest paper showing that Muslim Palestinians and Jewish Israelis believe that the other group conceives of god as an entity that encourages prosocial and benevolent behaviour in intergroup interactions. See this thread for a good description. Some background:
This site is full of antisemitism, Islamophobia and people unable to recognise the humanity of the other. It’s terribly distressing to those of us who are suffering
This predictions in this letter about Palestine and Israel were incredibly accurate. The occupation is a destructive force for Israel as well as for Palestine. I would add that something much broader is needed than ending the occupation. We need to rethink who we are.
In September 1967, the Israeli movement Matzpen published an open letter in
@haaretzcom
.
They were right all along.
Fifty-seven years later, we must end the occupation. Only a political solution will save Israelis and Palestinians from destruction.
The time has come.
My thoughts and best wishes are with family, friends and colleagues in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. I fear that the horror of today will be multiplied in days to come.
Without getting into the question of whether fixation on stable personality traits is a WEIRD phenomenon, people have to be more thoughtful about the language they use. Whether intended or not, I find this thread ethnocentric and offensive.
I am getting tired of WEIRD.
Like it or not, the world is becoming WEIRD.
It is true that personality matters more in societies that give people choice to be who they were born to be and want to be.
Studying traditional cultures is fine. To be happy you need to be WEIRD.
New immigration policies are not the result of material calculations. They express moral commitments to certain sacred values, such as the purity of the U.S. which is defiled by foreigners. Those seeking to change these policies are better off making moral arguments against them
It is indeed great news. Although no longer part of the lab,
@beitbutterbean
(now postdoc at Copenhagen) and Allon Vishkin (now postdoc at Michigan) played key roles in formulating the grant and will continue to be involved in the work.
@Ivuoma
Yep, when one reads this piece it is obvious that one reason he was not reappointed is that at least some of his work is explicitly racist. Also, it’s bad. I don’t care if it sneaked through peer review.
The psychology department at The New School for Social Research is hiring! The ad is targeted for an Assistant Prof but we also may be open to mid career hires. Happy to chat to anyone about the position
There is much of this that I agree with - and of course we are all residing this without context. But I think asking an author to justify conclusions while thinking about the population sampled is the right thing
Members of
@SPSPnews
are debating history and our stance on different responses to the Gaza war.. This petition seems well balanced and the type of document many of us - from Palestinian activists, to liberal zionists or Jewish anti-zionists might be willing to sign.
"There is a moral and strategic obligation to ensure that Israel's response is characterised by international humanitarian law and leads to an end to the occupation. Rhetoric is not enough."
Proud to have signed this powerful open letter. Please share.
Fascinating new study suggests that a disposition to analytical thinking has no effect when it comes to sharing misinformation relevant to sacred values
I’m all for teaching but I think we should talk about the performative characteristics of teaching statements. Are they really the best way to improve teaching?
Many people I follow regard a call for a free Palestine from the river to the sea as antisemitic. I want to discuss this a little bit here and explain why it is not
The newest replication paper is fascinating. But perhaps we need to move away from flashy findings and look at foundational studies in our fields. What for example do most social psychologists view as the 5-10 key findings? Nominations have to come outside of the replicators.
Some of us hold passports with privileges we rarely consider. The least we can do as academics is to be conscious of this privilege and work for equitable access for all of our colleagues
Dear conference organisers: I promise I will choose a better birth place next time, but in the meantime can we please 1) host conferences at more visa-friendly locations or 2) leave more time between paper decision time and conference so we have enough time to apply for visas?
I hadn’t seen this poll but it’s an important result. Muslim and Jewish students under any different things when they hear “From the river to the sea”. Muslims hear peace, Jews hear genocide.
Reminder from University of Chicago poll: When Muslim students hear "FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA," 76% understand it to mean Arabs and Jews living together in two states or one state; but 66% of Jewish students take it to mean Palestinians should replace Israelis in the territory.
@Ivuoma
All this demonstrates is the problem with lack of diversity among editors and reviewers. A more diverse group of scientists will lead to better science.
Evidence is mounting that the Israeli government is actively discussing ethnic cleansing of Gaza. If we don’t act against this we are complicit. In particular the American Jewish community need to use whatever influence they have to prevent this.
Similar statements were made by several ministers, but none of them had direct involvement in war policy. Now it comes from Netanyahu and should be seen a statement of intent.
@HemaPreya
@PolPsyISPP
My take on this debate is that while I disagree with Gilad on many things (including the title of his presentation) this is a good faith piece of research representing a certain perspective/positionality. As long as this is made clear and different/other perspectives are heard…
I’m biased, but I think this is a really interesting paper. It asks whether believers think their god encourages them to humanize or dehumanize people who believe in different gods.
I'm excited to share a preprint of our new paper, "Thinking about God Discourages Dehumanization of Religious Outgroups" - (with
@MikeyPasek
, Allon Vishkin, Kathryn Johnson, Crystal Shackleford (
@beitbutterbean
) and
@JeremyGinges
)
I agree with Jay in opposing boycotts of Israeli universities. I’ve given it a lot of thought. My opposition is partly moral. I don’t think we should hold individuals accountable for their govt’s actions. It’s impossible for boycotts not to effectively punish individuals
I strongly support a ceasefire and a return of the hostages. I also support disclosure and am open to divestment.
But I absolutely don’t support calls from protestors to have universities cut off relationships with Israeli academics.
I don’t think any academics in any country
@JinXunGoh
Yeah, I agree. “Misinformation” and “polarisation” are terms too often used. They mask the truth. More like propaganda and anti-democratic radicalisation
Israelis increasingly see tension between their country's democratic and Jewish identities. Though pressured to pick democracy, the country may be choosing to put identity first.
@JinXunGoh
@Xiaowen__Xu
The tweet wasn’t poorly phrased, it was poorly thought out. I grew up having my family name mispronounced and often mocked - even by teachers. The better tweet would have been directed towards Americans, encouraging them to work harder to pronounce names from different cultures.
Everyone, everywhere deserves a life with security and dignity. You cannot support the war on Gaza and believe this at the same time. Stop this disgusting war now.
Progressive Israelis were recently protesting in the name of democracy. Now, while many are busy supporting the war in Gaza, Israelis who demonstrate sympathy for the children of Gaza are brought in for questioning. This is an outrage that should bring people onto the streets.
I’m seeing distress about violence against Jews in the west, including on campuses. I’m also seeing distress about the silencing of Palestinians and their allies on campus. Both of these things are true.
This is a broad problem effecting our science. There is an implicit assumption that findings from white prowl in the global north generalise to all humans but work done elsewhere is simply “exotic”.
So tired of my work being perceived as not generalizable because I happen to have conducted a lot of research in Turkey. I did research in the country I lived in, no different than most of my colleagues anywhere else 🤷🏻♀️
There is no longer any doubt that ethnic cleansing of Gaza is the policy of this Israeli government. This clarity means that all who do not explicitly condemn and oppose the war are complicit in the crime.
I agree with Michael on this. I can't understand why more professors haven't thought through how their posts will effect students who they are supposed to be mentoring, teaching, helping. I think all of us need to consider our language and our actions from this perspective.
Ask yourself, how would our Muslim & Arab students feel if they were giving a talk at spsp and davidai--after calling students cowards and threatening their jobs--was in the audience?
Is that a rigorous environment for the free sharing of research? Is that a commitment to DEI?
When psychologists who are not expert in the politics or history of Palestine or Israel use their platform to give rambling opinions because they have “read stuff”, they owe us an annotated bibliography. Reminds me of anti-vaccination folk who have “done their research”
I have been thinking how Jewish Israelis like me, who want a just peace for both people, tend to avoid co-constructing visions of that peace with Palestinians. Typically we just talk amongst ourselves, rarely engaging with Palestinians.
Some people here are asking why we hold
@SPSPnews
conferences over the weekend. It’s a really good point - it assumes that attendees don’t have families or have someone else to take care of them.
Please read this important thread. We have to think carefully about how to be more inclusive to scientists regardless of which passport they hold. I don’t see a good reason not to have all of our professional meetings online or in hybrid form
Dear friends and colleagues,
This is a call for international conference organizers to think twice before organizing any conference in Western Europe/North America, where many academics from the Global South (GS) need a visa to enter. (1)
My take on this debate is that while I disagree with Gilad on many things (including the title of his presentation) this is a good faith piece of research representing a certain perspective/positionality. As long as this is made clear and different/other perspectives are heard…