iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 45m

For all the hand-wringing about the effects of technology on kids, the impacts may be just as corrosive on their grandparents Most reading has been done by older Americans. In 2003, older Americans read 58 minutes/day. By last year, that had fallen to 32 minutes/day www.nytimes.com/2026/07/16/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | Is This What a Post-Literate Era Looks Like?

It’s not the children who stopped reading. It’s their grandparents.

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 53m

Words change behavior more than we think People cooperate more when a game is called the “Community Game” than when it is called the “Wall Street Game” Language changes the emotions & social norms we associate with it—and therefore what we choose to do. www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/shaping-be...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 3h

Cambridge University is hiring a Professor who combines behavioural science & sustainability research (eg psychology, social neuroscience, behavioural economics, consumer behaviour, political science, policy studies, and environmental social sciences). www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/hatton-...

cam.ac.uk

Hatton Professorship of Sustainability

The Board of Electors to the Hatton Professorship of Sustainability invite applications for this Professorship from persons whose work falls within the general field of the Professorship (combining be...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

People who trust and cooperate with ingroup members are very likely to trust and cooperate with outgroup members This general prosocial trust exists in every country, but it is strongest in the Netherlands and weakest in Pakistan. It was also very high in the US www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Netflix's new reality show based on the Stanford prison experiment is being met with controversy. The experiment had to be abandoned because of the harm it was causing participants. I spoke to CBC about the ethical problems & psychological lessons from Experiment: www.cbc.ca/listen/live-...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The majority (63%) of citizens trust scientists. Only 5% distrust scientists. There is less trust for politicized topics (climate science) and of government or business scientists It's critical to support science at universities, where people trust the results www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Here are 30 Ideas for Fixing U.S. Schools, Ranked by 3 dozen Experts Two ideas surfaced as most effective: small group tutoring and the science of reading The worst value was Vouchers and smaller class sizes Going lower tech was also worth a try www.nytimes.com/2026/09/28/u...

nytimes.com

30 Ideas for Fixing U.S. Schools, Ranked by Experts

Math and reading scores are in a decade-long slump. We asked three dozen experts: What could turn things around?

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Intergroup contact is recognized for its positive effects on intergroup relations. A new paper finds that one of the best predictors of intergroup contact is when people perceive that their community values intergroup contact (ie pro-contact community norms) journals.sagepub.com/eprint/7V473...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Conspiracy Believers Are 91% Likely To Hold Incoherent Beliefs Can one believe Princess Di was murdered by and faked her own death? Both can’t be true. A new study N~9,000 finds that holding 2 incompatible ideas at once isn’t a quirk, it’s practically the rule. studyfinds.com/conspiracy-b...

studyfinds.com

Conspiracy Believers Are 91% Likely To Hold Incoherent Beliefs, Study Finds

A new study finds people at the extreme end of conspiracy thinking have a 91% predicted chance of holding incompatible beliefs.

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Reposted by Jay Van Bavel, PhD

In Otter News @in-otter-news.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

After a long day at the aquarium, the otters help tidy their toys away. Payment is made promptly and entirely in ice cubes.

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Reposted by Jay Van Bavel, PhD

The Upshot @upshot.nytimes.com · 27/09/2026

Our polling average today: 60 percent disapproval ties Trump's high. 37 percent approval ties Trump's low. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The latest academic scam is appointing scholars to fake societies then charging people money to join them. I get scams about fake conferences, predatory journals, phony consulting gigs, fictitious book clubs, vanity magazines, illusory media requests, etc www.nature.com/articles/d41...

nature.com

Exclusive: Sham scientific societies are misleading star researchers

A Nature investigation reveals a network of organizations that have been building their ranks through deceptive practices.

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The average person scrolls through 300 feet of newsfeed a day and will spend 5.5 years of their life scrolling on social media I recently discuss why engagement algorithms often reward our worst instincts and what we can do about it. You can watch the video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-lt...

youtube.com

Why We Get Each Other So Wrong with Dr. Jay Van Bavel

YouTube video by Global Compassion Coalition

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Online toxicity silences the majority and fuels power users On social media, extreme or hostile content often gains the most visibility. This creates a spiral of silence among most users But polite and constructive environments encourage silent readers to share www.psypost.org/how-online-t...,

psypost.org

How online toxicity silences the majority and fuels power users

A recent field experiment on Reddit reveals why a vocal minority dominates online political discussions, finding that toxic environments silence the majority while fueling the most active users.

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This professor "wrote" over 200 academic papers and 14 books in one year. This is ridiculous. Most people don't even have time to read this many papers and books carefully in a year, let alone write and edit it. This feels like peak AI slop. I'm curious what other people think about this?

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The only group that people won't help are politicians.

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Cornell produced new report on higher education noting that companies have a “jarring” skepticism of higher ed thanks to a new generation of degree holders who lack key skills like handling uncertainty, compromising, and absorbing feedback. Faculty also report that students lack these skills.

chronicle.com

Companies Are Skeptical of New Graduates. Cornell Has Ideas to Fix That.

Colleges need to start teaching soft skills, or students will keep falling short in the workplace, argues a Cornell report on “the future of the American university.”

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

People are more pro-social than we think An experiment in which 5,980 lost letters were dispersed in communities found that return rates for ingroup (Italian) & outgroup (foreign) recipients were the same Places that returned more letters to ingroup members also returned more to outgroup members

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Toxic workers impose a huge cost on organizations. Avoiding a toxic worker (or converting them to an average worker) provides far more benefits than retaining a superstar. www.hbs.edu/ris/Publicat...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Can We Predict Who Will Become Friends? Yes, we can. In our latest newsletter, @socialbrain.bsky.social explains how brain synchrony, social chemistry, and AI can be used to predict who we will click with and become friends. www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/most-peopl...

powerofusnewsletter.com

Can We Predict Who Will Become Friends?

Brain synchrony, social chemistry, and a new approach to finding connection.

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I am excited to be speaking at the #SPSP2027 Moral Psychology Pre-conference! The lineup of speakers is fantastic. Bravo to @diegoreinero.bsky.social @jowylie.bsky.social and @kylefiore.bsky.social for putting this together. If anyone wants to connect at SPSP, just email me a week before SPSP

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Does ingroup love lead to outgroup hate? I often tell people that identifying with ingroups does not always lead to outgroup discrimination. I call this the "Myth of tribalism". A new paper provides strong and robust evidence for a positive relationship between ingroup and outgroup prosociality.!

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

We have a new paper on the study of epistemically suspect beliefs We argue that research on social identity can explain how people select information & social environments, evaluate evidence & process information in ways that affirm their identities You can read it here: osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Reposted by Jay Van Bavel, PhD

Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

The world’s largest battery-electric aircraft flew for the first time on the 12th of August, a 27-minute test flight over upstate New York that cost about five dollars in electricity. Heart Aerospace’s 30-seat prototype is a big step toward a commercial version. buff.ly/i3f0PhR #ShareGoodNewsToo

techspot.com

The largest all-electric plane ever flew for 27 minutes, on $5 of electricity

Heart's X1 demonstrator flew for 27 minutes from a regional airport in upstate New York, running on battery power the entire time. The aircraft reached 1,100 feet...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

The Working Class Face a ‘Class Ceiling’ in Elite Occupations PhDs whose parents did not graduate from college are less likely to land TT jobs at research universities & less likely to get tenure.They also earn less in the private sector and hold less management jobs www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/b...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Netflix is launching a reality Stanford Prison Experiment “Thirty willing participants enter a real prison and are randomly assigned as guards or prisoners. Thrust into a system of power, hierarchy, and control, they’ll discover whether ordinary people inevitably conform to the roles they’re give”

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

What are you reading right now? These are the books on my desk and I'm currently half finished Jon Ronson's new book "The Castle: Adventures in a World of Unraveling Men". It's an extremely funny look into the so-called crisis of masculinity.

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

This is one step away from a Yondr pouch for college students

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Question for academics: Have you ever left your department for another department or school at the university? If so, how did it go? I've recently been having a lot of conversations about this topic with people and I'm curious about how this happens and the pros and cons of switching departments.

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

1969 was the first poster session at a scientific conference In the last half century, very little has changed. I discourage my lab from creating a poster unless they are going to circulate it broadly. Now there are tools that allow people to share posters widely: www.science.org/content/arti...

science.org

Conference posters could garner a wider audience, thanks to a new online platform

The staple format also warrants a deeper rethink, some researchers say

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

People randomly assigned to a liberal or conservative group chat groups shifted their expressed stance in the direction of the group, demonstrating that social norms alters political expression This effect emerges after controlling for baseline ideology www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Compared to high-status groups, members of low-status groups often show no implicit ingroup preference In low-status groups, ingroup preferences are accompanied by greater self-control than outgroup preferences (in an analysis of 5.7 million implicit bias tests) www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

People in romantic relationships report higher life satisfaction than singles. But this life-satisfaction gap is larger in regions with higher relationship rates, according to a new study of 382,078 adults across 379 regions in Great Britain. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

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Reposted by Jay Van Bavel, PhD

Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Social media discourse is driven by false #polarization We find that: 1) ideologues post opinions more than moderates 2) extreme attitudes are posted more than moderate one 3) This replicates in 40 countries 4) Opinions that users post are more hostile than the beliefs they keep to themselves

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Reposted by Jay Van Bavel, PhD

Neuroskeptic @neuroskeptic.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The soul is real and can be tied with a rope according to this graphical abstract. The paper is even weirder! "Quantum evidence of nonlocal consciousness during clinical death" www.cell.com/the-innovati... This is a Cell Press journal... via @pubpeer.com @forbetterscience.bsky.social

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

This is revealing: "nearly every one of the Gen Z-ers we spoke to explicitly asked for systemic, top-down change to social media platforms. Not through self-control apps or screen-time reminders but through the only mechanism they believe could work: regulation." www.nytimes.com/2026/09/08/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | The Truth About Brain Rot: It’s a Cry for Help

Maybe consuming meaningless content is the only way to be free online.

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Collaborative science is linked to bigger breakthroughs. Research papers and patents by teams are more highly cited than those produced by solitary individuals. I describe four principles for building inclusive, motivated, and effective teams: www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/the-scienc...

powerofusnewsletter.com

The Science of Making Teams Work

Four principles for building inclusive, motivated, and effective teams.

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Groups make more economically rational decisions. A paper compared Individual and Group Behavior in the Ultimatum Game. Groups offered less than individuals. But groups were also willing to accept lower offers. "groups are more rational than individuals" link.springer.com/article/10.1...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Wow--we never recovered socially from COVID:

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Psychological safety is a dyadic process. When a coworker expresses humility to another coworker, the latter coworker experiences a high level of psychological safety, which in turn leads that coworker to perform better psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

People judge a sexist perpetrator as less sexist if he is rude toward men. This occurs because rudeness toward men creates the illusion of gender blindness. Men who hold sexist beliefs about women often are rude to men which gives sexists plausible deniability. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The US is facing a mass exodus of scientists The funding cuts & attacks on science are demoralizing a generation of brilliant minds One-third of young scientists who were planning careers in academic research changed their minds in 2025 and many now plan to leave www.nber.org/system/files...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Misinformed and polarized beliefs often persist despite repeated fact-checking efforts. Why? New research finds that updating our trust in sources is resistant to fact-checking and is undermined by partisan source cues and politically-incongruent fact-checks osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Groups are more accurate than individuals in distinguishing truths from lies The group advantage in lie detection is due to the process of group discussion, not of aggregating individual opinions (ie “wisdom-of-crowds”) or altering response biases cdn.prod.website-files.com/699728903166...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

People often discount evidence that contradicts their firmly held beliefs People who changed their minds more showed less activity in the insula & amygdala when evaluating counter-evidence These results highlight the role of emotion in belief-change resistance www.nature.com/articles/sre...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Academic scores are plummeting. Those falls in reading and maths are equivalent to about two years of lost schooling! This is a serious crisis in education. It's frustrating to see people trying to minimize these trends.

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Partisans are highly segregated by workplace—the effect is similar in size to gender segregation at work. -Museums and environmental orgs have the fewest Republicans, pipelines and mines have the most Republicans www.powerofusnewsletter.com/p/august-res...

powerofusnewsletter.com

August Research Roundup: 10 new findings from social psychology

Studies on social media influencing conformity, workplace segregation, how professors (don’t) influence their student’s ideologies + more

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Modern academic structures are constraining scientific creativity A new paper says research is structured around short funding cycles, productivity-based evaluation criteria, and risk-averse frameworks that favor predictable and non-transformative research outputs. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Stating that 5 people in a row have donated induces further donation. In 11 experiments (N=12,688), asking people to join a short streak of charitable donors was more effective than informing them of a high % of donors (e.g., “X% of people did it”) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

People underestimate the receptiveness of other people to different political opinions This is strong for people who support a party they dislike, they expect such political conversation to be negative, and are therefore unwilling to engage www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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