Ryan Boyd
@ryanboyd.io
160 followers 220 following 32 posts
Computational Social Scientist, Social/Personality Psychologist, and Generally Curious Person. University of Texas at Dallas. https://www.ryanboyd.io
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Reposted by Ryan Boyd
jamiecummins.bsky.social
Can large language models stand in for human participants?
Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research.

One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want.

THREAD 🧵
The threat of analytic flexibility in using large language models to simulate human data: A call to attention
Social scientists are now using large language models to create "silicon samples" - synthetic datasets intended to stand in for human respondents, aimed at revolutionising human subjects research. How...
arxiv.org
Reposted by Ryan Boyd
veravine.bsky.social
‼️Academic job alert‼️ Our dept at Queen's University (Canada!) is looking to hire a TT assistant prof in clinical psychology... Applications due end of Sept! Re-posts very much appreciated www.queensu.ca/psychology/n...
Employment Opportunities | Department of Psychology
Available Positions Position Title Position Details Posting Date Closing Date Assistant Professor - Tenure-Track Appointment in Psychology
www.queensu.ca
ryanboyd.io
Completely agree with other replies. Descriptive work is necessary and foundational. We have to map out what we're studying + what it looks like before diving head-first into "how it works." Publishing it, on the other hand... editors/reviewers can be almost childishly hostile to this kind of work.
Reposted by Ryan Boyd
veerleceline.bsky.social
The LEADING reporting guideline is now published in Comprehensive Psychiatry 🥳

See www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Or read the previous summary 👇
ryanboyd.io
This is an incredibly fun and cool paper. Congrats!
ryanboyd.io
I refuse to run any fine-tuning method that can't be powered by AAA batteries.
Reposted by Ryan Boyd
agnilsson.bsky.social
🎺 Publication in JPSP 🎺
1/7 We automated the coding procedure of the implicit motives of power, achievement and affiliation with at least as high accuracy as human coders while being 99% faster! 🎯⚡️

Article: psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

#personality
#AI
#NLProc
@apajournals.bsky.social
ryanboyd.io
You're beginning the ascension to a new level of cool.
ryanboyd.io
It pains me to say this, but I could *absolutely* imagine seeing this in print, verbatim.
ryanboyd.io
Let's go ahead and get this thing published now so that we can spend the next 10 years muddying the literature and facilitating uncritical scholarship.
ryanboyd.io
"How often do you use AI to help write messages to other people (e.g., emails)?"

"How often do you use AI to find answers to a question that don't know the answer to?"

"How often do you use AI for fun/enjoyment?"

1=never
3=sometimes
5=daily
ryanboyd.io
But, but, but, it's going to have a passable Cronbach's alpha when tested on a sample of 100 people who are between the ages of 16 and 22. And just wait for the inevitable "brief" version of the measure comprised of only the 3 most eye-rollingly bad items.
Reposted by Ryan Boyd
mdehghani.bsky.social
Our new paper in PNAS Nexus. County morals > politics for carbon footprints? 🤯 We find that county-level values predict actual green behavior (emissions!), not just attitudes. Stronger than political leaning.
pnasnexus.org
A study finds that moral values predict environmental action as well as or better than political party affiliation. US counties where residents prioritize purity and fairness report higher environmental concerns and lower carbon emissions. In PNAS Nexus: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
A woman with pro-environmental signs. Stock photo.
ryanboyd.io
With all of the big announcements about AI-facilitated scientific research, like OpenAI's Deep Research and Google's AI co-scientist, it appears as though our thinky-piece on AI in the research process might be worth a re-read: www.frontiersin.org/journals/soc...
Frontiers | From silicon to solutions: AI's impending impact on research and discovery
The social sciences have long relied on comparative work as the foundation upon which we understand the complexities of human behavior and society. However, ...
www.frontiersin.org
ryanboyd.io
It's a wildly busy upcoming few days, but I genuinely love some good food for thought — I'm very much looking forward to giving it a read and continuing the conversation ☺️
ryanboyd.io
Zero pressure whatsoever — they were mostly just some pre-caffeine early morning musings 😄
ryanboyd.io
New blog post, and (I think?) my first one directly about LIWC-related things. More challenges, and thoughts, about sailing on the choppy seas of interdisciplinary scholarship. www.pancakes.wtf/20250110/lan...
Language Analysis Across Contexts: A Dialogue Between Forensic Linguistics and Psychology — A Rejoinder to Hunter & Grant (2025) – Pancakes? WTF?
www.pancakes.wtf
Reposted by Ryan Boyd
publicdomainrev.bsky.social
🥁 Announcing the Public Domain Image Archive! 🥁

We are v excited to share our new sister-project, the Public Domain Image Archive (PDIA), a curated collection of 10k+ out-of-copyright historical images, all free to explore and reuse: pdimagearchive.org @pdimagearchive