Brent W. Roberts
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bwroberts.bsky.social
Brent W. Roberts
@bwroberts.bsky.social
2.2K followers 1.5K following 550 posts
Respirating carbon-based life form. Pit of despair dweller. Bread maker. Sometimes personality psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
lakens.bsky.social
Babbage, 1830, discussing the problem that scientists selectively report findings that they want to be true.

Confirmation bias is a strong human tendency. This is why we need to design science in a way that prevents conformation bias from leading us away from the truth.
February 14, 2026 at 4:32 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
drdanvers.bsky.social
This article raises the larger point that it’s not just Individual decisions or moral failings that the Epstein files reveal. It’s a culture and clique that was self-reinforcing and enabling.
February 14, 2026 at 6:44 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
malte.the100.ci
New paper, on a worrying trend in meta-science: the practice of anonymising datasets on, e.g., published articles. We argue that this is at odds with norms established in research synthesis, explore arguments for anonymisation, provide counterpoints, and demonstrate implications and epistemic costs.
psyarxivbot.bsky.social PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 2d
Against Anonymising Meta-Scientific Data: https://osf.io/6eyjf
February 13, 2026 at 4:50 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
dingdingpeng.the100.ci
New blog post about the age-period-cohort identification problem!

In which, for the first time ever, I ask "What's the mechanism?" and also suggest that sometimes you may actually *not* be interested in causal inference.

www.the100.ci/2026/02/13/o...
One approach to the age-period-cohort problem: Just don’t.
Just to cause yourself more problems, you seek for something. But there is no need for you to seek anything. You have plenty, and you have just enough problems. Shunryū Suzuki in a 1971 talk A ...
www.the100.ci
February 13, 2026 at 2:33 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
lettersofnote.com
Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin
February 12, 2026 at 4:31 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
jayvanbavel.bsky.social
A meta-analysis on reducing discrimination finds:
1) passive interventions, such as short-term education or bias reminders, are ineffective
2) targeting behavior directly to inhibit bias (eg making individuals accountable or changing social norms) is helpful
psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...
February 11, 2026 at 2:32 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
ryancbriggs.net
I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.
It must be very hard to publish null results Publication practices in the social sciences act as a filter that favors statistically significant results over null findings. While the problem of selection on significance (SoS) is well-known in theory, it has been difficult to measure its scope empirically, and it has been challenging to determine how selection varies across contexts. In this article, we use large language models to extract granular and validated data on about 100,000 articles published in over 150 political science journals from 2010 to 2024. We show that fewer than 2% of articles that rely on statistical methods report null-only findings in their abstracts, while over 90% of papers highlight significant results. To put these findings in perspective, we develop and calibrate a simple model of publication bias. Across a range of plausible assumptions, we find that statistically significant results are estimated to be one to two orders of magnitude more likely to enter the published record than null results. Leveraging metadata extracted from individual articles, we show that the pattern of strong SoS holds across subfields, journals, methods, and time periods. However, a few factors such as pre-registration and randomized experiments correlate with greater acceptance of null results. We conclude by discussing implications for the field and the potential of our new dataset for investigating other questions about political science.
February 11, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
numcog.bsky.social
New: "Effect of Artificial Intelligence on Learning: A Meta-Meta-Analysis" by Wagenmakers and colleagues revealing evidence for "severe publication bias and extreme between-study heterogeneity" in existing meta-analyses of the effects of AI on learning: osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
February 10, 2026 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
paraic.bsky.social
***Just Published**

We tested whether purpose in life mediates the relation between #loneliness and future risk of death.

Loneliness seems to set in motion the erosion of purpose in life, that has downstream consequences on length of life.

Paper (open access)
doi.org/10.1016/j.so...
screenshot of the paper title and abstract that is linked to in the post
February 10, 2026 at 10:33 AM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
mcsweeneys.net
"Based on your results, we assume this comes as a great relief to you. The bridge trolling field requires little formal education, none whatsoever to be precise. If you are reading this letter at school, you may leave at any moment and head straight for the nearest bridge." buff.ly/8VX7EQ9
Your Career Aptitude Tests Results Suggest Bridge Troll
This letter is to inform you that your career aptitude test evaluation is complete. Your recommended career: Bridge Troll. Here at the Career Aptit...
buff.ly
February 7, 2026 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
infodocket.bsky.social
Journal Article: A Framework For Assessing the Trustworthiness of Scientific Research Findings (via @pnas.org) www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.... @cos.io
February 5, 2026 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
dingdingpeng.the100.ci
New preprint! So, what's a multiverse analysis good for anyway?>

With @jessicahullman.bsky.social and @statmodeling.bsky.social

juliarohrer.com/wp-content/u...
What’s a multiverse good for anyway? Julia M. Rohrer, Jessica Hullman, and Andrew Gelman Multiverse analysis has become a fairly popular approach, as indicated by the present special issue on the matter. Here, we take one step back and ask why one would conduct a multiverse analysis in the first place. We discuss various ways in which a multiverse may be employed – as a tool for reflection and critique, as a persuasive tool, as a serious inferential tool – as well as potential problems that arise depending on the specific purpose. For example, it fails as a persuasive tool when researchers disagree about which variations should be included in the analysis, and it fails as a serious inferential tool when the included analyses do not target a coherent estimand. Then, we take yet another step back and ask what the multiverse discourse has been good for and whether any broader lessons can be drawn. Ultimately, we conclude that the multiverse does remain a valuable tool; however, we urge against taking it too seriously.
February 4, 2026 at 10:24 AM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
briannosek.bsky.social
Our new paper, with colleagues from the Strategic Council of the National Academies, offers an integrative framework of the several components that contribute to making research findings trustworthy including ethics, methodology, transparency, inclusion, assessment, etc

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
A framework for assessing the trustworthiness of scientific research findings1 | PNAS
Vigorous debate has erupted over the trustworthiness of scientific research findings in a number of domains. The question “what makes research find...
www.pnas.org
February 3, 2026 at 7:27 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
ruben.the100.ci
New meta finds no correlation between testosterone and risk preference, buuuuut testosterone was mainly measured using 2D:4D (nonsense) or saliva (still bad) and we know from Frey et al. 2017 that the risk measures don't tap into a coherent preference.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
violin plot of results by testosterone measure violin plot of result by risk pref measure
February 3, 2026 at 12:03 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
funkel.bsky.social
Very happy that our new paper is out in Collabra: Psychology! 😀 Across three studies, we failed to replicate social class-based differences in conformity, which raises further questions about key assumptions of the social cognitive theory of social class.
January 28, 2026 at 9:10 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
tomstafford.mastodon.online.ap.brid.gy
Read my latest post for reflections on reproducibility, research quality and a summary of a great new study which shows how NOT to do it

https://open.substack.com/pub/tomstafford/p/gambling-with-research-quality
Gambling with research quality
How you get 244 different ways to measure performance on the same test of decision making. And what it means for the reliability of behavioural science
tomstafford.substack.com
February 1, 2026 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
janainstinske.bsky.social
Do conscientious people age more slowly?
Check it out in our work on epigenetic aging and personality differences.
🔍🧬🕰

doi.org/10.1177/0890...
Epigenetic aging and personality differences: Latent change analyses of twin data - Jana Instinske, Alicia M. Schowe, Darina Czamara, Dmitry V. Kuznetsov, Bastian Mönkediek, Christian Kandler, 2026
Personality stability and change are not only attributable to net contributions of genetic and environmental factors but also to their interplay. Environmental ...
doi.org
January 31, 2026 at 10:54 AM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
ruben.the100.ci
Really cool work!
michduf.bsky.social Michael Dufner @michduf.bsky.social · Jan 16
New paper out:
Some people are systematically better at judging others’ intelligence.
Who are the best judges? People WHO are intelligent themselves, have good emotion-perception ability, and who are high in well-being.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
The good judge of intelligence
Accurately judging others' intelligence is important, yet little is known about individual differences in this ability. In this study we investigated …
www.sciencedirect.com
January 31, 2026 at 8:37 AM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
theonion.com
No One Notices Area Man's Marginal Attempts To Change
No One Notices Area Man's Marginal Attempts To Change
January 30, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
michelenuijten.bsky.social
📣Revised preprint by @cas-goos.bsky.social

Measurement reliability, validity, and reporting in psychology still has a long way to go...

We compared original studies w replications, and where possible recalculated reliability & unidimensionality.

Some findings >

osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
January 7, 2026 at 3:53 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
gesis.org
#jobs #stellenangebote #GESISjobs #jobfairy #TrustedResearchEnvironments
Pursue your scientific career at GESIS!
youtu.be/zMY2zqYFIMg

Apply now for a job as a Associate in Trusted Research Environments (Salary group 11 TV-L, working time 39,5 h/week, unlimited contract)
gesis.jobs.personio....
Scientific career at GESIS
At GESIS, researchers work in various phases of their scientific careers: as student assistants, doctoral candidates, postdocs, senior researchers, team leaders, and department heads. The institute's goal is to provide its scientific staff with the best possible support in their various career phase
youtu.be
January 22, 2026 at 9:00 AM
bwroberts.bsky.social
The Personality Interest Group Including Espresso journal club (PIG-IE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign now has a public reading schedule: pig-ie-reading-vote.lovable.app/schedule. 1/
PIG-IE Reading List
The Personality Interest Group—Including Espresso Reading List
pig-ie-reading-vote.lovable.app
January 22, 2026 at 6:42 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
michelnivard.bsky.social
A very comprehensive review of the genetics of personlity led by @tedmond.bsky.social This is a great onramp for those who haven't checked into psychiatric genetics or bahviour genetics in a while. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
Personality Genomics
Recent research advances have precipitated the era of personality genomics: the study of how variation in human DNA sequence predicts individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, fee...
www.annualreviews.org
January 22, 2026 at 10:15 AM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
error.reviews
Improving scientific practice can seem daunting. In this fantastic talk (and thread below), Julia Rohrer shares practical ways to communicate methodological insights to a wider audience of researchers.
dingdingpeng.the100.ci Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · Jan 8
Some people bring up (1) the cost of criticism and (2) that a lot of criticism has already been voiced but ignored. Both points are valid, so here are some suggestion for (1) reducing backlash and (2) increasing impact (from this talk of mine: juliarohrer.com/wp-content/u...
January 22, 2026 at 12:03 PM
Reposted by Brent W. Roberts
jamiecummins.bsky.social
Comparing registrations to published papers is essential to research integrity - and almost no one does it routinely because it's slow, messy, and time-demanding.

RegCheck was built to help make this process easier.

Today, we launch RegCheck V2.

🧵

regcheck.app
RegCheck
RegCheck is an AI tool to compare preregistrations with papers instantly.
regcheck.app
January 22, 2026 at 11:05 AM