New Substack post! Another guest post from my brilliant PhD student Victoria Oldemburgo de Mello on the moralization of AI. Moralizing AI could be a reasonable position, she argues, but is it? Depends on what we know about AI and about how moralization works. She also calls my opinions dumb. Ouch!

Some Things Are Not Negotiable. Is AI One of Them?

Here is another guest post by my PhD student, Victória Oldemburgo de Mello.

open.substack.com

Thank you, Mickey, for this courageous and insightful essay.

Michael Inzlicht@minzlicht.bsky.social · 2w ago

I p-hacked my early work on prejudice. It never felt like cheating. I now wonder if that's because I believed the cause was good. New essay on why scholar-activism is a dangerous turn for social psychology. If justice comes first, truth is what gets sacrificed. open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

I p-hacked my early work on prejudice. It never felt like cheating. I now wonder if that's because I believed the cause was good. New essay on why scholar-activism is a dangerous turn for social psychology. If justice comes first, truth is what gets sacrificed. open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

My P-Hacking Felt Like Truth

I became a social psychologist because I wanted to make the world a better place.

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A decade ago, psychology went to war with itself over replication. For one year, I was the referee, moderating a Facebook group meant to keep the fights civil. Worst year of my academic life. The full story, originally paywalled, is now free: open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

When Psychology Went to War With Itself

A month ago, someone shoved me into a time machine.

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New guest post by my PhD student @hellovic.bsky.social. She writes about her new working paper finding that most Americans don't oppose AI. But those who do treat it as a moral issue, refusing tradeoffs and even money. Why that makes AI debates so hard. open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

AI's Fiercest Critics Are Opting Out of the Conversations That Matters Most

This week I’m publishing a guest post by my PhD student, Victória Oldemburgo de Mello.

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New paper out! Some AI companies anthropomorphize their products to boost trust. But does it work? And can anthropomorphism benefit them beyond increased trust? We tested this across two studies. Here's what we found:

There's no other way to say this: PUB DATE! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/745513...

The Last Straight Woman by Phoebe Maltz Bovy: 9780771013027 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

A fiercely intelligent, funny, and much-needed reality check on the state of heterosexual women. The Last Straight Woman is a call to set aside the baggage of what female heterosexuality evokes,...

penguinrandomhouse.com

I have a student who is considering putting together a symposium at SPSP on the psychology gleaned from specific films. We'll be covering--what else--The Big Lebowski. Anyone else interested in putting something together?

I want to defend punching down in academia. Scratch that. I want to defend punching, full stop. Up, down, sideways. The norm against critiquing junior scholars publicly comes from a good place but breaks something fundamental about how science works. New essay. open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

Science Doesn't Care Who You Are

A few months ago I sat in the audience for a PhD student’s talk that was, well, not great.

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My lab posted a paper on AI opposition. Someone threatened me with a guillotine. The replies proved our findings better than the data did. New post! open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

500,000 Views and a Guillotine Threat

One of my social media posts recently trended on Twitter.

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Are different desires (e.g., food, sleep, alcohol, cannabis) experienced and regulated the same way? We tested this question in a new preprint with Yang Liu, @minzlicht.bsky.social, @wilhelmhofmann.bsky.social, and @kevinmking.bsky.social: osf.io/preprints/ps...

@nature.com has published three groundbreaking papers on reproducibility, analytical robustness, and replicability across the social sciences. Sincere thanks are due to the many folks who contributed to these projects. It’s painstaking work, and a great service to social science.

Researchers affiliated with SRI at @utoronto.ca (including @semrasevi.bsky.social, Elliot Creager, Matt Ratto, @zhijingjin.bsky.social, & @minzlicht.bsky.social) are part of 8 new CIFAR projects focused on examining AI Safety through the lens of social sciences & the humanities. shorturl.at/NAwej

CIFAR awards over $1M to support sociotechnical challenges in AI safety - CIFAR

Eight projects announced to receive funding for AI safety research.

shorturl.at

🚨 New preprint with @dcameron.bsky.social and @minzlicht.bsky.social! The empathic voice penalty: Vocal delivery reduces perceived empathy in humans and AI osf.io/preprints/ps... We know AI often outperforms humans at text-based empathy—but what happens when emotional support is expressed vocally?

I've known @jayvanbavel.bsky.social and Dominic Packer for 20 years. Partly responsible for me ending up at UofT. They write one of the best psychology Substacks around. This week I'm republishing their piece on the bystander effect and why the Kitty Genovese story isn't what we thought.

The Myth That Made Social Psychology Famous

Social psychology built a whole theory of human callousness on a story that wasn't quite true. Dominic Packer and Jay Van Bavel sort out the myth from the science.

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Qualitative coding 3,183 open-ended responses by hand would take 80+ hours. With an LLM-assisted workflow, Gino Carmona-Díaz and colleagues in Colombia did it in 10. ICC = .824. Full tutorial, prompts, and code are open access. link.springer.com/article/10.3...

An AI-powered research assistant in the lab: A practical guide for text analysis through iterative collaboration with LLMs - Behavior Research Methods

Analyzing texts such as open-ended responses, headlines, or social media posts is a time- and labor-intensive process highly susceptible to bias. However, large language models (LLMs) are promising to...

link.springer.com

18 months ago I wrote about the fall of stereotype threat. It's making rounds again. DominicPacker and @jayvanbavel.bsky.social republished it, Mary Murphy wrote a lengthy rebuttal, and the debate is alive. I have thoughts. For now: the original essay, with one important addition.

Is Stereotype Threat Just Vibes Now?

The title of this newsletter tells you that I use this space to speak my mind.

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We created a new scale to measure AI sycophancy in conversations with no right answer. Three facets: Uncritical Agreement, Obsequiousness, Excitement. People hate the flattery but welcome the enthusiasm. And sycophancy correlated with perceived empathy across every study. arxiv.org/abs/2603.15448

Check out @hellovic.bsky.social's new paper on the moralization of AI: osf.io/preprints/ps.... Ort check out a cool infographic of the paper.

Check out my student @hellovic.bsky.social's new paper: The Moralization of Artificial Intelligence With @reemayad.bsky.social, @eloisecote.bsky.social, @yoelinbar.net, and Jason Plaks

Victoria Oldemburgo de Mello@hellovic.bsky.social · 5mo ago

🧵 New preprint alert! Why do some people refuse to use AI, even when you tell them it's safe and beneficial? We argue it's not about risk perception. It's about moralization. AI has become a moral issue for many people, and that changes everything. [1/7] osf.io/preprints/ps...

Three cheers for humility about AI and limits of human understanding. Resonates with how I've been thinking about AI, empathy, metascience with @minzlicht.bsky.social @jdweng.bsky.social @mgreinecke.bsky.social @jimaceverett.bsky.social. Well written and incisive, this post is really worth a read.

Tom Costello@tomcostello.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I saw we were fighting about what AI will do to (social) science. I have some thoughts (originally written for a book on scientific inquiry) and decided to turn them into my first substack article. Co-written with Nat Rabb! tomstello.substack.com/p/standing-o...

Wrote up my impressions of this year's SPSP conference. A 21-year analysis of the field's political drift, a tribute to Sam Sommers, AI-generated slides with zero apology, and a party I maybe shouldn't have attended. open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

Three Days in the Belly of Social Psychology

I have mixed feelings about the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP).

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Fun to read this after my post on stereotype threat was republished by @jayvanbavel.bsky.social et al. I don't agree with all that Mary wrote, but it's worth a read. One place I'll push back: if stereotype threat only really affects feelings (and not performance) would it have made the same impact?

Mary C. Murphy@marycmurphy.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Today Dominic Packer & @jayvanbavel.bsky.social republished @minzlicht.bsky.social's post about "The Downfall of Stereotype Threat" in their widely-read The Power Of Us newsletter. I felt a certain way about that & the evidence presented there & thought I'd respond:

Today Dominic Packer & @jayvanbavel.bsky.social republished @minzlicht.bsky.social's post about "The Downfall of Stereotype Threat" in their widely-read The Power Of Us newsletter. I felt a certain way about that & the evidence presented there & thought I'd respond:

The Report of Stereotype Threat's Demise Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

And why I'm feeling a certain way about it

marycmurphy.substack.com

1/ Calling all Psychonomics people who care about motivation. The Society for the Science of Motivation (SSM) is looking for someone to organize a preconference ("Affiliate Meeting") at the 2026 Psychonomic Society Annual Meeting.

1/ New paper in Communications Psychology: Against Frictionless AI. Led by my student Emily Zohar and @paulbloomatyale.bsky.social. The argument: AI's greatest selling point is also its problem. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Against frictionless AI - Communications Psychology

AI’s greatest strength—removing friction from work and relationships—is also a liability. Prioritizing outcome over process, it eliminates desirable difficulties that drive growth. By subtracting effo...

nature.com

New paper in Current Directions in Psych Science: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... After countless arguments about what tasks ppl should/should not offload to AI, we instead argue that genAI can be used *augment* research protocols in novel ways. I.e. use AI to make better psych experiments!

#UTSC student Dariya Ovsyannikova and Professor Michael Inzlicht share research on AI and empathy: why chatbot responses can be rated as more compassionate, what that says about how we listen, and why safeguards matter when people turn to bots for support, via BBC Online bbc.in/4qXU0rq #UofT

Conference season is here. Many of you are doing it wrong. You flew across the country to check your email in a different city. New post on what conferences are actually for. open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

You're Doing Conferences Wrong

I love conferences.

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Preprint of "Wise Empathy Improves Well-being on Instagram" is now available: osf.io/preprints/ps... Effects of social media on well-being vary, and depend greatly on online experiences. Here, we present a wise empathy intervention to change digital experiences and improve well-being. #empathy 1/4