Studies empathy, altruism, aggression @Georgetown. Author of The Fear Factor https://nitter.cf/t.co/iSO3TcUhAV. Co-Founder of https://nitter.cf/t.co/Tnjnl8Unql
Washington, DC
Joined June 2013
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As someone who studies both prosociality and antisociality, I completely buy this idea. Outside of "positive psychology" (which has its own problems) it is SO much easier to get purchase on research with a pessimistic narrative. @PsychScience journals.sagepub.com/doi/ful…
Abigail Marsh retweeted
Critics have long argued against using Direct Instruction.
But an APM Reports review of available survey data shows that teachers who use it tend to like it. apmreports.org/story/2026/10…
Abigail Marsh retweeted
Psychology’s replication problems drew wide attention after 2015. A new study in Nature suggests the challenge is not unique to psychology: across economics, education, business, sociology, and political science, success rates were similar. dlvr.it/TW5zv4
Abigail Marsh retweeted
The results were so good that people accused them of cheating. youtube.com/watch?v=n2EOPAf1…
Abigail Marsh retweeted
🔥 It's great to see the usual characters panicking over the notion that the same commitment to scientific evidence driving reading reform might be applied to mathematics.
We want better reading instruction, but why would we stop there?
Doesn't math deserve the same attention?
I'm sick of pseudoscience driving education. Period.
It's time to take education back and stop letting fads and ideology determine how children are taught.
Abigail Marsh retweeted
Michael Pollan reveals how the introduction of caffeine completely changed human history and consciousness.
"Before caffeine, it was a very different world and a very different consciousness. People were drunk a lot of the time, buzzed almost all of the time because it was safer than water"
"Water was really how you got diseases. If you fermented things, even low alcohol, it killed a lot of the microbes. So people, even kids, drank hard cider for breakfast"
"Tea, chocolate, and coffee all arrive in the same decade in England, and things start to change... no one ate or drank boiling water or hot beverages before"
"Boiling it made it much safer. This gave this incredible public health boost to these places, and then you have the drug that fosters a kind of more linear, rational, focused way of thinking"
"People in the 1600s started writing about it saying, 'Wow, we have this new civil and sober drink that we can use.' And that, I think, makes possible things like the Industrial Revolution"
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The clip repeats the myth that pre-caffeine people were mostly drunk because water was unsafe. Historians and medieval sources show water was commonly drunk from wells/springs while weak ale provided nutrition/calories, not a substitute for bad water.
leslefts.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-gr…
slate.com/human-interest…
fakehistoryhunter.net/2026/02/02/dri…
Abigail Marsh retweeted
VOTE FOR FLACO! 🦉🗳️ Wild Inside is nominated for an audience award. Help us get to the final round by voting here -- it's 2 clicks and you don't have to enter an email. Voting will close on Monday, November 2 at 5PM PT. cinemaeyehonors.com/audience…
Abigail Marsh retweeted
Imagine that you're someone that struggles with drinking. But you manage to get yourself out of the bar and then the bartender runs after you with another bottle. Rather than cutting you off, they’re actually chasing you down to give you more of the thing you're trying to run away from.
This is effectively what the sports betting companies are doing.
Abigail Marsh retweeted
Explicit measures of prejudice are much stronger predictors of discrimination than implicit measures.
A new adversarial collaboration found that self-report measures of racial bias exhibited greater predictive validity of discrimination than indirect measures (explaining ∼45% vs 3% of the variance).
The zero-order correlations between each indirect measure and behavioral measures of discrimination were quite low ( r = .00 to .19) By comparison, correlations between direct measures and discrimination were all statistically significant (r = .099 to .381).
Moreover, the behavioral discrimination measures generally produced effects favoring Black over White targets, which "complicates claims that anti-Black effects on indirect measures are a source of cumulative disadvantage."
psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202…
Abigail Marsh retweeted
It's almost that time of year when you get together with family you haven't seen in months, only to remember exactly why you avoid talking politics with them.
When someone shares an opinion you find completely outrageous, it's tempting to tell them why they're wrong. But this holiday season, I encourage you to try something different.
Instead of trying to prove them wrong, ask them to tell you more. You don't have to agree with someone to be curious about how they came to see the world the way they do. You may not change each other's minds, but through genuine curiosity, you might understand each other's points of view a little better.
Abigail Marsh retweeted
Giving novices problems they lack the knowledge to solve makes little sense. Ausubel said this in 1968 and it still holds true.
"If I have to reduce all educational psychology to just one principle, I would say this: the most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach [the learner] accordingly."
-David Ausubel
Abigail Marsh retweeted
Sadly this is completely unsurprising. Meta has executed a “merchants of doubt” campaign against the reputation of people calling out the toxicity of their products for a long time.
@JonHaidt is a true hero who has done more than almost anyone else to affect global norms and policy to protect children’s developing minds from social media and screens with #TheAnxiousGeneration
Meta had an internal PR plan to try and discredit Jon Haidt because he was a critic of social media.
Meta was going to recruit academics, like Andrew Gelman, to write take down pieces. They were trying to turn academics against one another through a "whisper strategy".
This is a very serious problem for open academic debate. If academics who share negative evidence about a platform are targeted by campaigns to smear our credibility, we are in deep, deep trouble.
This creates a very serious conflict of interest for anyone who is paid to do this.
law360.com/articles/2542517/…
Abigail Marsh retweeted
Meta had an internal PR plan to try and discredit Jon Haidt because he was a critic of social media.
Meta was going to recruit academics, like Andrew Gelman, to write take down pieces. They were trying to turn academics against one another through a "whisper strategy".
This is a very serious problem for open academic debate. If academics who share negative evidence about a platform are targeted by campaigns to smear our credibility, we are in deep, deep trouble.
This creates a very serious conflict of interest for anyone who is paid to do this.
law360.com/articles/2542517/…
Want to learn about @GUPsychology's PhD program? Join our informational webinar on Monday 11/2 at 6:30pm ET to learn about our graduate tracks and ask questions about our program and/or the application process! @Georgetown @SANS_news @PsychScience georgetown.zoom.us/j/9160861…
Abigail Marsh retweeted
“It is one thing to empathize with patients’ experiences of injury and victimization but we must be able to empathize with their negative impulses as well, including sadistic or hateful wishes to attack or to wreak vengeance.”
—M. Carsky & F. Yeomans, “Overwhelming Patients and Overwhelmed Therapists”
Abigail Marsh retweeted
“We know that what exacerbates anxiety is avoidance. Exposure therapy helps develop new, healthier relationships with your anxieties by breaking the avoidance habit.”
sciam.com/article/how-exposi…
Abigail Marsh retweeted
This month's American Psychological Association Monitor on Psychology features an article on Dr. Andrea Bonior and her influential role as a media commentator on psychological issues.
Read the full article: apa.org/monitor/2026/10/andr…
Abigail Marsh retweeted
New research and analysis by the HEA Group featured in the New York Times show that graduates from GU's Psychology Department are a positive outlier in earnings after graduation, compared to their peers from other universities.
nytimes.com/interactive/2026…
Abigail Marsh retweeted
Unfollowing toxic social media influencers makes people less hostile!
In 2 large field experiments, unfollowing a few extreme influencers:
-Reduced partisan animosity by 24%
-Increased satisfaction with Twitter/X
-Led people to share higher-quality news
Effects persisting for 6+ months and most people choose not to refollow the influencers after the study was over.
Read the full paper here: osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/ac…
