Neil Lewis, Jr.

@neillewisjr.bsky.social

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Behavioral Scientist & Science Communicator.
Associate Professor of Communication, Medicine, and Public Policy at Cornell.

neillewisjr.com
Personal account.

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😊

Long live Hastorf & Cantril (1954) psycnet.apa.org/record/1954-...

My priors that the Biden interview would confirm everyone’s priors have been confirmed

Here's why this is bad for Biden's age.

Reply to

Carl T. Bergstrom

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Reply to

Neil Lewis, Jr.

One hypothesis...

Timeline cleanse

Reply to

Neil Lewis, Jr.

It is essential that both sides of the isle commit to the larger goal of having a democratic society for any of this to have a chance of working.

I know I keep sharing their books, but Levitsky & Ziblatt have been very helpful for my thinking about this moment, how we got here, and how we can get out of it.

The thing I can't stop thinking about is this: I'm 48, and in my adult lifetime there has been one Republican who won the popular vote. But I will probably spend the rest of my life under the authority of a Supreme Court dominated by hard right conservatives. How is that democracy?

Just revisited the chapter on Subverting Democracy from the book How Democracies Die. This particular passage is relevant again today.

Today was a beautiful and peaceful day 😍

So...they rushed to fire people and will worry about whether the process for firing was reasonable later? 🤔

No news about this from UF or my department, but a line in this story seems to imply that 50 tenured professors at UF may end up losing their jobs as a result of the post-tenure review process this year. www.alligator.org/article/2024...

UF Faculty Senate holds special meeting to approve Hamilton Center degrees, discuss post-tenure review - The Independent Florida Alligatorwww.alligator.org The UF Faculty Senate held its first-ever summer meeting Friday over Zoom to vote on approval of two degree proposals for the Hamilton Center, the university's state-mandated civic center which has be...

Instead, we get this 🙃

Trump, Who Incited Insurrection After Losing In 2020, Refuses To Say He Will Accept Outcome of 2024 Election there's your fucking headline.

Reply to

Nathan Kalmoe (he/him)

Not just education in political science--the broader social science devaluation of "applied topics" does a disservice to our scientific enterprise and the broader world that could use that knowledge. Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox now. More on this here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"Allow me to problematize the question you have asked, and the way in which you have asked it."

Relevant image someone shared on the old site a few years ago:

To avoid being Chomsky-ed, everyone needs to send out a message every day that we are, in fact, still alive. More than once a day is encouraged. That will ensure that Bluesky is accurate as to whether people are alive. For purposes of today, at 4:54 Central Time, I am alive.

Related paper (and body of research) on this general idea. For a policy to elicit support, it is important...that the [out-group] loses so that the [in-group] achieves a greater relative advantage. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Honestly, this is almost the most Republican thing ever: “I will make life much harder on a bunch of Americans in a way that will not benefit any of you in the slightest.”

Reply to

Berna Devezer

I'm currently reading Toni Morrison's "Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination" and she makes a parallel point about presumed audiences and what they mean for writers who are not in the dominant social group.

Reply to

Neil Lewis, Jr.

This also stood out. I'm increasingly interested in which metrics "count" in policymaking decisions, and what that means for how we respond to crises.

Reply to

Andrew Mercer

I think about this interview segment a lot. freakonomics.com/podcast/the-...

This example of mispredicting reactions to Ukraine is brushed over as an oopsie that can easily be overcome, but, in my view, illustrates the broader issue with the temptation to try and replace humans with AI agents. "The model lacked sufficient context on crucially relevant recent events."

Pollsters are simulating political surveys with AI because nobody answers the phone: ash.harvard.edu/articles/usi... "The big difference between humans and AI agents is that the AI agents always pick up the phone..."

Using AI for Political Polling – Ash Centerash.harvard.edu

I had the same experience when I first read it. I had to click the embedded link and see the letter for myself. Truly wild. For folks who don't want to click through the links, this is the "Courtesy Letter" American issued:

this made so little sense to me I had to go read it in context and then I realized it says exactly what it means, my brain literally just couldn't parse being this evil literally giving your employees a doctor's note that says "we underpay them so like, would you mind taking the hit instead?"

Me reading this, agreeing with it, then reading this line: "But now, thanks to a bill...signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis last week, things are about to change."

A new law in Florida will place unprecedented new curbs on the power of homeowners’ associations — and other states may follow “These associations tend to be full of Karens who don’t just want to speak to the manager, they want to be the manager”

Curbing the Karens: Florida reins in over-mighty homeowners’ groupswww.theguardian.com The state’s homeowners’ associations (HOAs) are notorious for petty bureaucracy – including threats of eviction for the wrong kind of dog or decorative garage door hinges

@joelleforestier.bsky.social and I have a new paper in @natrevpsych.bsky.social today: "When and why people conceal their identities." In this paper we propose a dynamic identity concealment model that we hope helps with integrating research on this topic. Open🔗: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Every time I read articles about extremely wealthy people/companies engaging in unethical behavior to become even more wealthy, I think about this excerpt from the book the psychology of money. The endless quest for more is so damaging, especially when pursed by those who already have enough.

Excellent op-ed yesterday from @andrewdessler.bsky.social on renewables already being the cheaper option and how the fossil fuel industry is trying to salt that particular bit of earth to stop their rollout. These companies are *absurdly* rich and they're not gonna stop. Gift link:

Opinion | Oil and Gas Companies Are Trying to Rig the Marketplacewww.nytimes.com Fossil fuel interests are spreading misinformation that renewable energy is harmful, unreliable and worse for consumers.

Happy Sunday 😊

The reactions since yesterday have me thinking about old research on the common enemy effect.

In all seriousness, protect these people. You know his gang will come for them.

Reply to

Stacy Farina

The paper didn't engage with this?

Reply to

Neil Lewis, Jr.

It's commencement weekend at Cornell, which means I had the honor of hooding and celebrating the accomplishments of two amazing humans and scholars: Bharathy & @zberry.bsky.social. I'm so proud of them and grateful to have had the opportunity to work with them over the past six years ❤️.