Halloween Edition
Nov 2021: New papers, announcements from current and former lab members, some research in the news, and a postdoc fellowship opportunity at NYU
We hope everyone had a Happy Halloween! With that, keep reading, as new papers, news from current and former lab members, and a fellowship opportunity awaits! To celebrate the holiday, Diego Reinero sent us a lab halloween party photo from 5 years ago with costumes spanning everything from Reviewer 1 to the Data Police:
New papers
Our biggest collaboration to date (with over 250 authors!) is now in press in Nature Communications, and finds that national identity is linked to public health activity during the pandemic.
Our new paper is now officially published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences! Jay, Steve Rathje, Elizabeth Harris, Claire Robertson, and Anni Sternisko are the lab members behind this work, and it explores how social media shapes polarization through the following processes: partisan selection, message content, and platform design and algorithms.
One of our lab’s postdocs, Kim Doell, recently had a paper published in Scientific Reports! It finds that individual predispositions to experience positive emotions in an environmental context predict pro-environmental actions and corresponding shifts in affective states (towards personal as well as witnessed pro-environmental actions).
Another paper by former postdoc Andrea Pereira, PhD student Elizabeth Harris, and Jay was published this month in Group Processes & Intergroup Relations! We found that Democrats and Republicans are both more likely to believe news about the value-upholding behavior of their ingroup or the value-undermining behavior of their outgroup.
A new pre-print with lab affiliates Rachel Leshin, Daniel Yudkin and colleagues found that parents’ political ideology was linked to their kids punishment decisions.
Clara Pretus, one of our lab’s visiting researchers, William Brady, Elizabeth Harris and colleagues conducted several experiments that found that extreme partisans were more willing to share misinformation linked to their sacred values, and that fact-checks had little or no effect among this group!
Lab member shoutouts
Our former PhD student and active lab affiliate Diego Reinero recently attended SESP in Santa Barbara, CA, and was one of only a handful of postdocs to give a talk, which was titled “Understanding the psychological and neural foundations of political polarization.” While there, he also got to catch up with some former lab members! Pictured: Billy Brady (front right; former PhD student in the lab) and Leor Hackel (back right; former PhD student in the lab and one of Jay’s very first students!). Also featured is another former NYU social psych PhD student, Dave Kalkstein (front left).
Anastasiia Korolavskaia, a research assistant in the Social Identity & Morality Lab, just had her conference poster accepted for next year’s SPSP:
Our PhD student Claire Robertson gave an Emerging Scholars in Psychological Science (ESPS) talk at Princeton University, entitled “‘If it bleeds, it leads’: Negativity Drives Online News Consumption” and it focused on her negativity bias work. (Here’s Claire at Princeton.)
Visiting researcher Steve Rathje was featured on the Freakonomics podcast! He discussed our research on how social media amplifies out-group negativity:
Former PhD Student, Jenny Ray, just landed a job as a Learning and Talent Measurement Manager supporting Global Learning Solutions, Global Talent Acquisition, and Global Talent Management in the Takeda Pharmaceutical Center! She evaluates the effectiveness of core programs and business value of the team's work, analyzing data and providing metrics to the business. If you’re interested in non-academic careers, she’s available to answer any questions you might have. Go Jenny!
The Power of Us
A huge thank you to everyone who came out to our book launch party this month—we had a great time!
If you’re interested in learning more about social identity, collective behavior, and how to become smarter about groups, subscribe to The Power of Us weekly newsletter! Some of our recent updates have covered the Facebook Papers, what motivates bystanders to intervene during an attack, and why we fight over who makes the best pizza. To learn more about the book and stay up-to-date on new media and events, you can head over to the book’s website.
And if you’re still unsure about whether to check out The Power of Us, see this review from Jay’s 11-year old neighbor, Leo.
Fellowship opportunity
NYU is offering a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program for promising scholars and educators from diverse backgrounds. The deadline to apply is November 10th. See this post below if you or someone you know may be interested in applying:
In the media
Last week, Jay was interviewed on CNN’s Reliable Sources, and discussed how people’s beliefs are shaped by their political identity and information universe:
Jay and his co-author Dom wrote an op-ed about the “bystander effect” and how it related to the recent SEPTA attack for Psychology Today:
And were also were featured on The Lincoln Project podcast, discussing identity and polarization, and the effect of COVID-19 on our individual and collective identities:
In case you missed last month’s newsletter:
As we venture into November with Thanksgiving on the horizon, we’d like to take a moment to say thank you to all of our lab members and readers! We’re thrilled that so many people are interested in our work and we truly appreciate your support. Let us know if there’s anything you’d like to see more (or less) of in future newsletters in the comments, and as always, please share this newsletter with anyone else you think may be interested in our research.
As always, if you have any photos, news, or research you’d like to have included in this newsletter, please reach out to Katie (nyu.vanbavel.lab@gmail.com). We encourage former lab members to share exciting career updates or job opportunities (we’d love to hear what you’re up to!).
That’s all, folks—thanks for reading and we’ll see you next month!