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tomcostello.bsky.social
research psychologist. beliefs, AI, computational social science. prof at american university.
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SPSP was lovely, really got a lot out of seeing so many friends and colleagues. Let’s stay in touch!

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Whova is a scourge

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

New research from Costello, Pennycook, and Rand. Can conversations with AI help reduce belief in conspiracy theories? Quite possibly. What’s the mechanism? Evidence production. Let me explain my little-t theory about how this might work.

submitted 6 days ago • 11 comments

Heading to SPSP? The secret is that conferences aren't about the talks; they're about connecting with people. And you might enjoy it more than you think (just ditch the grad school crew and work in pairs instead). My guide to academic networking: open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

submitted 8 days ago • 2 comments

Changing conspiracy theory beliefs is very hard, but a replicated finding shows a short chat with GPT-4 changes people’s belief in conspiracy theories for the long term. Why? It isn’t rhetorical tricks, it's that AI provides relevant facts and evidence tailored to each person's specific beliefs.

submitted 8 days ago • 8 comments

very cool stuff here from Tom + colleagues, following up their 2024 debunking paper ->

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

I am among the over 700 political scientists who signed this statement "express[ing] our urgent concern about threats to the basic design of American government and democracy" under the current presidential administration:

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Last year, we published a paper showing that AI models can "debunk" conspiracy theories via personalized conversations. That paper raised a major question: WHY are the human<>AI convos so effective? In a new working paper, we have some answers. TLDR: facts osf.io/preprints/ps...

submitted 8 days ago • 19 comments

Really excited about this WP we just posted - folks w questions or ideas about why we found GPT4 to be effective at debunking conspiracy theories should check out Tom's thread + the paper. This fig summarizes it to me: it's the facts and evidence that are doing the persuading, not any AI mumbo jumbo

submitted 8 days ago • 4 comments

Last year, we published a paper showing that AI models can "debunk" conspiracy theories via personalized conversations. That paper raised a major question: WHY are the human<>AI convos so effective? In a new working paper, we have some answers. TLDR: facts osf.io/preprints/ps...

submitted 8 days ago • 19 comments

This is the most relevant article to NIH and research cuts I’ve seen. Imagine if this was today , how many people would be saying “Why are we studying Gila Monsters and their impact on diabetes ? That’s wasted money !” globalnews.ca/news/9793403...

submitted 17 days ago • 1165 comments

New open-access paper in Annual Review of Psychology with @mjbsp.bsky.social: “Ideology: Psychological Similarities and Differences Across the Ideological Spectrum Reexamined” www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

submitted 31 days ago • 3 comments

Hi friends, I'll be starting as an Assistant Professor in Psychology at American University this summer! I'm pretty thrilled to be moving back to the DC/Baltimore area, to connect back with so many old friends & colleagues (as well as make new ones, ofc)

submitted 33 days ago • 19 comments

Today is the first day @lizsuhay.bsky.social & @mjbsp.bsky.social are co-EiC 🥳 Read the vision statement! 💲 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🆓 osf.io/nybxm Submit your papers! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal...

submitted 45 days ago • 1 comment

Looking through my backlog of emails I found a Christmas morning surprise that this paper has made it to print! I hope it can help streamline some hierarchies Improving hierarchical models of individual differences: An extension of Goldberg’s bass-ackward method. doi.org/10.1037/met0...

submitted 51 days ago • 4 comments

My paper with @mikearcaro.bsky.social exploring the organization of pulvino-cortical connections in newborn human infants is now out in @currentbiology.bsky.social ! www.cell.com/current-biol...

submitted 51 days ago • 2 comments

Charlie Warzel and Mike Caulfield explain that the Internet functions as a "justification machine" — providing ample "evidence" for people to use (with the help of political pundits and online influencers) to create and maintain their preferred realities: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

submitted 51 days ago • 5 comments

Great blog post (by a 15-author team!) on their release of ModernBERT, the continuing relevance of encoder-only models, and how they relate to, say, GPT-4/llama. Accessible enough that I might use this as an undergrad reading.

submitted 69 days ago • 1 comment