@jayvanbavel
Professor of Psychology at NYU (jayvanbavel.com) | Author of The Power of Us Book (powerofus.online) | Director of NYU Center for Conflict & Cooperation | trying to write a new book about collective decisions
In this systematic review and meta-analysis of up to 153 longitudinal studies:
Social media use was associated with higher depression, behavioral problems, self-injury, and substance use, and lower self-perception and academic achievement tinyurl.com/47z3anym
📚Preprint📚
Gregson, Nikadon, Formanowicz, @chiarazazzarino.bsky.social, Kitchin, Kosinski, @jayvanbavel.bsky.social @alekscichocka.bsky.social
➤ osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/9jcvr_v1
Tasked LLMs to label national identities in social media posts and political speeches (25 languages, 13M words)
🧵 1/8
“In the preface, he declares that all royalties will be donated to
the Scientific Integrity Fund. His motives for writing seem to be two-fold: firstly, to help
himself make sense of how he became embroiled in a scandal about honesty research, and to
describe what could have been done differently.”
A graphic promoting a book review. On the left is the cover of the book Inside an Academic Scandal: A Story of Fraud and Betrayal by Max H. Bazerman. The cover has large orange and black text and an abstract horizontal paint‑stroke graphic beneath the word “Scandal.” On the right, black text reads: “Jennifer Byrne reviews Inside an Academic Scandal: A Story of Fraud and Betrayal.” At the bottom right is small text that reads “Vol. 46 No. 1 (2026): February,” alongside a small circular logo with the letters “PIR.”
Jennifer Byrne (@jabyrnesci.bsky.social) reviews Max H. Bazerman’s 'Inside an Academic Scandal', a narrative of research misconduct, institutional response, and the ethical challenges surrounding fraud in academia.
journals.uvic.ca/index.php/pi...
Super interesting study, Victoria.
🧵 New preprint alert! Why do some people refuse to use AI, even when you tell them it's safe and beneficial? We argue it's not about risk perception. It's about moralization. AI has become a moral issue for many people, and that changes everything. [1/7] osf.io/preprints/ps...
Figure 1 presents two plots. Panel (a) displays the percentage of donors in each wealth rank that contributed to each of the six campaigns (i.e., Democratic and Republican nominees in 2012, 2016, and 2020).Footnote 17 Panel (b) displays the per capita dollars from each wealth bin, by campaign (including those who donate nothing). As Figure 1 shows, the association between wealth and contributions is approximately exponential. The wealthiest are much more likely to contribute, and the wealth gradient is even steeper in dollars because the top 0.1% contribute very large sums. This is one of the most robust findings in the campaign finance literature, but the figure demonstrates it with considerably more precision. By measuring wealth independently of contribution size, we avoid misattributing smaller contributions to non-wealthy donors and underestimating wealthy dollars. Most relevant to our analysis, Figure 1 compares the wealth gradients for Trump versus other candidates. In 2016, compared to other candidates, Trump’s wealth gradient is far flatter, because Trump elicited far fewer wealthy contributors and per capita dollars. For example, among the top 0.1%, Trump’s donors and per capita dollars represent about one third of Romney’s. While Trump did worse than all other candidates among nearly all wealth groups, that deficit was larger among the wealthy. In short, in 2016, wealthy donations to Trump are low compared to other presidential candidates. In 2020, Trump’s performance among the wealthy improved considerably over 2016 (Figure 1). Consider donation rates (Panel a). Among the wealthiest 0.1%, for example, Trump roughly doubled his rate, though he still significantly lagged Biden and Romney. He did even better in per capita dollars (Panel b) than in rates. Open access link to paper: http://cup.org/4cfm0Az
The wealthy dominate political contributions. Our study shows the top 0.1% donate 10–15× more frequently than the bottom 90%. The gradient isn’t subtle, it’s exponential. cup.org/4cfm0Az
An analysis of over 14 million social media posts from accounts in Canada found that 87% of conspiratorial claims come from just 100 influencers.
This minority of users impacts politics, influencing what people view as normal and leads to self-censoring to avoid attacks from conspiracy theorists.
Sycophantic AI distorts reality by returning responses that are biased to reinforce existing beliefs.
"sycophantic AI distorts belief, manufacturing certainty where there should be doubt."
Unbiased sampling produces discovery rates 5X higher! arxiv.org/pdf/2602.14270
This creates false perceptions of social norms and stereotypes, creating a funhouse mirror effect www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
The more active users are on social media, the more polarized they are!
The opinions of the these extreme users are filling your newsfeed, but they are not representative of most citizens or even most social media users--which are far less polarized! arxiv.org/pdf/2603.021...
We noticed this in our new global social media RCT study: One of the biggest effects we saw in our initial data was that taking a break from social media significantly improved sleep quality.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
A new paper in JAME revealed a growing sleep deficit among high school students, which impacts cognitive ability and depressive symptoms.
There is a need for systemic change, such as "later school start times or reductions in bedtime digital media"
Elon Musk’s X is the epicentre of this conspiracy content,
www.nationalobserver.com/2026/02/25/n...
These extremists create what we call "the funhouse mirror" effect of social media, where a small number of users create misperceptions of social norms. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
An analysis of over 14 million social media posts from accounts in Canada found that 87% of conspiratorial claims come from just 100 influencers.
This minority of users impacts politics, influencing what people view as normal and leads to self-censoring to avoid attacks from conspiracy theorists.
Public health chaos and research funding cuts are inspiring nationwide pro-science protests against the Trump administration
Excited to share new work with Yaming Cao @zew.de and @kayaez.bsky.social @cu-cardiffbusiness.bsky.social published in Labour Economics! Students with gritty peers in high school are more likely to succeed in the labor market. Gritty peers are pivotal for #FirstGen students. doi.org/10.1016/j.la...
After nearly a decade measuring American public support for political violence, @nathankalmoe.bsky.social and I have published a somewhat comprehensive guide to measuring these attitudes. This includes historical comparisons and responses to common critiques. doi.org/10.1093/poq/...
Agreed—I had the same thought.
The U.S. is the only place we surveyed where more adults describe the morality of others living in the country as bad than good.
Canada is on the opposiite end of the spectrum--they overwhelmingly see their neighbors as morally good
pewrsr.ch/4ubNwaM
![This figure shows the percentage of respondents in 35 countries across the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) and the Integrated Values Survey (IVS) who rate “hard work” as more important than structural factors for getting ahead in life. Dark blue diamonds (IVS) and dark green circles (ISSP) represent survey year averages. Light blue and light green lines plot the trend in meritocratic beliefs across the five-year cohorts, on the basis of locally weighted least squares regressions on the cohort-country means (light blue diamonds [IVS] and light green circles [ISSP]). IVS data show whether respondents rate hard work (1) or luck and connections (0) as the more important factor for achieving a better life. ISSP data show the share of respondents who rate hard work as more important than “knowing the right people” and “coming from a wealthy family” for getting ahead in life.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ndvutufhi4t2mbjmmod2xe4e/bafkreie5twmfrtznixh33w3b567m5s5kk22wzdrlxycmjifnnplcb3rosi)
This figure shows the percentage of respondents in 35 countries across the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) and the Integrated Values Survey (IVS) who rate “hard work” as more important than structural factors for getting ahead in life. Dark blue diamonds (IVS) and dark green circles (ISSP) represent survey year averages. Light blue and light green lines plot the trend in meritocratic beliefs across the five-year cohorts, on the basis of locally weighted least squares regressions on the cohort-country means (light blue diamonds [IVS] and light green circles [ISSP]). IVS data show whether respondents rate hard work (1) or luck and connections (0) as the more important factor for achieving a better life. ISSP data show the share of respondents who rate hard work as more important than “knowing the right people” and “coming from a wealthy family” for getting ahead in life.
The figure shows annualized change scores (subtracting the earliest from the latest value and standardizing by the number of years/cohorts). This figure is only included in the supplementary material.
How has the public belief in meritocracy changed over time? We address this question in our new Data Viz (@sociusjournal.bsky.social) by examining trends in popular beliefs across cohorts and periods in 35 countries, based on two datasets.
🔗 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23780231261425841
🚨 My first solo preprint is out!
I study Grok's fact-checking on X and show:
📌 Professional fact-checkers are a major source of Grok.
📌 Grok becomes more accurate as more articles from fact-checkers become available.
🔗 ssrn.com/abstract=626...
Karpf: "If you think Claude Code is a better social scientist than you, then you’re probably right. But that means, at some point, you stopped trying to answer interesting/puzzling questions and started trying to win the publish-the-most-articles race." davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/can-ai-rep...
Why some Gen Z's embrace traditional gender roles: While young men are being taught that the way to happiness is wealth, cars, girls and physical strength, there are women being taught that the way to happiness is a really traditional idea of femininity.
www.bbc.com/news/article...
Employees who are impressed by vague corporate-speak like “synergistic leadership,” or “growth-hacking paradigms” struggle with decision-making.
The Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale measures susceptibility to impressive-but-empty organizational rhetoric. news.cornell.edu/stories/2026...
Perceived Political Bias in LLMs Reduces Persuasive Abilities
A new paper (N = 2144) finds that short messages indicating that an LLM is biased against one's political party reduces it's ability to persuade by 28%.
arxiv.org/abs/2602.18092
New paper out in Science Advances! I'm really (really) proud of this one. Let's get into it. doi.org/10.1126/scia...
This is what state censorship looks like:
I'm a big fan of embedding pro-social design principles in technology.
We have found that adding a "misleading count" button to a social media platform reduces the likelihood people will share false information by 25%
We could make healthier technology: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...
