Jay Van Bavel, PhD

18 May

People prefer to use “sycophantic” AI systems that reinforce their pre-existing beliefs. In a new paper (n=7,227), we found that people enjoyed interacting with sycophantic AI chatbots more than interacting with neutral chatbots or “disagreeable” chatbots that challenged their beliefs.

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People with smaller social networks are more likely to use chatbots for companionship This is associated with lower well-being, especially when interactions are intensive & self disclosuring This is based on an analysis of 464,687 messages from 237 users www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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It's striking how similar some of the patterns are for AI and social media.

@caulfieldtim.bsky.social

20h

Shared national identity shapes grant reviews more than gender An analysis of 37,073 grant applications reveals that reviewers who share an applicant’s country of work or citizenship award higher scores than reviewers with no such match. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Jay Van Bavel, PhD reposted

Timothy Caulfield

⚠️ Social media = polarization machine ‼️ 👉 Extreme ideologues post more 👉 People are more likely to post extreme positions "...robust evidence that online discourse severely over-represents extreme perspectives" = "prediction of false polarization." Important preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

AI Reviews Dominate Human Peer Reviews AI-generated article reviews are now better, by every measure the authors could construct, than reviews written by well-compensated human experts and judged to be of unusually high quality by journal editors and authors. Thoughts? gking.harvard.edu/peerless/

Issues in Science and Technology

Roughly 30% of PhD dissertations in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in the United States this year contained AI-generated text PhDs with AI abstracts were 17% less likely to be employed in academia than were graduates who did not use AI. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Jay Van Bavel, PhD reposted

@issuesinst.bsky.social

“As the rest of us doomscroll through a mix of hot takes, misinformation, and moral outrage, we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of what most people believe,” @jayvanbavel.bsky.social writes.

issues.orgBeware the Funhouse Mirror“Social media acts more like a funhouse mirror that creates a distorted reflection of society,” argues Jay Van Bavel.

Should we focus on finding the best leaders or avoiding the worst? We found that the top 100 business schools emphasize good leaders far more than preventing bad leaderss But in 9.9M Glassdoor reviews people mention their leader 70% more in the negative than positive way osf.io/preprints/ps...

We also have causal evidence across 40 countries (N = 51,433) revealing that people were more willing to sacrifice time and money to avoid a bad leader than obtain a good leader (across both morality and competence). People care more about avoiding the worst leaders than getting the best.

osf.ioAvoiding the worst leaders is more important than getting the bestSociety and organizations invest heavily in selecting the best leaders 1, and existing research shows a positivity bias by focusing on the bright side of leadership 2–4. Yet, according to Popper 5, th...

The central question of institutional design may not be who should rule, but how to prevent bad leaders from doing too much damage. osf.io/preprints/ps... This research was led by @hallgeirsjastad.bsky.social and @jareef.bsky.social Martuza

We also found that negative leader mentions predicted company ratings 1.5X more strongly. A bad-leader mention was also associated with 30% higher odds of leaving a company within the first year among former employees, whereas a good-leader mention is associated with only 5% lower odds of leaving.

powerofusnewsletter.comHow Can a Group Be Right When Everyone Is Wrong?The surprising science of why thinking together can make us smarter.

There is a myth that when people join a group they lose their minds. Rather than losing their minds, people operate with greater rationality. Even when every member is wrong a group can be right. In fact, groups are about 4X as smart as individuals: www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/the-myth-o...

The #stanfordprisonexperiment is now a reality show on Netflix For 50 years, it has been understood to show that assigning people to a toxic role will, on its own, unlock the human capacity to treat others with cruelty. history.com/articles/sta... But that's not the whole story

When we examined material in the Stanford archives, we found compellingthe evidence that, rather than guards conforming to role of their own accord, experimenters directly encouraged Guards to adopt roles and act tough, consistent with identity leadership pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31380665/

The number of people writing dissertations in the humanities and social sciences has collapsed. I'd wager that we will see a similar trend in psychology and other fields before long. Cuts in funding, the tight academic job market, and AI are cratering grad programs.

I'm giving a talk at Lectures on Tap about "Why Outrage Goes Viral: Influence, Identity, Polarization" in New York City (Nov 16 @ 6:30) Get tickets here to attend: www.eventbrite.com/e/lectures-o...

If people think a chatbot has a political bias, it becomes less effective AI chatbots effectively corrected misconceptions, but a short message indicating that the model was biased against the users political party reduced this correction by 28% and trust in AI academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Demographics are not destiny Party membership matters far more than demographics when people are choosing political candidates But party labels matter less when voters know where candidates stand. And policy alignment can even trump party membership alexandercoppock.com/coppock_etal...

Rather than saying "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays", people react best to inclusive greetings with all three cultural holidays mentioned (e.g., “Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Joyous Kwanzaa”) This message elicited the highest feelings of belonging www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Two wrongs make a right when it comes to incivility Retaliatory incivility (i.e., incivility in response to someone else's incivility) is seen as less morally condemnable than initial incivility. This may create a vicious circle of conflict www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

theguardian.comThe problem with telling people the world is endingIn the face of terrible crises, it can feel right to shock people into action. But what if that has the opposite effect?

Is a random human peer better than a highly supportive chatbot in reducing loneliness over time? This study offers evidence that texting daily with a random human peer may be more effective in alleviating loneliness than texting with a highly supportive chatbot www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Jay Van Bavel, PhD reposted

Nathan Ross

@n-j-ross.bsky.social

Broad public demand for change is necessary for the scale of reform and investment needed to tackle climate change. There are many aspects of behavioural psychology that are relevant to engaging less-engaged, nervous audiences successfully, some of which are set out in this good thread ⬇️

Jay Van Bavel, PhD@jayvanbavel.bsky.social

These days, it’s easy to succumb to hopelessness. But I explain why doomerism can lead to paralysis in a new article I wrote for The Guardian The problem with doomerism isn’t necessarily that the risks are exaggerated, but that it may create a self-fulfilling prophecy and create helplessness

Jay Van Bavel, PhD reposted

David Mair

@davidmair4.bsky.social

“When people hear messages designed to appeal to our fears, they can be moved to take action. But this only tends to work as a one-off, and only then when the messages convey a sense of efficacy – a belief that it’s still possible to make a difference.” Preach @jayvanbavel.bsky.social

Jay Van Bavel, PhD@jayvanbavel.bsky.social

theguardian.comThe problem with telling people the world is endingIn the face of terrible crises, it can feel right to shock people into action. But what if that has the opposite effect?

powerofusnewsletter.comWhat Actually Makes a Strong Connection?Adam Grant on chemistry, values, conflict, and the relationships that matter most.

"On average, it takes 50-100 hours to make a friend. But some people manage to do it in just a few hours or even minutes. They skip small talk and go straight to deep talk." We interviewed @adamgrant.bsky.social about his new book "VIBE": www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/the-secret...

To make connections: 1 Join a group. One of the best ways to boost well-being is to join a club that reflects your goals or values 2 Introduce your friends. When our friends know each other, we develop a stronger sense of community. 3 Intensify your interactions. the faster we bond together.

theguardian.comThe problem with telling people the world is endingIn the face of terrible crises, it can feel right to shock people into action. But what if that has the opposite effect?

theguardian.comThe problem with telling people the world is endingIn the face of terrible crises, it can feel right to shock people into action. But what if that has the opposite effect?

We also found that doom and gloom messages are the most effective at getting people to spread it on the internet or social media. But like other fear appeals, it fails to inspire real action. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

theguardian.comThe problem with telling people the world is endingIn the face of terrible crises, it can feel right to shock people into action. But what if that has the opposite effect?

If we want to motivate people in the face of dire threats, we must give them a reason to hope. Without that, we are destined to doomscroll while the world burns. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

theguardian.comThe problem with telling people the world is endingIn the face of terrible crises, it can feel right to shock people into action. But what if that has the opposite effect?

theguardian.comThe problem with telling people the world is endingIn the face of terrible crises, it can feel right to shock people into action. But what if that has the opposite effect?

A big problem for us now is that the modern information ecosystem tends to reinforce negativity. For decades, a core principle in the news business has been “if it bleeds, it leads”. This principle now dominates what you see online. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

We looked at traffic to news stories on Upworthy, a website that became famous for conducting A/B tests of headlines to use the most engaging headline. We analysed 22,743 of these mini-experiments and found that each additional negative word in a headline increased clicks by 2.3%.

theguardian.comThe problem with telling people the world is endingIn the face of terrible crises, it can feel right to shock people into action. But what if that has the opposite effect?

When people hear messages designed to appeal to our fears, they can be moved to take action. But this only tends to work once, and when the messages conveys it’s possible to make a difference. if people are inundated with scary and overwhelming stories about the climate or AI, they tune out.

Collective deliberation leads to large, reductons in affective polarization Deliberation requires that people use good information to “weigh” competing arguments through civil and diverse discussion The impact was strongest among the most extreme www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

To be clear, this paper was published during the Biden administration.

Polarized teams produce better work on Wikipedia Research from the University of Chicago of more than 200,000 Wikipedia pages finds that collaborations bridging the political spectrum produce higher-quality work than articles edited by moderate or one-sided teams. news.uchicago.edu/story/politi...

Wikipedia pages on politics, social issues and science written by editors with a broader range of political affiliation rank better on Wikipedia’s quality scale, because of diverse perspectives, increased debate and&appeals to community guidelines

Social media creates a funhouse mirror that distorts public opinion I have a new article explaining how social media amplifies extreme voices, fuels moral outrage, and makes us think other people are far more hostile and polarized than they really are. issues.org/social-media...

This creates the illusion that society is far more divided than it really is But our research finds that most Americans actually agree about what they want from social media: less hatred and misinformation, more accurate and uplifting content, and greater control over their algorithms

The challenge is to build platforms that better reflect what people actually believe. This is what people tell us they want.

Consider a few striking findings: -0.1% of accounts spread 80% of the misinformation -Just 3% of active accounts produce 33% of toxic content -Outgroup animosity increases the odds of a post being shared by 67%

People with the most extreme opinions are also the most likely to weigh in online, creating a distorted picture of public opinion. This small but vocal minority dominates online conversations while more moderate voices remain silent.

Jay Van Bavel, PhD reposted

Andreas Bjerre-Nielsen

@andbjn.bsky.social

Our large-scale study of phone bans just came out in Science. We randomized phone-free classrooms for 16,000+ students across 10 institutions in Odisha, India. Students deposited phones in a box at the start of each class, for a full semester.

88% of voters are extremely concerned about government corruption. It is now the #1 concern, according to a Fox News Poll. Almost everyone can see how blatent it is.

Sexual haarassment rates are higher in climates that create a perception of tolerance of harassment Organizations where harassment occurs see reduced employee satisfaction, lower organizational commitment, increased absenteeism, and deteriorating relationships pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29894119/

University whistleblowers who have reported professional malpractice are bullied & isolated, with no support from colleagues Misconduct involving senior academics must be investigated by independent experts, rather than by the universities that employ them www.nature.com/articles/d41...

youtube.comThe Psychology of Belonging: How Groups Shape Who We Are | With Jay Van Bavel Ph.D.YouTube video by Power & Impact

I discuss 'The Psychology of Belonging: How Groups Shape Who We Are" Groups can bring us together to accomplish things none of us could achieve alone. They can also fuel prejudice, division & conflict. Our groups shape who we trust and how we respond to others www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqBy...

Initial actions to promote diversity can be followed by decisions “blind” to candidates’ demographics This intervention reduces concerns about a diversity–meritocracy trade-off in workplace hiring & grad admissions psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-...

A key part of academic success is financial support It's amazing how much variation there is in terms of funding across countries. The average PhD student in Denmark makes more than a new Assistant Professor/Lecturer in the UK!

Jay Van Bavel, PhD reposted

Roni Porat

@roniporat.bsky.social

3 Sept

Excited to be co-editing a special issue of @psychscience.bsky.social with @vishnusreekumar.bsky.social: From Lab to Life: Psychological Science in the Real World. We’re looking for research that takes psych theories out of the lab and into the wild.