New Paper in Philosophical Psychology: Trust in experts is low. Why? How bad is it? And what should we do? To answer these questions, we reviewed philosophy (when *ought* we defer to the experts) and psychology (when *do* people defer to the experts). Link in comments!

BACK TO PEN AND PAPER Y'ALL. chatbots now filling out qualtrics surveys (effortlessly)

I think the real third rail is that nobody wants to talk about whether and how much corporations should be allowed to take advantage of very stupid people.

I’m excited to share that I’ll be starting a PhD in Psychology at UCLA this fall. I’ll be working in the Social Cognitive Neuroscience lab with Matt Lieberman🇺🇦, studying consciousness and morality. I can’t wait for this next chapter!

This is the best one-paragraph explanation for what's gone wrong with our institutions:

Why do professors often make a point of saying their classroom is a "safe space"? And why has the practice spread so rapidly? One reason might be that it sends a social signal that they (the professor) are caring and trustworthy.

Forget whether or not "trigger warnings" and "safe spaces" are effective - what do they SIGNAL? That's the premise of this new paper just out from Sam Pratt

Crémieux This has also been shown for trauma. People shown non-severe events (e.g., not being hired after a job interview) had a lower threshold for labeling things "traumatic" compared to people who saw severe events. Paper by Payton Jones and colleagues doi.org/10.1037/xap000…

New preprint: Do people care more about their pet dog than about other people? 🐶 > 🫂 Our findings suggest that increases in "soulmate" emotional reliance on dogs is associated with reduced moral concern for people. 🧵

I'll be looking to take on a doctoral student in autumn 2026 (hopefully fully funded via SCDTP). Should be strong at stats, high grades. [email protected] Possible topics to choose from include:

✍️ New Preprint: "Sticks and stones may break my bones..." but can words really harm? We created the Words Can Harm Scale (WCHS) to measure the belief that speech can cause lasting psychological harm. You can take the online assessment here: sampratt99.github.io/Words-Can-Harm…