Gordon Pennycook
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gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook
@gordpennycook.bsky.social
23K followers 1.2K following 370 posts

Associate Professor, Psychology @cornelluniversity.bsky.social. Researching thinking & reasoning, misinformation, social media, AI, belief, metacognition, B.S., and various other keywords. 🇨🇦

https://gordonpennycook.com/ .. more

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Gordon Robert Pennycook is a Canadian psychologist who is an associate professor at Cornell University. He is also an adjunct professor of Behavioural Science at the University of Regina's Hill and Levene Schools of Business. In 2020, he was elected to be a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists. .. more

Political science 22%
Sociology 21%
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gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 25d
🚨 Now out in Psych Science 🚨

We report an adversarial collaboration (with @donandrewmoore.bsky.social) testing whether overconfidence is genuinely a trait

The paper was led by Jabin Binnendyk & Sophia Li (who is fantastic and on the job market!) Free copy here: journals.sagepub.com/eprint/7JIYS...

Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Gordon Pennycook, Jennifer A. Richeson , and 6 more

darinself.com
Darin Self @darinself.com · 1d
I can still recall all the tut-tutting from the media when Harris made this argument.
adamjschwarz.bsky.social Adam Schwarz @adamjschwarz.bsky.social · Aug 24
Kamala Harris at her closing campaign rally:

"Donald Trump intends to use the United States Military against American citizens who simply disagree with him."

Reposted by Gordon Pennycook, Dean Eckles

tomerullman.bsky.social
Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 2d
once again being driven insane by ML conference submissions

Reposted by Adam J. Berinsky, Nathan P. Kalmoe

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 3d
One of the most salient differences between Trump's first and second term is that he is now surrounding himself with people who are genuinely radicalized. Some of them are blatantly lying, sure. But to do it so callously and at this scale... I have to think that many really believe their own BS.
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 3d
Leavitt: "The deadly incident that took place yesterday in Minnesota yesterday occurred as a result of a larger, sinister left-wing movement that has spread across our country where our brave men and women of federal law enforcement are under organized attack."

Reposted by Gordon Pennycook, David Darmofal

atrupar.com
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 3d
Leavitt: "The deadly incident that took place yesterday in Minnesota yesterday occurred as a result of a larger, sinister left-wing movement that has spread across our country where our brave men and women of federal law enforcement are under organized attack."

Reposted by Greg Linden

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 3d
we're not even a full week into 2026 yet

Reposted by Gordon Pennycook, Cort W. Rudolph

drjennings.bsky.social
Will Jennings📉🗳️ @drjennings.bsky.social · 4d
This seems a fitting song for the moment (as it is time and time again).
Neil Young - Ohio [Live At Massey Hall 1971] (Video)
YouTube video by neilyoungchannel
www.youtube.com

Reposted by Jonathan Portes, Anna O. Law, Gordon Pennycook , and 19 more

mclem.org
Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 5d
A new paper by George Borjas—who served this past year in the Trump White House designing some of its anti-immigration policies—claims to display evidence of ideological bias among researchers who study immigration.

doi.org/10.1126/scia...

🧵 Thread—>

Reposted by Gordon Pennycook

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 15d
The U.S. government bans 5 people from the country, alleging “Murthy-style speech suppression.” Masnick: “So the State Department is citing a case that disproved government censorship as evidence of government censorship. That’s not even creative lying — it’s just citing your own loss as precedent.”

Reposted by Lisa W. Fazio, Gordon Pennycook, Brendan Nyhan , and 1 more

katestarbird.bsky.social
Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 16d
Good article, but I think we could add that many of the current government officials & influencers spreading political point-scoring falsehoods during crisis events HAVE BECOME gov officials & influencers BECAUSE of their bullshit-spreading talents. System effects of rotten attention dynamics.
Government Officials Once Stopped False Accusations After Violence. Now, Some Join In.
www.nytimes.com

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 19d
Also, secondarily, I made the mistake of focusing on the camera and not looking at myself... and hence did not realize what my face was doing.

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 19d
I did an interview today while on vacation... and the only room free from the intrusion of children was my in-law's laundry room 😂

If you're curious (it's about using AI for political persuasion): www.cbc.ca/player/play/...

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 19d
One reasonable guess is that censoring this report will actually cause *more* people to watch it and hear about it.
bubbaprog.xyz Timothy Burke @bubbaprog.xyz · 20d
The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

Reposted by Anne Applebaum, Joanna Bryson, Naomi Klein , and 46 more

bubbaprog.xyz
Timothy Burke @bubbaprog.xyz · 20d
The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

Reposted by Gordon Pennycook

neuroskeptic.bsky.social
Neuroskeptic @neuroskeptic.bsky.social · 22d
"Some people do believe that they are able to perform relatively well on tasks even when there is little reason for that confidence. Our results support the claim that overconfidence might be a trait." pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41401360/

Reposted by Rebecca Solnit, Dorothy Bishop, Gordon Pennycook , and 9 more

wyden.senate.gov
Senator Ron Wyden @wyden.senate.gov · 23d
The Epstein file is the only thing Trump has ever taken his name off of

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 23d
Thank you!!

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 24d
Nothing particularly insightful to say about that, but I do think it's a great question a very promising direction for future research! (Also possible that there's already some work on this that I'm not aware of)

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 25d
Ah, interesting! This paper (www.cambridge.org/core/journal...) looks at a broader set of associations and the correlations are quite modest

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 25d
For estimated performance, there aren't consistent gender differences. However, when it comes to overplacement (thinking you're better than others on the task), men are more overconfident than women

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 25d
Thanks to Cory Clark and Phil Tetlock and their "Adversarial Collaboration Project" for supporting this work! web.sas.upenn.edu/adcollabproj...
Research Team | Adversarial Collaboration Project
web.sas.upenn.edu

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 25d
Ultimately, it may have taken several papers and much back-and-forth to come to a similar conclusion. And, most likely, we might never have come to a genuine agreement if we had not engaged in this adversarial collaboration together. I think it's a great approach to science!

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 25d
Nonetheless, we came to an agreement on the following conclusion: "some participants are more confident than others across the seemingly random tasks we offered. These relationships provide support for a within-individual consistency and a trait interpretation of confidence and
overconfidence."

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 25d
@donandrewmoore.bsky.social et al remain skeptical about trait overconfidence (see the discussion section of the article), but future work will hopefully help evaluate whether the tendency to be confident on these types of "unconfounded" tasks is predictive of real-world instances of overconfidence

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 25d
Although performance on these tasks is (essentially) random, some ppl just think they are doing better than others. This is what I would like to call "generalized" overconfidence: The extra boost of confidence that people who tend to be overconfident bring with them to various situations/contexts.

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 25d
We then tested whether the tendency to indicate confidence when it is not justified is consistent across the 8 tests that we devised. The results were straightforward: The tendency was very consistent across tasks. Factors analyses supported a single factor.

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 25d
To test whether overconfidence is genuinely a trait, we created several tasks where ppl have no basis for confidence (e.g., guessing whether someone has an innie or outie belly button based on a pic of their face). We pretested them to make sure that they were unfamiliar tasks that involved guessing

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 25d
Before I talk about the results, I just want to say that it was such a pleasure to work with @donandrewmoore.bsky.social more & his team. This ad collab did not require a moderator & it was very pleasant throughout! Don, of course, is extremely reasonable (my highest possible praise)!

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 25d
Don was justifiably skeptical that this was genuinely measuring an underlying trait, as opposed to (once again, based on past work) an idiosyncratic form of overconfidence that would not strongly correspond with other measures of overconfidence.

So, we did an ad collab to test it further!

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 25d
To address this concern, Jabin & I created a task where people have to, essentially, guess the answer ("the Generalized Overconfidence Task"). Even though people are guessing and confidence is not related to performance, some people are *still* more confident. And this predicts a bunch of things.

gordpennycook.bsky.social
Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 25d
Ppl tend to be more overconfident for tasks that they are bad at and less overconfident for tasks that they are good at. I.e., Task performance confounds our estimates of *trait* overconfidence. Thus, as Don has pointed out many times, overconfidence measures are highly unreliable.