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Andy Vonasch

@andyvonasch.bsky.social
619 followers 1.6K following 36 posts

Senior lecturer in social psychology at the University of Canterbury. I study moral judgment and decisions

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Reposted by Andy Vonasch
Katie Hinde @mammalssuck.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
"For too long, the university has ignored the wisdom of the donor class and hired based on academic excellence. Regrettably, this has led to the underrepresentation of discredited viewpoints in elite higher education." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wer...
mcsweeneys.net
We’re Diversifying the University by Hiring More Crackpots
“For too long, the university has ignored the wisdom of the donor class and hired based on academic excellence. Regrettably, this has led to the underreprese...
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Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 06/12/2025
Study after study shows campaign ads barely move the needle. So where does money’s real power come from? I ranked the five ways money corrupts politics—from least to most corrosive. What I’ve learned from 15 years of tracking political money:
open.substack.com
Money Doesn't Buy Elections. It Does Something Worse.
Campaign ads barely move the needle. The real influence is hiding in plain sight.
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koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
If the shopkeeper demanded 1p more than the advertised price fur a pint of milk, most people would not just pay up. They’d challenge the seller, perhaps even refuse to buy and pay even more elsewhere. Isn’t that odd? My weekly post suggests an answer: buff.ly/jVboMjQ
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Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
New postdoc position at Cornell! This is a bit of a unique one: It's a teaching postdoc focused on integrating active learning strategies into psychology courses (including one of my own). Should be a lot of fun! Apply here: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31738
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Andy Vonasch @andyvonasch.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Come see my talk at SPSP tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be talking about why it’s suspicious to offer to pay people to eat cookies.
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koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
We are quick to condemn people as irrational for not choosing the most generous offer, but cool research by @andyvonasch.bsky.social et al suggests this is overlooking how people suspect ‘phantom costs’, eg in very high pay offers, or very cheap products or services: buff.ly/bVPs9ln
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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
Only a small % of people engage in toxic activity online, but they’re responsible for a disproportionate share of hostile or misleading content on nearly every platform Because super-users are so active, they dominate our collective impression of the internet www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...
theguardian.com
Are a few people ruining the internet for the rest of us?
Why does the online world seem so toxic compared with normal life? Our research shows that a small number of divisive accounts could be responsible – and offers a way out
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Bart Bonikowski @bartbonikowski.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
Essential reading (by @jasonstanley.bsky.social) for every American. The media, aided by a handful of reactionary academics and compliant university administrations, has sold the public a huge lie about wokeness on college campuses, enabling the extreme right. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
The mainstream media has enabled Trump’s war on universities | Jason Stanley
For the past decade, the US press has fueled a moral panic over leftists on campus while failing to report on the right’s assault
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Andy Vonasch @andyvonasch.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
Moral Saurus learns the three goals of philosophy from Preston Stovall youtu.be/sZ_Yu9LwhO8
youtu.be
Moral Saurus learns the three goals of philosophy from Preston Stovall
YouTube video by Moral Saurus
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Ellen Roche @ellroche.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Disappeared Tufts Human Dev. PhD student Rumesya Ozturk is also a graduate of Teachers College - she’s a dev. psychologist studying children’s media & prosocial development. She also bakes without recipes and binge-watches cartoons. She is our colleague & she was abducted on the street w/ our tax $.
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Rocky Alcoa @ivortossell.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
I just don’t think that - real brainwave here - “believe in something and stand up for it” is some niche leftist tactic. Baffled by those who do. It’s what normal people respond to.
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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
"even lawmakers within his party have feared for their personal safety, and at least one has told confidants that it has swayed his decision-making" "Tillis told people that the FBI warned him about 'credible death threats' when he was considering voting against Pete Hegseth’s nomination"
vanityfair.com
“They’re Scared Shitless”: The Threat of Political Violence Informing Trump’s Grip on Congress
With the president smashing norm after norm, even lawmakers within his party have feared for their personal safety, and at least one has told confidants that it has swayed his decision-making.
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Andy Vonasch @andyvonasch.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
Very excited to announce that my former PhD student, Scott Danielson, has accepted a faculty position at Lincoln University!
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Dr. Mel @dr-mel99.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
I haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but this summary is an interesting and hopeful take on why “getting out into nature” - a common intervention I use with my clients is so often helpful - the “awe walk” apple.news/AZGLdS58nSdm...
apple.news
Scientists Asked People To Do 1 Thing Differently While Taking A Walk. The Results Were Astounding. — HuffPost
“It [creates] an amazing cascade of physiology that we can find almost any day and is very good for you,”
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Andy Vonasch @andyvonasch.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
At SASP and just met a very friendly colleague
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CLaE @claeneuro.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Nature Human Behaviour The effect of seeing scientists as intellectually humble on trust in scientists and their research www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
The effect of seeing scientists as intellectually humble on trust in scientists and their research - Nature Human Behaviour
Across five pre-registered studies, Koetke et al. find that perceptions of scientists’ intellectual humility positively affect the perceived trustworthiness of scientists and their research.
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Andy Vonasch @andyvonasch.bsky.social · 09/11/2024
youtu.be/FEw98ipUA1I Need some levity in your life? Watch a new episode of Moral Saurus! He talks with philosopher Manuel Vargas about how humans flourish through moral responsibility... and not eating their young.
youtu.be
Moral Saurus discovers the secret to human flourishing… don’t eat your young
YouTube video by Moral Saurus
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Andy Vonasch @andyvonasch.bsky.social · 25/10/2024
www.eurekalert.org/news-release... we discovered a psychological bias toward killing anonymous bystanders in war
eurekalert.org
Bystanders in a combat zone are treated as guilty until proven innocent
People’s bias toward sacrificing unknown bystanders appears to stem from assuming the unidentified person is an enemy, according to a study published October 23, 2024, in the open-access journal...
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koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 23/10/2024
Gossiping carries the risk of backfiring on the gossiper, but new research suggests women’s gossip, when disguised as concern, harms reputation the reputation of the target, while protecting the gossiper: buff.ly/4heeKam
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Andy Vonasch @andyvonasch.bsky.social · 02/09/2024
Wow this is so reasonable. What a shock that this is shocking
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simine vazire @simine.com · 01/06/2024
Hi I’m a psych researcher. My greatest hits include: -p-values can’t tell you that -that definitely won’t replicate -ok but some humans are not US college students -you measured that with a self-report? -your brain images don’t impress me and -sorry that’s not the only plausible mechanism
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Andy Vonasch @andyvonasch.bsky.social · 08/02/2024
www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.... new study showing ai cannot be detected with enough accuracy to prevent fraudulent participants from ruining online studies… we don’t know how prevalent this issue is yet, but soon it will likely be a problem
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Andy Vonasch @andyvonasch.bsky.social · 05/01/2024
authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S00… New (open access) article! People took a personality test--but it was rigged to tell them they were high on one trait and low on another. THE HIGH/LOW TRAITS WERE ASSIGNED AT RANDOM. We then asked them how morally important those traits were...
authors.elsevier.com
ScienceDirect.com | Science, health and medical journals, full text articles and books.
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Dominique Muller @dommuller.bsky.social · 29/11/2023
Nice website showing graphically what it means to allow for random intercepts, slopes, and both mfviz.com/hierarchical...
mfviz.com
A Visual Introduction to Hierarchical Models
A visual explanation of multi-level modeling
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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 17/11/2023
Feature suggestion: Editorial Manager Clippy
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simine vazire @simine.com · 17/11/2023
A cool paper on an important topic: Questionable research practices in student projects. Students may engage in QRPs not knowing that they’re questionable, or not thinking that the data would be used for a real article. See full thread 👇 spb.psychopen.eu/index.php/spb/arti…
spb.psychopen.eu
Evading Open Science: The Black Box of Student Data Collection| Social Psychological Bulletin
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Cate Denial @cjdenial.bsky.social · 07/11/2023
If your institution or organization is interested in having me visit to talk about a Pedagogy of Kindness next summer or fall, you can find all the important details at bit.ly/CateSpeaking. Remember, pre-orders are open at bit.ly/PreOrderPoK!
bit.ly
A Pedagogy of Kindness - University of Oklahoma Press
Academia is not, by and large, a kind place. Individualism and competition are what count. But without kindness at its core, Catherine Denial suggests, highe...
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