Introducing JoC publication: “The (in)efficacy of AI personas in deception detection experiments”, by David M Markowitz @davidmmarkowitz.bsky.social , Timothy Levine.
Read here: doi.org/10.1093/joc/...

🚨🚨 My lab is hiring a Postdoc! 🚨🚨

Postdoc opening in my lab at Harvard Psych (start: Summer/Fall 2026).

We study identity, group dynamics, language, & politics.

Rolling review begins 3/14
Apply: academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15806

Please repost + tag folks who might be a good fit! 👇

VHIL-E knows it all but rarely hallucinates! Lab materials collected, cleaned, classified, chunked, created embeddings, correlated in an index, & connected ("7 Cs"). Over 2.3 million words segmented into 10k "chunks" integrated into an RAG-based LLM. Now published.

vhil.stanford.edu/publications...

GenZ version of dplyr in R

Hadley Wickham made a GenZ version of dplyr 😂

hadley.github.io/genzplyr/

Stanford Ocean Acidification Experience on Meta Quest Stanford researchers have produced a virtual underwater experience to allow you to observe firsthand what reefs are expected to look like by the end of the century if we do not curb our CO2 emissions....

The Stanford Ocean Acidification Experience, downloaded from Steam in over half of the countries in the world, showcased everywhere from Superbowl to Senate, studied thoroughly, with scholars typically demonstrating increased learning and motivation.

Now Free on Meta!

www.meta.com/experiences/...

An elderly man reads a newspaper on a bench. Stock photo.

Obituaries capture the best in people. An analysis of 38 million obituaries from the United States found that many focused on the values of tradition and benevolence. Major events shape obits: The COVID-19 pandemic has eroded benevolence. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Prior work shows AI is often truth-biased in text-based deception detection. In our new 12-study paper in @journal-of-comm.bsky.social, we find a substantial lie-bias in audiovisual deception detection during mock interrogations. Read more here!

doi.org/10.1093/joc/...

New in @pnas.org! We analyzed 38 million US obituaries to see how we remember the deceased:
- Tradition & benevolence dominate legacies
- Major cultural events (e.g., 9/11) shifted what values were emphasized
- Gender & age of the deceased shape legacies
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

An exploration of basic human values in 38 million obituaries over 30 years | PNAS How societies remember the dead can reveal what people value in life. We analyzed 38 million obituaries from the United States to examine how perso...

🪦 New in @pnas.org: we analyzed 38 million U.S. obituaries to ask what signals a life well lived:

What values are people most remembered for?

How do legacies shift with cultural events?

How do age and gender shape what it means to have lived well?

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New in @pnas.org! We analyzed 38 million US obituaries to see how we remember the deceased:
- Tradition & benevolence dominate legacies
- Major cultural events (e.g., 9/11) shifted what values were emphasized
- Gender & age of the deceased shape legacies
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

a cartoon of spongebob using a vacuum cleaner and iron Alt: a cartoon of spongebob using a vacuum cleaner and iron

It's August 1st.

U.S. academics on the semester system:

Meta Explains Why The Ideal VR Session Is 20-40 Minutes Meta is telling developers that the ideal VR session length with today's hardware is 20-40 minutes, and has explained its reasoning.

Looks like someone at Meta has been doing their Stanford homework.

www.uploadvr.com/meta-ideal-v...

VHIL suggests "30 minutes" for VR sessions. Robby Ratan & colleagues tested it. 30 participants met regularly over 3 months. Duration had an inverted U-shaped relationship with peer social presence. Many peaks are in the 30 minute range but varied by participant.

vhil.stanford.edu/publications...

Personality activates differently depending on environmental context. Also in VR!

@davidmmarkowitz.bsky.social shows groups with extraverts excel in large spaces. Extroversion detectable by speech in platforms who can "shard" users by world size for group success.

vhil.stanford.edu/publications...

!!!!

Medical Research Funding — Unbreaking How the administration is breaking the government, and what that means for all of us.

I urge everyone to read Unbreaking’s new page on everything the govt is doing to destroy & diminish medical research funding.

It’s the best thing I’ve read on this topic: @lizneeley.bsky.social & co have such done an incredible job.

unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

I think we did!

So THAT's where my boot went!

Five canonical findings from 30 years of psychological experimentation in virtual reality - Nature Human Behaviour This Review presents five canonical psychological research findings in virtual reality (VR) over the past three decades. These findings have been consistently replicated and are useful for both resear...

Five enduring, in-lab VR results (w/ @stanfordvr.bsky.social): (1) presence depends on activity, (2) self-avatars shape behavior, (3) VR better for procedural than abstract learning,(4) body tracking is powerful but privacy-risky, (5) people underestimate VR distance.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Five canonical findings from 30 years of psychological experimentation in virtual reality - Nature Human Behaviour This Review presents five canonical psychological research findings in virtual reality (VR) over the past three decades. These findings have been consistently replicated and are useful for both resear...

Study: "the benefit of being there [VR] depends on the activity; self-avatars influence behaviour; procedural training works better than abstract learning; body tracking makes VR unique; people underestimate distance in VR." #VirtualReality #ImmersiveLearning #EdTech

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

5 robust, replicated, & meta-analyzed findings from 30 years of psych research in VR. Timeline of events in experiment history, recommendations for consumers & scholars new to the medium, and the DICE model on when to use (and not use) VR.

@nathumbehav.nature.com

vhil.stanford.edu/publications...

3/
We’re thrilled to feature two keynote speakers who are shaping the field:
🗣️ The Mohrmann Lecture: Dr. Dana Mastro from UCSB (@ucsantabarbara.bsky.social)
📣 Conference Keynote: Dr. David Markowitz (@davidmmarkowitz.bsky.social) from MSU (@msucomartsci.bsky.social)

2/
This year’s theme — Media, Health, and Society — brings together 53 unique research presentations on topics including AI and algorithmic influence, social media and well-being, information integrity, and public health communication.

A pair of black over-ear headphones placed over three upright books—one beige, one pink, and one blue—against a beige background, visually representing the concept of audiobooks.

🧵/
The 2025 Comm Horizons Conference (communication.ucdavis.edu/horizonconf2...) is almost here! From May 16–18, UC Davis will host scholars from around the world to explore how media, health, and society intersect across lifespans and diverse communities @ucdavis.bsky.social @ucdlands.bsky.social

Congratulations to psychologists Rich Petty, Phoebe Ellsworth, BJ Casey, Jamie Pennebaker, & Alison Gopnik on their election to the National Academy of Sciences today!!

Who speaks next?

@PortiaWang.bsky.social analyzed a VR dataset of 77 sessions, 1660 minutes of group meetings over 4 weeks. Verbal & nonverbal history captured at millisecond level predicted turn-taking at nearly 30% over chance. To appear @acm-cscw.bsky.social.

vhil.stanford.edu/publications...

James Pennebaker and the Power of Physical Markers in Social Research APS’s incoming president describes the lessons and impacts of his research in social psychology.

Meet James Pennebaker, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, who is set to become APS's next president later this year. Read more to discover how Pennebaker describes the lessons and impact of his research in social psychology.

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, ...

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...

This was such a fun and informative project between @stanfordvr.bsky.social and me. We can learn a lot about a field through large-scale literature overviews facilitated by NLP and LLMs. Check out the paper in Cyberpsychology Behavior and Social Networking! www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/...