Curtis Puryear

New preprint! We developed new measurement tools to examine moralization in ~2B Twitter/X & Reddit posts and ~5M traditional media texts. Key finding: moralization increased markedly on social media from 2013-2021; more than traditional media; associated with multiple user dynamics 🧵👇

Do ethnic minority interest parties grow through programs, or people? Schaaf, Otjes & Spierings show that DENK’s support in the Netherlands stems mainly from personal & religious networks, while online ties matter less. #ComparativePolitics Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Intervening on a central node in a network likely does little given that its connected neighbors will "flip it back" immediately. Happy to see this position supported now. "Change is most likely [..] if it spreads first among relatively poorly connected nodes." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Depolarization is not "a scalable solution for reducing societal-level conflict.... achieving lasting depolarization will likely require....moving beyond individual-level treatments to address the elite behaviors and structural incentives that fuel partisan conflict" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

I mean, we are living in two different realities now, and this really hasn't always been the case.

New preprint 🚨 Cognitive bottlenecks make LLMs more morally aligned with people 🧠🤖 We made AI “think” more like people by narrowing its focus to a few key moral cues. This AI better predicted people’s moral judgments & was more trusted. 🧵 ⬇️

Ever stared at a table of regression coefficients & wondered what you're doing with your life? Very excited to share this gentle introduction to another way of making sense of statistical models (w @vincentab.bsky.social) Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf... Website: j-rohrer.github.io/marginal-psy...

The CHES EU team has published a new research note in @electoralstudies.bsky.social describing some trends across the 25 years now covered by our trend file and exploring two new items included in the 2024 wave of the survey: doi.org/10.1016/j.el... Here’s a summary thread: 1/

We know that a consensus of opinions is persuasive, but how reliable is this effect across people and types of consensus, and are there any kinds of claims where people care less about what other people think? This is what we tested in our new(ish) paper in @psychscience.bsky.social

I have a new article out at @polstudies.bsky.social. In "Electoral Hope", I make the case that supposedly irrational "wishful thinking" is actually a crucial part of how voters make rational sense of their role in democracies. OA link: doi.org/10.1177/0032...

👅Can moral language boost pro-immigrant messages and be as effective as anti-immigrant messages? ➡️ @kristinabsimonsen.bsky.social shows that pro-immigrant actors are not always bound to lose against the anti-immigrant side www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView #OpenAccess

🚨 New paper in Science Advances @science.org Can changing how we argue about politics online improve the quality of replies we get? T HeideJorgensen, @gregoryeady.bsky.social & I use an LLM to manipulate counter-arguments to see how people respond to different approaches to arguments Thread 🧵1/n

I have a new paper on "The Psychology of Virality" with @steverathje.bsky.social We explain how similar psychological processes (eg preferential attention to negativity, social motives, etc.) drive the spread of information across online and offline contexts: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Really enjoyed my conversation with @chrislhayes.bsky.social about how protests can shape public opinion. He also generously invited me to share a bit of my personal story which helps put the research in context. — Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w... — Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/2Byd...

English language is filled with trait words like “caring” and “smart” These words are the currency of personality/social psych, yet key questions remain about their evolution, function, and structure We take on these questions in a preprint led by @yuanzeliu.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/ps...

Thanks to everybody who chimed in! I arrived at the conclusion that (1) there's a lot of interesting stuff about interactions and (2) the figure I was looking for does not exist. So, I made it myself! Here's a simple illustration of how to control for confounding in interactions:>

Is America an oligarchy? Bernie and AOC say yes, touring the country to “Fight Oligarchy.” Other Democratic leaders aren’t so sure. With the debate heating up, I wanted to share a few insights from our recent paper on who’s funding American politics. 🧵 cup.org/4cfm0Az

Were wealthy donors key to Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020? I'm thrilled to announce a new paper in which Sean Kates, Eric Manning, Tali Mendelberg and I analyzed data on 108 million (!) homeowner-voters. See “Plutopopulism: Wealth and Trump’s Financial Base.” Open access: cup.org/4cfm0Az 🧵 1/

New study analyzed 145 years of U.S. congressional speeches and found a clear shift away from evidence-based language toward more intuition-based language—especially since the mid-1970s. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Really proud of this new work out @psychscience.bsky.social. Led by the amazing but bluesky-less Amanda Geiser and with @deborahsmall.bsky.social. We show that when comparing moral wrongs, people are (much) more willing to “scale up” than to “scale down” condemnation and punishment…

The most successful person-to-person politically persuasive messages are those that bridge identity divides, use perspective taking, and incorporate personal narratives, finds @naunovmartin.bsky.social Ruedo-Cañòn @tjryan02.bsky.social in @thejop.bsky.social www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

If you want to see more of our data on longitudinal trends in moralization, I'm giving a symposium talk tomorrow morning at 8:00AM in Four Seasons Ballroom 1 #SPSP2025

@curtispuryear.bsky.social a study of a decade of twitter posts shows and new measure of moralization shows that moralization has substantially increased over time (d = .45!). Driven by both self selection and within-user increase over time! #comppsych #spsp2025 (also stay tuned for this paper😎)

👀New preprint! In 3 prereg experiments we study how engagement-based algorithms amplify ingroup, moral and emotional (IME) content in ways that disrupt social norm learning (and test one solution!) w/ @joshcjackson.bsky.social and my amazing lab managers @merielcd.bsky.social & Silvan Baier 🧵👇

Ok, thread time. Closed-ended survey responses are efficient and easy to analyze, but limit what respondents can say. Open-ended responses are useful for letting respondents answer with more depth in their own words (as opposed to yours).

Distrust unconditionally pushes people away from the status quo, but does not unconditionally pull people towards any alternative model. Rather than technocracy and authoritarianism, political distrust particularly stimulates support for direct democracy link.springer.com/article/10.1...

My year started with this article coming out, so it's nice to see that it now is the most read on @europeansocieties.bsky.social. It's about the common sense political reasoning of the majority of citizens who don't care too much about politics. More below. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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