







a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences
How social norms emerge: The interindividual actor–critic.
What is Causing Our Epidemic of Loneliness and How Can We Fix It?
Researchers share what Americans have to say about social disconnection and potential solutions


Designing the Social
This book explores the complex place of social media in young people’s lives and the role it plays in shaping how they understand and present their identity publicly on a wide array of platforms. It proposes a new theoretical framework, Comic Theory, for understanding identity performances.

Designing the Social
This book explores the complex place of social media in young people’s lives and the role it plays in shaping how they understand and present their identity publicly on a wide array of platforms. It proposes a new theoretical framework, Comic Theory, for understanding identity performances.

Undersociality: miscalibrated social cognition can inhibit social connection
A person’s well-being depends heavily on forming and maintaining positive relationships, but people can be reluctant to connect in ways that would create or strengthen relationships. Emerging research suggests that miscalibrated social cognition may create psychological barriers to connecting with others more often. Specifically, people may underestimate how positively others will respond to their own sociality across a variety of social actions, including engaging in conversation, expressing appreciation, and performing acts of kindness.

Social Verification Theory: A New Way to Conceptualize Validation, Dissonance, and Belonging
Academic Abstract In the present review, we propose a theory that seeks to recontextualize various existing theories as functions of people’s perceptions of their consistency with those around them. This theory posits that people seek social consistency for both epistemic and relational needs and that social inconsistency is both negative and aversive, similar to the experience of cognitive dissonance. We further posit that the aversive nature of perceiving social inconsistency leads people to engage in various behaviors to mitigate or avoid these inconsistencies. When these behaviors fail, however, people experience chronic social inconsistency, which, much like chronic rejection, is associated with physical and mental health and well-being outcomes. Finally, we describe how mitigation and avoidance of social inconsistency underlie many seemingly unrelated theories, and we provide directions for how future research may expand on this theory. Public Abstract In the present review, we propose that people find inconsistency with those around them to be an unpleasant experience, as it threatens people’s core need to belong. Because the threat of reduced belongingness evokes negative feelings, people are motivated to avoid inconsistency with others and to mitigate the negative feelings that are produced when it inevitably does arise. We outline several types of behaviors that can be implemented to avoid or mitigate these inconsistencies (e.g., validation, affirmation, distancing, etc.). When these behaviors cannot be implemented successfully, people experience chronic invalidation, which is associated with reduced physical and mental health and well-being outcomes. We discuss how invalidation may disproportionately affect individuals with minoritized identities. Furthermore, we discuss how belongingness could play a key role in radicalization into extremist groups.

Solitude and Leadership - The American Scholar
If you want others to follow, learn to be alone with your thoughts

A Model for addressing privacy on ATproto
When I first got involved with Northsky social, we knew we would have to eventually address the elephant in the room. How do we proactively protect a community from outside influences without relying purely on moderation? And more importantly, how do we keep bad actors from simply pulling their data straight from a relay?

From @mkarhulahti.bsky.social, me, @nballou.bsky.social, and Ivan Ropovik, newly accepted at Collabra: Psychology. This concerns a Nature: Human Behavior publication on the impacts of a Chinese anti-gaming policy. The paper has serious flaws making its results unsupportable. osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/n2rka_v4
OSF
osf.ioGreat new-ish paper by @zephoria.bsky.social I have a few thoughts …