iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

How exciting to see that this is now out for all to read! Congratulations Alex and team! :) 🎉

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Garvin Brod @garvinbrod.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Curious about how smartphones shape children’s development? We’re recruiting a Postdoctoral Researcher for 3(+2) years for a cutting-edge randomized controlled trial conducted in collaboration with @orbenamy.bsky.social and her team. iwm-tuebingen.de/en/career/jo...

iwm-tuebingen.de

IWM Tübingen

Post-Doctoral Researcher (m/f/d)

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Timothy Caulfield @caulfieldtim.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

Understanding the impact of misinformation on adolescents www.nature.com/articles/s41... Adolescents = changes that "can increase vulnerability to misinformation through social influence, emotional manipulation and cognitive biases..."

nature.com

Understanding the impact of misinformation on adolescents - Nature Human Behaviour

Adolescents are especially vulnerable to misinformation but also possess unique strengths. This Perspective outlines a forward-looking research agenda to understand these vulnerabilities and foster re...

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Timothy Caulfield @caulfieldtim.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

How adolescents can become resilient to digital misinformation www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2025... "Teenagers tend to respond more strongly to emotional messages than adults do. Misinformation often takes advantage of this by using emotions such as fear, anger or outrage to spread quickly."

universiteitleiden.nl

How Adolescents Can Become Resilient to Digital Misinformation

Young people are particularly susceptible to misleading information on social media. Yet insights from developmental psychology show that they also have unique strengths to build resilience. In new re...

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Christoph Völter @christophvoelter.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Fully funded #PhDposition in Comparative Cultural Psychology @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social. We will use touchscreen experiments & eyetracking to study mental simulations in nonhuman apes & human children across different cultures. All info here: www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit... Please share / apply!🙏

eva.mpg.de

Positions available - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

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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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Kevin Tiede @kevinetiede.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

New year, new research: In our latest paper published in JEP:LMC, my co-authors Thorsten Pachur, Wolfgang Gaissmaier and I answer the question: “Is there a description–experience gap in choices between a described and an experienced option?” (psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...)

psycnet.apa.org

APA PsycNet

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Chris Bail @chrisbail.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Cool post-doc with @janalasser.bsky.social : jobs.uni-graz.at/en/jobs/a122...

jobs.uni-graz.at

Universität Graz

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Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.uk · 16/11/2024

I created this starter pack of researchers based in Europe who study misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. I suspect this list will grow -- get in touch with suggestions go.bsky.app/36RdG8Z

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 24/12/2024

academics from poorer backgrounds are: -severely underrepresented -more likely to not publish -have outstanding publication records -introduce more novel scientific concepts, but less likely to receive recognition, as measured by citations, Nobel Prize nominations & awards www.nber.org/papers/w33289

nber.org

Climbing the Ivory Tower: How Socio-Economic Background Shapes Academia

Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

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Sebastian Stier @sebstier.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

We’re hiring a Team Lead at the GESIS Computational Social Science department 🌐 Passionate about open science & innovative methods for digital behavioral data? Join us to shape the future of CSS! 💻📊 ❓ Questions? Contact me via DM or mail 👉 Job ad: www.hidden-professionals.de/HPv3.Jobs/ge...

hidden-professionals.de

Senior Researcher & Team Lead for Transparent Social Analytics and Open Science

GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences is an internationally active research institute, funded by federal and state governments and member of the Leibniz Association. Starting as soon as po...

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Check out @fstock.bsky.social's new study--a cross-cultural study on preferences to control one's online environment!

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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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David Garcia @dgarcia.eu · 10/12/2024

Job announcement: Junior Professorship in Computational Social Science at the University of Konstanz. Join us at the Center for Data and Methods! Feel free to reach out if you have questions. stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/2...

stellen.uni-konstanz.de

Junior Professorship (W1, non tenured) in Computational Social Science

Deadline: 7th of January 2025

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Shannon McGregor, PhD @shannimcg.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

We asked people in 8 countries 🇦🇷🇧🇷🇩🇪🇯🇵🇪🇸🇰🇷🇬🇧🇺🇸 how they use platforms and their views on platform governance, privacy, & misinformation. We find overall platform ambivalence - people use platforms for news & info about politics, but they're also skeptical of the information they see there. 1/

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Benjamin Getenet @benjamingetenet.fr · 17/11/2024

New study in PNAS reveals how age, analytical thinking, and political alignment shape susceptibility to online misinformation. Media literacy remains crucial in combating fake news. #Misinformation #MediaLiteracy #Research #OnlineSafety #SocialPsychology

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Very happy to share that our work is now published in PNAS! 🎉 It's a systematic look into how demographic and psychological factors are associated with misinformation susceptibility. @arc-mpib.bsky.social Thread below and can be read in full here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Screenshot of the study page on the PNAS website.

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 07/10/2024

Our new paper takes you Inside the funhouse mirror factory and explains how social media distorts perceptions of norms 0.1 % of users share 80% of fake news! A tiny proportion of bad actors cause most of the problems and distort the social norms. sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Center for Adaptive Rationality (MPIB, Berlin) @arc-mpib.bsky.social · 07/10/2024

🚨Job Alert for Our Summer School🚨 Ein*e studentische*r Forschungsassistent*in wird für die Vorbereitung des jährlichen Summer Institutes im Juni 2025 gesucht. Angestrebter Beginn ist Februar 2025. 👇Weitere Informationen findet Ihr auf den folgenden Seiten. www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/1908772/2024...

mpib-berlin.mpg.de

Studentische*r Forschungsassistent*in | Forschungsbereich Adaptive Rationalität

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

This is a preprint, so any feedback and comments are welcome. This has been an effort to put together, so thanks are very much in order. Thanks to all my co-authors, and especially Ralf and @alantump.bsky.social :) 15/n

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

Here is an overview of the results. On top we have discrimination ability. For example, older adults have higher discrimination ability. On the bottom we have response bias, older adults have a false news bias, they tend to be more cautious. 14/n

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

We also looked at some further meta-questions. Experiments on MTurk have better discrimination ability than on Lucid. And headlines displayed with a source lead to better discrimination ability. 13/n

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

Our biggest effect is familiarity. If you’ve seen a news headline before, you’re much more likely to treat it as true. 12/n

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

Partisan bias, aka ideological congruency, is a very reliable effect. People treat ingroup news to be true more often and disregard outgroup news as false more often. This again is worrying. The effect holds across partisan lines and is ready for interventions. 11/n

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

We find that analytical thinking (CRT) is reliably associated with higher discrimination ability and a false news bias (caution). It’s not yet fully clear what the CRT is measuring, unlocking this would help to build better interventions. 10/n

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

Confirming a worrying trend in other studies, we find that Democrats show a higher discrimination ability than Republicans, and a false-news bias (caution). Seen in light of polarisation, this hints towards Democrats and Republicans inhabiting different perceptions of truth. 9/n

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

A null effect of education on discrimination ability. Higher education is also linked with treating news as true more often, a kind of naivety (a small effect). Resonates with research suggesting current educational practices need to better equip people for the digital world. 8/n

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

Older adults have a higher discrimination ability than younger adults and also a false news bias (they are more cautious). This is quite interesting, especially as older adults are known to share the most misinformation. (Note: each line is a study, split by true and false). 7/n

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

Here are the results at a glance: For discrimination ability, values greater than 0 indicate higher ability to discern between true and false news. For response bias, values greater than zero suggest a true-news bias, while values less than zero indicate a false-news bias. 6/n

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

We use signal detection theory to disentangle discrimination ability: how well someone judges between true and false news. And response bias: whether one is biased towards generally treating news as true (true-new bias; naivety) or false more often (false-news bias; caution). 5/n

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

In our individual participant data meta-analysis, we pooled together 256,337 unique choices made by 11,561 participants across 31 experiments. This extensive dataset helped us assess how key demographic and psychological factors impact misinformation veracity judgements. 4/n

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

Research has often used the now-established news headline paradigm, where people are asked whether they believe a news headline to be true or false. Luckily, this presents us with a unique opportunity for some meta science. 😎 3/n

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

As we know, misinformation can have negative outcomes. And despite lots of research into it, it’s still unclear why people fall for it. 2/n

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Mubashir Sultan @msultan.bsky.social · 06/05/2024

Who falls for online misinformation? A meta-analysis on demographic and psychological factors impacting misinformation susceptibility. Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps... My lovely coauthors: @alantump.bsky.social Nina Ehmann, @lorenzspreen.bsky.social, Ralph Hertwig, Anton Gollwitzer, @RalfKurvers 1/n

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