Do punishers of freeriders get admiration from peers? Depends a lot on the peers. In small groups (N=667 lab study), punishers received higher status from peers high in right-wing authoritarianism, but not by peers low in RWA. Full paper (open access): journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Which Machiavellianism scale should we use? We compared the TDMS, FFMI-SSF, MAAQ, M4, M7, and SD4 in a comprehensive psychometric evaluation. Spoiler: the M4 came out on top overall. And yes, I developed the M4. Make of that what you will.😅 The preprint is available on osf.io/preprints/ps...

Two simulation studies in this paper show that doubly robust methods for causal inference—especially regression weighted by inverse propensity scores—are more robust to model misspecification than traditional regression across many scenarios. link.springer.com/article/10.3...

A review and evaluation of doubly robust approaches for estimating average treatment effects - Behavior Research Methods

In nonexperimental studies, obtaining an unbiased estimate of the average treatment effect (ATE) typically requires two key assumptions: that all relevant covariates are measured (i.e., no unmeasured ...

link.springer.com

This looks like a paper every personality psychologist should have an opinion on. I've often defended broad factor models to cognitive scientists and economists who look at them askance because they are genuinely useful, but it's hard to argue that personality traits are common causes as modelled.

Michael P. Grosz@mp-grosz.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I'm excited to share that my paper "Why the Big Five Personality Traits Are Composites, Not Common Causes" has just been accepted at Psychological Review. The preprint is available on PsyArXiv: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Good news everyone 🥳 Our (w @vincentab.bsky.social) primer on models as prediction machines (with the marginaleffects package) is finally officially published!> journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Models as Prediction Machines: How to Convert Confusing Coefficients Into Clear Quantities - Julia M. Rohrer, Vincent Arel-Bundock, 2026

Psychological researchers usually make sense of regression models by interpreting coefficient estimates directly. This works well enough for simple linear model...

journals.sagepub.com

I'm excited to share that my paper "Why the Big Five Personality Traits Are Composites, Not Common Causes" has just been accepted at Psychological Review. The preprint is available on PsyArXiv: osf.io/preprints/ps...

New post on The 100% CI: Science needs downvotes. www.the100.ci/2026/04/13/s... In which I make the case that grant funders should add funding lines that include a module for bug bounties.

Science needs downvotes

A bug bounty module in grants would give criticism a leg up The Soviet Union was good at producing shoes. Factories made 800 million pairs a year, twice as many as Italy, three times as many as the...

the100.ci

New paper, out this week in PLOS One, suggests that most close relationship self-report measures are primarily capturing relationship quality 🧵 journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Predicting relationship quality with itself? A single general factor captures most of the variance across 34 common relationship measures

In relationship science, researchers have generated a wide array of constructs and corresponding self-report measures to characterize, explain, and predict relationship quality – the foremost studied ...

journals.plos.org

New preprint out today (osf.io/preprints/ps...). We tested whether AI agents are actually infiltrating online surveys. Spoiler alert: they aren't Thread 🧵 [1/9]

New post from me on The 100% CI. Think inside the box, part 1: The guy Euclidean distance told you not to worry about www.the100.ci/2026/03/09/t...

Think inside the box, part 1: The guy Euclidean distance told you not to worry about

Romance could be so simple if only we were two-dimensional. You just find the closest available partner and go for it. To find out who is closest, you might compute a distance measure. The Euclidean d...

the100.ci

Despite increasing use of observational data in public health, researchers are still hesitant to use strong causal language (for fear of overpromising). New paper and comment in @bmj.com sets out new guidance on appropriate use/misuse of causal language www.bmj.com/content/392/...

“To Be” or “I Am Someone Who Tends to Be”: Does the Wording of Personality Items Matter? #RegisteredReport from @cskay.bsky.social, Sara Weston, and David Condon doi.org/10.1525/coll...

Just gave my last talk of the year! 2025 was quite packed, I gave talks about: - the age-period-cohort problem - making rigorous causal inference more mainstream - mediation analysis - marginaleffects - causal graphs (x10) If you're curious, check out my slides here: juliarohrer.com/resources/

Resources

Here you can find a collection of things that may be helpful, including slide decks, a curated list of introductory papers and blog posts, as well as some infographics I have generated to explain v…

juliarohrer.com

I used to think that people use the “weasel word causal inference strategy” (“our analyses show that X is an important predictor of…” followed by conclusions that are clearly causal) for the sake of plausible deniability. But I’m revising that now, because often deniability *isn’t* plausible.>

Meine Uni, die HMU, hat mehrere W3 Professuren für den neuen Standort in München ausgeschrieben: ✅ Quantitative Methoden ✅ Allgemeine Psychologie ✅ Entwicklungspsychologie ✅ 2 x Klinische Psychologie www.health-and-medical-university-muenchen.de/ueber-uns/ka... 🔄 Bitte teilen & retweeten!

Das Kriminologische Forschungsinstitut Niedersachen oranisiert eine Tagung zu Kausalanalyse in der kriminologischen Forschung -- 8. und 9. Dezember in Hannover, Teilnahme kostenfrei! kfn.de/veranstaltun...

Machiavellianism scales often miss key facets across affect, behavior, cognition, and desire. Our new paper in @collabrapsychology.bsky.social introduces the M4 scale, built with Ant Colony Optimization to capture Mach more comprehensively. It is freely available here: doi.org/10.1525/coll...

Assessing the ABCDs of Machiavellianism: Development and Validation of the M4 Scale Using Ant Colony Optimization, from @mp-grosz.bsky.social et al. doi.org/10.1525/coll...

New article by me! Cardiovascular disease mortality rates have declined by around three-quarters since 1950, but we rarely hear about it. I explore some of the reasons behind the decline. ourworldindata.org/cardiovascul...

APART-USA @oeaw.bsky.social program available for outstanding #postdocs working at US research institutions to relocate their research activities to Austria. 25 fellowships distributed across Austrian research institutions, Sept 15 deadline, by nomination stipendien.oeaw.ac.at/en/fellowshi...

This one is quite fascinating because it’s a very explicit attempt at methods harm reduction — people keep doing the shoddiest mediation analyses despite repeated criticism; let’s rebrand it as associational variable analysis to provide a more accurate label.

Aidan Wright@aidangcw.bsky.social · last yr.

On this July 4, liberate the field from cross-sectional “mediation analysis” - check out this new paper discussing an alternative. I bet it’s an instant classic. My sense is that folks continue bad practices bc they don’t know what else to do. This solves that psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

Our paper about the GIPO data has now been officially published at Personality Science. The paper is freely available at journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

❕NEW PAPER❕ We developed the M4, a reliable & valid Machiavellianism scale capturing affective, behavioral, cognitive, and motivational aspects of Mach. Link: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Extremely excited to share the first effort of the Revived Genomics of Personality Consortium: A highly-powered, comprehensive GWAS of the Big Five personality traits in 1.14 million participants from 46 cohorts. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

📊 NEW PAPER 📊 Our manuscript about the GIPO dataset (N = 1,460) is now accepted at Personality Science! 🎉 The freely available dataset includes measures of personality and prosocial & cheating behavior. 📄 You can find the accepted manuscript here: osf.io/preprints/ps... bsky.app/profile/mp-g...

Michael P. Grosz@mp-grosz.bsky.social · last yr.

7 years ago, I received funding for a project on personality, incentivized prosocial behavior & social status in groups. Today, we've made the anonymized data publicly available. Researchers can now use it by citing the preprint/paper (no need to add anyone as a coauthor): doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🚨 New preprint! 🚨 Using nationally representative survey data from 142 countries (N = 128,093), I find that people who have experienced a climate-related hazard are more likely to consider climate change a 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵. 🧵 Link: osf.io/preprints/ps...

🚨 JOB! Full professorship (W3) in Personality Psychology / Interindividual Differences & Psychological Assessment at Uni Bremen. I hold the "sister professorship" is social psych & very much recommend this post. Please apply, share widely & don't hestiate to ask me! www.uni-bremen.de/en/universit...

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uni-bremen.de

📣 Are you a psychologist with an interest and passion for #ScienceCommunication research and/or practice in Germany? Join our newly founded DGPs interest group #PsyComm! 📣

PsyComm - Wissenschaftskommunikation in der Psychologie@psycomm.bsky.social · last yr.

Hi #AcademicSky - we are PsyComm, a new @dgps.bsky.social interest group to promote networking between science communication #scicomm research and practice within psychology. Join us for our inaugural meeting: forms.gle/DGpav3jCUHCi...

This paper on tailored cutoffs for fit indices in SEM is great. Their simulation-cum-ROC approach is not only more informative but also more flexibly applicable (e.g., works also for second-order models and WLSMV) than other methods for finding tailored cutoffs. link.springer.com/article/10.3...

The simulation-cum-ROC approach: A new approach to generate tailored cutoffs for fit indices through simulation and ROC analysis - Behavior Research Methods

To evaluate model fit in structural equation modeling, researchers commonly compare fit indices against fixed cutoff values (e.g., CFI ≥ .950). However, methodologists have cautioned against overgener...

link.springer.com

I’m excited to share my new preprint entitled “The Big Five Personality Traits are Composites Rather Than Common Causes”: osf.io/6ukqb_v1. 😀