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Almog Simchon

@almogsi.bsky.social
2.7K followers 754 following 44 posts

Assistant Professor at Ben-Gurion University. Computional social psychologist. Studying social media, misinformation, polarization and language

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Reposted by Almog Simchon
Alan Jagolinzer @jagolinzer.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
@lewan.bsky.social, Chair in Cognitive Psychology, University of Bristol, discusses his paper “Rhetorical features from social media predict real-world violent outcomes of manifestos." 2026 Cambridge Disinformation Summit. youtu.be/xz2zMQLqFOY?...
youtu.be
Prof Stephan Lewandowsky research presentation on how social media rhetoric predicts real violence
YouTube video by Cambridge Disinformation Summit
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
I was really looking forward to attending the Summit this year, but couldn't make it due to recent events. Fortunately for the lucky audience, @lewan.bsky.social stepped in to present the project (led by @louisteitelbaum.bsky.social and in collaboration w/ Emily Saltz). Hoping to be there next year!
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Shachar Hochman @hochmanshachar.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
Our paper is finally out in Cognition! 🎉 We introduce the "CLIP task"—a computerized paradigm for measuring numerical bias in adults: when number and physical size both matter, do you spontaneously rely more on numbers or on physical size?
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Louis Teitelbaum @louisteitelbaum.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
If you're a psychologist working with text data in R, this package is for you.
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
This project wouldn’t have come together without the amazing team -- Tomer Zipori and @louisteitelbaum.bsky.social for the heavy lifting and computational analysis, @lewan.bsky.social for his insight, and @profsanderlinden.bsky.social whose vision made this possible. Truly grateful for this!
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
An opportunity to work with the best!
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Shachar Hochman @hochmanshachar.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
1/3 New post up! 📝 I took the workhorse 🔧 of binary modeling—logistic regression—and gave it a Bayesian tune-up using a Kaggle SMS-spam dataset.
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
Our new #rstats embeddings tutorial is now published in Psychological Methods! Led by the one and only @louisteitelbaum.bsky.social
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Gabriel Braun @gabrielbraun.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
For my first BlueSky post I want to share this freshly published paper in PNAS @pnas.org! We show how belief and disbelief shape narrative processing in the brain, not just as opposites of a continuum, but as distinct effects, including a cool truth/belief bias. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
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Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.uk · 06/06/2025
My latest column in Science went up yesterday doi.org/10.1126/scie... . I argue that “Knowledge is power”—or at least it was when Sir Francis Bacon coined this phrase in the 16th century. 1/n
doi.org
Public health suffers when those in power dismiss knowledge
“Knowledge is power”—or at least it was when Sir Francis Bacon coined this phrase in the 16th century. In today’s world, we frequently encounter a different variant of this philosophy, perhaps best de...
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Michael Bang Petersen @m-b-petersen.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
This statement from the NSF is insane. Science is, in essence, designed to separate the true from the false. Understanding how falsehoods spread is key to the scientific endeavor. It is not a violation of free speech to be proven wrong.
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Only @lewan.bsky.social can distill four years of research into such an insightful 🧵. Proud to have co-authored these works and especially grateful to Segun Aroyehun for leading our latest paper. Collaborated with the fantastic team: @janalasser.bsky.social @fabiocarrella.bsky.social @dgarcia.eu
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Shachar Hochman @hochmanshachar.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
1/6 Hello Bluesky! 👋 Excited to join this community and share my new blog. First post: Using Bayesian hierarchical models to rescue "unreliable" cognitive tasks, with the dot-probe task as my case study. cogpsychreserve.netlify.app/posts/dotpro...
cogpsychreserve.netlify.app
The Dot-Probe Task is Probably Fine – CogPsych Reserve
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Tal Yatziv @talyatziv.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
We are delighted to invite applications for an open-rank, tenure-track position at the developmental psychology track within the Department of Psychology at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. For more information, follow the link: bgu-academic-recruitment.my.site.com/Recruiters/V...
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Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.uk · 06/02/2025
My latest column just appeared in Science, entitled "Free speech, fact-checking, and the right to accurate information”. (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) I use one of President Trump’s first executive orders to unpack the terrain between misinformation and claims to free speech 1/n
science.org
Free speech, fact checking, and the right to accurate information
True to his campaign promises, on 20 January 2025, US President Donald Trump signed a broad range of Executive Orders, the scope of which ranged from renaming the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America” t...
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
Grateful to be a coauthor on this paper led by @fabiocarrella.bsky.social , and part of this terrific team
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
Steve has summarized more than four years of work into this thread. Interested in microtargeting? Check it out!
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
Our paper is finally out!
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Stefan Herzog @stefanherzog.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
🌟🧠💪📝 #BOOSTING: Empowering citizens with behavioral science New, freely available paper in Annual Review of Psychology. PDF: tinyurl.com/boosting2025 For more: scienceofboosting.org @arc-mpib.bsky.social @mpib-berlin.bsky.social @annualreviews.bsky.social #policy #behavioralscience 1/ 🧵👇
The image is the cover page of an article from the "Annual Review of Psychology" titled "Boosting: Empowering Citizens with Behavioral Science" by Stefan M. Herzog and Ralph Hertwig. It features a brief abstract, keywords, and publication details. The abstract outlines the concept of "boosting" as a behavioral public policy that emphasizes empowering individuals to make informed decisions, in contrast to "nudging," which subtly steers behavior. The abstract reads:

Behavioral public policy came to the fore with the introduction of nudging, which aims to steer behavior while maintaining freedom of choice. Responding to critiques of nudging (e.g., that it does not promote agency and relies on benevolent choice architects), other behavioral policy approaches focus on empowering citizens. Here we review boosting, a behavioral policy approach that aims to foster people's agency, self-control, and ability to make informed decisions. It is grounded in evidence from behavioral science showing that human decision making is not as notoriously flawed as the nudging approach assumes. We argue that addressing the challenges of our time—such as climate change, pandemics, and the threats to liberal democracies and human autonomy posed by digital technologies and choice architectures—calls for fostering capable and engaged citizens as a first line of response to complement slower, systemic approaches.List with summary points:

1. Behavioral public policy garnered widespread attention with the introduction of nudging, which aims to steer behavior while maintaining freedom of choice.
2. Criticisms of nudging include that it does not promote agency and competences and that it relies—overly optimistically—on the presence of benevolent choice architects.
3. The proliferation of environments threatening people's autonomy, the slow pace of systemic approaches to tackling societal issues, and the intrinsic benefits of empowerment make empowering citizens an indispensable objective of behavioral public policy.
4. Boosting is a behavioral public policy approach to empowerment grounded in evidence from behavioral science that shows that humans’ boundedly rational decision making is not as flawed as the nudging approach assumes.
5. Boosts are interventions that improve people's competencies to make informed choices that conform to their goals, preferences, and desires.
6. In self-nudging boosts, people learn to use architectural changes in their proximate choice environment to regulate their own behavior—that is, they are empowered to adapt their own choice environments.
7. There are boosts to foster core competences in many domains, including finance, online environments, and health, as well as broader, overarching areas, such as motivation, risk, and judgment and decision making. Boosts should be part of a policy mix that also includes system-level approaches.
8. When implementing boosts, policy makers need to avoid the trap of individualizing responsibility and to be mindful that, due to differences in cognition and motivation, inequalities in the desirable effects across boosted individuals may emerge.
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Maayan Trzewik @maayantrzewik.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
✨ Excited to share our new preprint! ✨ After years of work in @nivreggev.bsky.social 's SCMB lab, we proudly present the Israeli Face Database (IFD)! Special thanks to co-leader @mayanna.bsky.social, @talmoran.bsky.social, and everyone who made this possible. 🙌 🧵 A thread:
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Sander van der Linden @profsanderlinden.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
In this new article in American Psychologist we respond to critics in detail and clarify two key points for the field; (1) The prevalence of misinformation in society is substantial when properly defined. (2) Misinformation causally impacts attitudes and behaviors. psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
I’ve been eagerly awaiting this one for far too long. Outstanding work by @cabels18.bsky.social, @kiiahuttunen.bsky.social, @lewan.bsky.social and Ralph Hertwig. Dedicated to my fellow Israelis, with a glimmer of hope that we might still manage to dodge that bullet
cambridge.org
Dodging the autocratic bullet: enlisting behavioural science to arrest democratic backsliding | Behavioural Public Policy | Cambridge Core
Dodging the autocratic bullet: enlisting behavioural science to arrest democratic backsliding
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
What an amazing project. So happy to see this finally out. Kudos Inon and team!
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 15/04/2024
Very excited to share a new textbook I am working on (led by Louis Teitelbaum). It's called Data Science for Psychology: Natural Language, and it covers text analysis and social media research w/ example code in R ds4psych.com #css #rstats
ds4psych.com
Data Science for Psychology: Natural Language
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 27/03/2024
🚨New paper alert! 🚨 Michael Gilead & I put forward three principles of a psychologically informed approach to prediction models psycnet.apa.org/record/2024-...
psycnet.apa.org
APA PsycNet
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 23/02/2024
Happy to see our piece published in SciAm on GenAI and microtargeting w/ @lewan.bsky.social and Matthew Edwards www.scientificamerican.com/article/poli...
scientificamerican.com
Political Ads Can Target Your Personality. Here's What Could Go Wrong
This banner year for elections worldwide may witness the arrival of advertising tailored to your personality
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Sander van der Linden @profsanderlinden.bsky.social · 31/01/2024
A highly scalable "manipulation machine". Personalized political ads are more persuasive & can be automated on a large scale with AI/chatGPT. Impressive new work from @almogsi.bsky.social @lewan.bsky.social 👏 academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ad...?
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 31/01/2024
New paper alert! Now on PNAS Nexus: The persuasive effects of political microtargeting in the age of generative AI w/ @lewan.bsky.social and Matthew Edwards doi.org/10.1093/pnas... [1/8]
doi.org
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 12/10/2023
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Ross Dahlke @rossdahlke.bsky.social · 27/09/2023
What is honesty and truth? New work from Lasser, Aroyehun, Carrella, @almogsi.bsky.social Garcia & Lewandowsky finds that the dissemination of misinformation by US politicians (Republicans) is connected to an alternative understanding of honesty and truth nature.com/articles/s41...
Fig 1. The figure depicts the distribution of keywords on a textual scatterplotFig 2. Belief-speaking and fact-speaking similarity in tweets by members of the US Congress for the period 2011-2022 shown separately for members of each partyFig 3. Relation of information quality with belief speaking and fact speaking
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Almog Simchon @almogsi.bsky.social · 26/09/2023
New Paper Alert! 2 yrs after I finished my PhD and just 2 wks before I start a new chapter as an Assistant Professor, it’s finally out! My final dissertation paper. Let's dive into the relationship between personal agency and linguistic agency www.nature.com/articles/s44... THREAD 1/7
nature.com
A computational text analysis investigation of the relation between personal and linguistic agency -...
People’s use of linguistic agency is indicative of their personal sense of agency. Lack of control over one’s actions, low social rank as well as depression are associated with higher use of passi...
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Opinion Today @opiniontoday.bsky.social · 26/09/2023
From alternative conceptions of honesty to alternative facts in communications by US politicians (Jana Lasser @almogsi.bsky.social, et al, Nature Human Behaviour) www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
From alternative conceptions of honesty to alternative facts in communications by US politicians - N...
By examining patterns in public-facing communications of US politicians, the authors identify two honesty-related concepts: belief speaking and fact speaking. They find that for Republicans, but not D...
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Christopher Barrie @cbarrie.bsky.social · 24/09/2023
Here is a *very* minimal R package for BlueSky built on top of the code provided by @andrew.heiss.phd. It can only post right now but we can add functions as API develops github.com/cjbarrie/blu...
github.com
GitHub - cjbarrie/blueskyr
Contribute to cjbarrie/blueskyr development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Niv Reggev ניב רגב نيڤ ريچيڤ @nivreggev.bsky.social · 06/09/2023
Interested in #socialpsyc #neuroskyence and looking for a post-doc? Applications for the 2024-25 Azrieli Int’l #Postdoctoral #Fellowship are OPEN! Apply by Nov 15 to be considered for a postdoc position in Israel – available to candidates worldwide. Learn more: bit.ly/3YSBmV7
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