iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Finally, thanks to the European Union Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions and UKRI for funding this work, and to all my colleagues in the IP-PAD Doctoral Network (you can find out more about our work on www.ippad.eu)

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Facing a dark future: Young people’s future anxiety and political attitudes in the UK and Greece

🔍How does young people's anxiety about the future relate to their political attitudes? Find out in my first PhD paper, just published in the special issue "The Psychology of Pushback" at advances.in/psychology/1...

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Study finds future anxiety linked to more conservative views among young men, but not young women, in the UK and Greece.

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Huge thanks also to the team at @advances.in: The feedback from the editors, peer-reviewers, and production team was beyond exceptional! Bonus, peer-reviewers get paid for their work, which they more than deserve for the helpful feedback we received!!

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This work is the result of a cross-country collaboration with my great colleagues and co-authors from the IP-PAD Doctoral Network Melina Niraki and Ermioni Seremeta, and my amazing supervisors @mtsakiris.bsky.social and Kaat Smets!

Today's younger generations will live the longest with the consequences of current political, societal, and natural crises, but they also have the potential to defend democratic values in the future!

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Why this matters: Our findings suggest that understanding the futures that young people imagine—and how they feel about the future—is of considerable political relevance. 🌱 The focus on young people is also particularly important:

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🧠 In follow-up analyses, we show how these associations differ not just by gender, but also depending on young people's emotion regulation strategies.

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😨 Surprisingly though, future anxiety across genders was also associated with 🚨 stronger support for democratic principles (e.g., equal rights to vote) and greater political participation 🚨

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🙍 Our UK data further revealed that only among young men future anxiety was associated with more support for authoritarian principles and lower open-minded thinking

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👫 Future anxiety is associated with the ideological gender gap: Young men—but not young women—who are more anxious about the future also report being more politically conservative and right-wing. This results in ideological gender polarisation, but only among young people high in future anxiety!

😨 In times of multiple crises, converging reports show many young people are anxious about the future. Yet how this relates to their political attitudes remains unclear. We here provide insights from survey data from close to 2,000 adolescents in the UK and Greece. Key findings:

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Facing a dark future: Young people’s future anxiety and political attitudes in the UK and Greece

advances.in

Study finds future anxiety linked to more conservative views among young men, but not young women, in the UK and Greece.

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Olaf Borghi @olafborghi.com · 11/09/2025

thank you for all the extremely helpful papers and blog posts!! so many of them are my go-to resources, and they came out surprisingly often with perfect timing for my work :)

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Olaf Borghi @olafborghi.com · 11/09/2025

marginaleffects is one of my favourite R packages and this is such a great paper!! extremely recommended, alongside all other papers from the two authors and also the amazing and free Model to Meaning book marginaleffects.com

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 11/09/2025

New paper out with @boryslaw.bsky.social 🥳 In which we sketch out how to rethink measurement invariance causally for applied researchers. And provide a causal definition of measurement invariance! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Rethinking measurement invariance causally

Highlights:
It is preferable to work with a causal definition of measurement invariance
A violation of measurement invariance is a potentially substantively interesting observation
Standard tests for measurement invariance rely on strong assumptions
Group differences can be thought of as descriptive results

Conceptual graph illustration the central points of the manuscript. A group variable is potentiall connected to a construct of interest which affects items. Measurement invariance is violated if the group variable directly affects the items, for example by modifying the loadings from the construct to the items, or by directly affecting an item

To make this less abstract, consider a scenario where students take an exam, R, meant to capture some ability, T, and then are admitted to a program, V, depending on their exam results: R → V. This is sufficient to result in a violation of the statistical definition of measurement invariance. Exam results and admission are not independent given ability because exam results have a direct effect on admission. Even if we know somebody’s ability (e.g., we know it’s very high), learning about their admission status (e.g., they were not admitted) can tell us something about their exam result (e.g., it may have been worse than expected). According to the causal definition, this in itself does not constitute measurement bias, which seems a sensible conclusion here. After all, the scenario does not involve any reason to believe that the measurement process varied systematically by admission status. Admission happens after the exams took place, it cannot retroactively influence the measurement process (and, for example, lead to unfair treatment depending on admission status).

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Olaf Borghi @olafborghi.com · 22/07/2025

This is incredible work, such an insanely cool paper and findings! Quite alarming that "[post-training and prompting methods that] increased AI persuasiveness [...] also systematically decreased factual accuracy"

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Mariana von Mohr @marianavonmohr.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

In previous work with Manos Tsakiris @mtsakiris.bsky.social , we showed that interoception can act as a buffer against political stress. We now extend this research to the 2024 U.S. Presidential elections, capturing data before and after Check out our preprint 👇 osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Leonardo Carella @leonardocarella.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

I'm glad someone did basic due diligence on the wolf paper. (Although - worth noting - PNAS has an impact factor of 9 and Electoral Studies an impact factor of 2: a familiar pattern with replications of fundamentally flawed findings.) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

The East in wolf’s clothing. Wolf attacks correlate with but do not cause far-right voting

The resurgence of wolves in Germany has sparked intense debate, particularly in rural areas where wolf attacks on livestock are frequent. Prior resear…

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Mariana von Mohr @marianavonmohr.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Sharing our work at #ISPP in beautiful Prague on affective prescription —and how this shapes the kind of political leader we’re drawn to based on their appearance. Preprint coming soon!

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Olaf Borghi @olafborghi.com · 04/07/2025

This book is highly recommended! Bonus is that I genuinely enjoyed working through it when it first came out

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Mariana von Mohr @marianavonmohr.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

Great talk by @olafborghi.com on cognitive control and politically motivated reasoning, even in the face of unexpected interference 👇😂 #ISPP2025

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Lisa DeBruine @debruine.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

(1/6) #ISPP2025 is just one day away and I can't wait to be in Prague! It will be the first conference I attend during my PhD - looking forward to all the interesting sessions, catching up with friends, and meeting new people! 🤩 #PsychSciSky #polisky #CogSci #polpsy

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As one of my favourite colleagues Etienne Roesch just whispered to me in response to a #MetaScience2025 speaker suggesting AI could act as an additional grant reviewer: A👏I👏is👏not👏an👏analytic👏tool

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politics & adolescence | ippad

(5/6) If you are looking for more interdisciplinary talks bridging cognitive and political sciences and young people's politics, also check out the 15+(!!) contributions from my colleagues from the ippad.eu network, including three full panels

ippad.eu

IP-PAD (Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Adolescence & Democracy) is a Doctoral Network that aims to address a timely, pressing societal issue, namely the understanding of how the dev...

(4/6) It will feature four talks on the involvement of young people in politics, a highly policy-relevant area given the discussions on lowering the voting age where political psychology can make an important contribution! With interdisciplinary discussants @mtsakiris.bsky.social and Kaat Smets

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politics & adolescence | ippad

(3/6) Together with amazing collaborators from ippad.eu, I also co-organised Session 127: Young People's Political Agency and Voting Rights - Sunday 8:30 AM. I know, a bit early for the last day of the conference, but I promise that getting out of bed early will be worth it!

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(2/6) I'll be presenting and chairing Session 19: Biological and Psychometric Approaches on Thursday 10:15 AM. Come by if you want to hear about my recent preprint on politically motivated reasoning and its cognitive correlates, and more exciting interdisciplinary research! doi.org/10.31234/osf...

doi.org

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 18/06/2025

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To re-up this, this also applies to latent growth curve models 😭 😭 😭 No, I'm afraid you cannot solve a fundamental identification problem by applying a latent growth curve model.

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Dr Lucy Foulkes @lucyfoulkes.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

I’m in the Guardian today, arguing that we should stop them all-class mental health lessons in schools I've thought very carefully about ‘going public’ with this, because it's a sensitive argument to make, especially in the face of so many young people struggling. (cont 🧵) tinyurl.com/vun92cz7

theguardian.com

Mental-health lessons in schools sound like a great idea. The trouble is, they don’t work | Lucy Foulkes

All-class therapy sessions don’t help, and may even make matters worse. The evidence shows we need different solutions, says Dr Lucy Foulkes, an academic psychologist at Oxford University

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Dr Lucy Foulkes @lucyfoulkes.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

This is a *key* new paper in the world of school mental health interventions A very large trial (N=6388) testing a universal CBT-based app for adolescent depression (13-14y) No effects found (on depression, anxiety, distress or insomnia) (🧵) mentalhealth.bmj.com/content/28/1...

Future Proofing Study: a cluster randomised
controlled trial evaluating the effectiveness of a
universal school-based cognitive–behavioural
programme for adolescent depression

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SCAN Unit @scanunit.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

🚨 Come work with us! 3-year fully funded PhD position in Social and Cognitive Neuroscience @univie.ac.at @clauslamm.bsky.social to join our project investigating prosocial behavior under uncertainty. More info: shorturl.at/1fnb2 Please share widely 🔁

shorturl.at

3y_PhDposition_univie_ScanUnit.pdf

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Alex Coppock @aecoppock.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

New visualization tool alert! The vayr package version 1.0.0 is now on CRAN. It contains position adjustments for ggplot2 that help with overplotting in pleasing ways. My favorite is position_sunflower(). - install.packages("vayr") - alexandercoppock.com/vayr #rstats #ggplot2 #dataviz

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 12/04/2025

Proudly presenting the (for now) final version of "Why experiments work." To share the materials in a slightly more professional manner, I added a "Resources" page to my website: juliarohrer.com/resources/. That was long overdue anyway; now there's also a curated list of my papers and blog posts.

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Boryana Todorova @todorova.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

🧠🌍 Thrilled to share our latest paper, just out in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences: "Neuroscience and climate action: intersecting pathways for brain and planetary health" Read here (OA!): www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 1/

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SCAN Unit @scanunit.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

🔎 We are looking for collaborators for our new manylabs looking at the effects of extreme heat on human cognition and well-being across the globe 🌍 See below for more information and sign up if you’re interested 👇🏼

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 23/03/2025

In related news, maybe you should stop directly messing around with coefficients in the first place! Just talked to a student who was told by their advisor that they should use a continuous scale for a categorical thing because otherwise “the analyses get too complicated.”>

the100.ci

✨ Unleash your inner stats sparkle ✨ with this very non-technical introduction to marginal effects

Let’s admit right away that “marginal effects” doesn’t sound like the most sexy topic. I’m not saying that to further marginalize these poor effects. It’s just that statistics, in and of itself, barel...

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 20/03/2025

New blog post! In which I explain the issue with mediation analysis and sketch out one way to deal with the underlying causal inference problem -- in just a bit over 1,000 words! If you have never found the time to read up on this, now is your chance. www.the100.ci/2025/03/20/r...

the100.ci

Reviewer notes: That’s a very nice mediation analysis you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.

Mediation analysis has gotten a lot of flak, including classic titles such as “Yes, but what’s the mechanism? (Don’t expect an easy answer)” (Bullock et al., 2010), “What mediation analysis can (not) ...

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politics & adolescence | ippad

And huge thanks to all colleagues in my doctoral network www.ippad.eu, to the European Union and UKRI for funding our research, and to my colleagues @rhulpsychology.bsky.social! lots of more exciting research to come in the future!

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Link to pre-print: osf.io/preprints/ps... & open data and materials: osf.io/uztn7/ #PsychSciSky #psychsky #AcademicSky #polisky #CogSci #polpsy

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(6) These results are all the more compelling given the clear evidence of motivated reasoning we provide across topics, and open up new research directions beyond paradigmatic findings that have proven to be hard to replicate.

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(5) Turning to our competing hypotheses, we find that it is 20 times more likely that cognitive reflection is associated with less (!) politically motivated reasoning – contrary to the influential hypothesis from political science. For inhibitory control, our results are less conclusive.

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(4) We find that people engage in motivated reasoning across a wide range of political topics, from immigration to climate change. Funnily enough, our 🇬🇧 participants also showed motivational bias when judging news messages about tea preferences 🍵

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(3) So, what is it? Adapting and gamifying a recently developed experimental paradigm to assess motivated reasoning, in our study participants took on the role of “Fake News Detectives” 🕵️ We also assessed cognitive control on different levels using two established tasks 🧠

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(2) However, research from cognitive psychology suggests that those with greater cognitive control over intuitions and automatic responses should also be better at overcoming political bias. For example, research indicates negative associations between cognitive control and political dogmatism.

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