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Sam Pratt

@sampratt99.bsky.social
130 followers 346 following 266 posts

Psychology PhD student at UCLA 🐻 learning about morality, politics, and consciousness sampratt99.github.io/sampratt

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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
sampratt.substack.com/p/5-tips-for...
sampratt.substack.com
5 Tips for Navigating Hostile Interviewers
Lessons from a late night conservative talk show
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
New post ✍🏻: 5 tips for navigating hostile interviewers I reflect on my experience being interviewed by someone ChatGPT described as a "belligerent reporter who tends to challenge and ambush guests." Link below 🔗⬇️
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
sampratt.substack.com/p/if-were-so...
sampratt.substack.com
If We’re So Smart, Why Aren’t We Rich?
A commentary on Paul Bloom’s post
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
New post (link in comments):
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
The Words Can Harm Scale was recently covered in The Wall Street Journal - check it out below! www.wsj.com/opinion/free...
wsj.com
Opinion | The Empathy of the Intolerant
A new paper suggests that the most empathetic among us are also the most intolerant of free speech.
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Helen Devine @helenldevine.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
We gave 30 couples without kids an infant simulator for the weekend and tracked how they handled it. Nope, this isn't a reality show: it's a scientific paper! 🍼 New in Human Nature 👇🔗
Scientific paper in Human Nature titled "Testosterone Changes in Couples in Response to a Caregiving Task with an Infant Simulator."
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Helen Devine @helenldevine.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
psych post-bacc jobs are scattered across wikis, twitter/bsky, and random lab sites. hard to find if you're not already in the field. I started a slack to pool them in one place — a low-effort bulletin board, channels by subfield, updated live! 🔗⬇️
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Thanks Nathan!
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Excited to share that I was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! Feeling very grateful for my amazing mentors and collaborators.
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Let's go!!!!
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Helen Devine @helenldevine.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Thrilled to share I'll be starting a PhD in Psychology at Yale this fall with Melissa Ferguson — and that I was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to support my work! Can't wait to get started! 🥳 #NSFGRFP
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
I'm working on a post with an online science blog and they replaced all of my em dashes with commas, even where grammatically inappropriate. Is this the new anti-AI signaling?
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
sampratt.substack.com/p/can-words-...
sampratt.substack.com
Can Words Harm?
My new measure that sparked Twitter outrage
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
I started a newsletter and my first post is about the twitter reactions to our new Words Can Harm Scale. Link in comments!
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Rob Sica @robsica.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
"Studying people’s deeply held beliefs is a funny thing. No matter how unbiased you try to be, you typically end up upsetting people on both sides, because each assumes your agenda is against them. But that shouldn’t stop us from doing the research."
sampratt.substack.com
Can Words Harm?
My new measure that sparked Twitter outrage
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Check out what people are saying about our paper on r/science: www.reddit.com/r/science/co... And huge shoutout to the co-authors that are on here! @jakewomick.bsky.social @emilykubin.bsky.social @helenldevine.bsky.social @keithpayne.bsky.social @kurtjgray.bsky.social
reddit.com
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Our takeaway: moral disagreement revolves around the question "who is a victim?" We can measure this using AoVs to help understand ongoing political disagreements. Open access paper here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
We noticed a broad trend: liberals tended to amplify group differences in vulnerability (the environment and othered are VERY vulnerable and the powerful and divine are VERY invulnerable) whereas conservatives viewed all groups as more equally vulnerable to suffering.
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Overall, liberals had higher AoVs about targets pertaining to the Environment (e.g. "coral reefs") and Othered (e.g. "gay people") whereas conservatives had higher AoVs about the Powerful (e.g. "CEOs") and Divine (e.g. "The Bible").
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Knowing who someone sees as vulnerable - by measuring their AoVs - predicted their moral judgments about hot-button issues (e.g. police use of force) better than Moral Foundations alone. AoVs also predicted charity donations when given the option to help different groups.
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Across 12 studies, we found that liberals and conservatives had different AoVs about specific targets. For example, conservatives were more likely to say that state troopers are vulnerable to harm, and liberals were more likely to say that illegal immigrants are vulnerable.
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
We created a scale to measure "assumptions of vulnerability" (AoVs) and predicted that liberals and conservatives would differ in who seems most like a victim.
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Our recent PSPB paper showing that liberals and conservatives have different perceptions of victimhood (AoVs) is generating quite a bit of discussion on r/science. Short summary of the results (and 🔗 ) below 🧵
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Huge thanks to co-authors Payton Jones, Ben Bellet, Rich McNally, and @kurtjgray.bsky.social !
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
The WCHS is free to use and all data/materials/code are on OSF. Scale may be useful if you study free speech attitudes, concept creep, safetyism, political or moral psychology, (@jonathanhaidt.bsky.social @glukianoff.bsky.social @jaredcelniker.bsky.social) authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...
authors.elsevier.com
The Words Can Harm Scale
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Perhaps most striking: higher WCHS scores were consistently associated with worse mental health — more anxiety, depression, emotion regulation difficulties, lower resilience, and greater perceived vulnerability to trauma.
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
The WCHS was associated with political liberalism, left-wing authoritarianism, moral grandstanding, support for political correctness, trigger warnings, and safe spaces, and belief in the importance of silencing others.
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Higher WCHS scores were linked to self-reported empathy, intellectual humility, and agreeableness — but also lower emotional stability and higher tendency for interpersonal victimhood.
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Who believes most strongly that words can harm? People who are younger, female, non-White, and politically liberal.
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Here is the full scale. The WCHS is psychometrically solid (N = 956): one factor, α = .92, and strong two-week test-retest reliability (r = .80).
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
🚨 New paper in Personality and Individual Differences! We introduce the Words Can Harm Scale (WCHS): a 10-item measure of the belief that speech can cause lasting psychological harm. Who believes that words can harm, and what does this belief predict?🧵 ⬇️
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koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Can words be harmful? A new scale by @sampratt99.bsky.social et al scores the strength of the belief they can. High scorers tend to be younger, female, non-White and liberal, and self-rate as high in intellectual humility, empathy and moral grandstanding: buff.ly/UZu4znx
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Helen Devine @helenldevine.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
This past weekend, I attended @ap-ls.org in Reno, Nevada and presented a poster on the co-occurrence of true crime consumption & victim-blaming attitudes. 🧪⚖️ #apls2026
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Helen Devine @helenldevine.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Last month, I presented my poster on how true crime consumption relates to victim blaming at #SPSP2026 in Chicago — and I'm so honored to have received the Best Poster Award at the Moral Psychology pre-conference! 🎉
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Helen Devine @helenldevine.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
⚖️ New paper in Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences! Legal decisions hinge on who counts as a victim — but our judgments are biased & hard to change. We propose solutions: victim impact statements, funding restorative justice, & acknowledgments for exonerees.
Cover page of a journal article titled "The Psychology of Victimhood in the Law"
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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 15/01/2026
I started reading up on the whole "loneliness pandemic" narrative because this seems like a literature where the age-period-cohort problem may be relevant (or maybe it isn't?). Here's data from Australia (HILDA), average agreement with the statement "I often feel very lonely" (SD of ca. 1.8).>
Average agreement with the statement "I often feel very lonely" plotted over time
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
I am crowdsourcing divisive TV episodes for a study on moral disagreement. If you know of episodes that make for heated conversation, please complete the form below and pass it on! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com
Help Me Find the Ultimate TV Argument
The Goal: I am designing a psychology study about how our brains handle disagreement. I am looking for specific TV episodes that divide viewers into two opinion camps—a story where two reasonable peop...
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Society for Personality and Social Psychology @spspnews.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Looking for hands-on psychology research experience? We've compiled summer programs, internships, and opportunities specifically for undergraduates. Explore the full guide: ow.ly/sWBj50XT9SM
Group of young adults sitting indoors, one focused on his smartphone while others chat or wait nearby.
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
It's that time of year - lots of people are hunting for postbacc research jobs and aren't sure where to start. Below are some helpful resources I compiled from my experience. Please feel free to share with others! docs.google.com/document/d/1...
docs.google.com
Postbacc Psychology Job and Career Resources.docx
Psychology Resources for Post-Baccalaureate Jobs, Graduate School, and Career Planning Finding a postbaccalaureate research job in psychology can be time-consuming, difficult, and mysterious. This…
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
For LLM-assisted manuscripts, lexical complexity is negatively correlated with publication success and reviewer scores. Hopefully this will push us to prioritize clear, concise scientific writing over superficially complex writing (imo, simple writing was always better).
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
There is def reason to worry about impact of LLMs in science, but one benefit they've already had is eroding the heuristic that complex writing = good writing LLMs can mask a bad idea with elegant writing, which makes complexity a bad signal of quality. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
I’m taking grad level social psych and am noting examples of social/personality psych directly influencing society. Any other favorite examples? -Good Samaritan laws (bystander effect) -Mass marketing/political messaging (Yale Approach) -Personality traits (Allport) -Dating apps (similarity effect)
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Thanks again to my fantastic co-authors Payton Jones, Victoria Bridgland, Benjamin Bellet, and Rich McNally pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40608447/
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Sending signals: Trigger warnings and safe space notifications - PubMed
Trigger warnings and safe space notifications are common in higher education. Although researchers have evaluated these practices as mental health tools, little attention has been paid to the…
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
So, do trigger warnings and safe spaces belong in the classroom? Though we can't answer this for instructors, our data suggest that TWs fall short at improving students' perceptions of the classroom, but students react positively when the classroom is framed as a safe space.
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
BUT: safe spaces also made instructors seem more liberal and left-wing authoritarian—a scale that includes items about censoring conservative ideas. Mentioning that the classroom is a "safe space" raises the question: safe for which ideas?
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Safe spaces had benefits! When instructors described the classroom as a safe space, students saw them as more caring and felt more psychologically safe and willing to discuss controversial issues.
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
In conclusion, though 83–92% of our sample agreed that trigger warnings should be used, those randomly assigned to receive one felt no better about the classroom or their instructors than those who didn’t. But what about safe spaces?
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Trigger warnings didn’t help even among students with a history of trauma—the group they’re often meant to support. 44% of these students reported that the trigger warning reminded them of their past trauma, but these students did not feel more positively after receiving a TW.
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
A common argument for trigger warnings is that they’re polite: they signal respect and make students feel supported. But we found no evidence for this. Students who were randomly assigned to receive a warning felt no more positively about their instructors or the classroom.
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Sam Pratt @sampratt99.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
Pleased to share our paper Sending Signals: Trigger Warnings and Safe Spaces is an Editor’s Choice paper in JEP:A 🥳 Trigger warnings and safe spaces are increasingly popular. We asked: do they shape how students perceive the classroom climate? psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...
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