Professor @UAlbany, social scientist (public opinion, survey methodology, decision-making), outdoor enthusiast, Hufflepuff
Albany, NY
Joined November 2019
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Justin T. Pickett retweeted
"Attending an Ivy-Plus college instead of the average flagship public college increases students' chances of reaching the top 1% of the earnings distribution by 50%"
Justin T. Pickett retweeted
Really proud of our new article in @apsrjournal! @nicoravanilla @MatthewJNanes
What does citizen contact do to police attitudes in conflict settings?
For those interested in bureaucrats, embeddedness, conflict, mix-methods (field experiment + inductive): doi.org/10.1017/S00030554240…
Justin T. Pickett retweeted
Publication bias is greater at the top five journals: "56% of statistically significant results [in leading econ journals] were selected to be statistically significant. Selection bias is greater at top5 journals, where 66% of significant results were selected to be significant."
Justin T. Pickett retweeted
A massive study on the effects of social class tested 35 hypotheses in 4 countries (N = 33,536).
Only 50% of prior findings replicated.
Hypotheses based on differences between social class contexts in terms of constraints, uncertainty and status were well supported across countries and measures.
Hypotheses based on models positing social class differences in psychological orientations towards ‘the self’ versus ‘others and the environment’ received less support.
In short, the social psychology literature on social class did not replicate. The hypotheses about class from other fields largely held up. nature.com/articles/s41562-0…
Justin T. Pickett retweeted
New in @Theory_Society: The Sociology of Social Progress👇link.springer.com/article/10…
Justin T. Pickett retweeted
Will A.I. lead to de-skilling of physicians?
And if so what can be done to preempt it?
@tberzin and I address this in a new @TheLancet piece
thelancet.com/journals/lance…
Justin T. Pickett retweeted
Rude prompts to LLMs consistently lead to better results than polite ones 🤯
The authors found that very polite and polite tones reduced accuracy, while neutral, rude, and very rude tones improved it.
Statistical tests confirmed that the differences were significant, not random, across repeated runs.
The top score reported was 84.8% for very rude prompts and the lowest was 80.8% for very polite.
They compared their results with earlier studies and noted that older models (like GPT-3.5 and Llama-2) behaved differently, but GPT-4-based models like ChatGPT-4o show this clear reversal where harsh tone works better.
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Paper – arxiv. org/abs/2510.04950
Paper Title: "Mind Your Tone: Investigating How Prompt Politeness Affects LLM Accuracy (short paper)"
Justin T. Pickett retweeted
Cursing is rarely a symbol of low class. It's often a mark of high authenticity.
Evidence: Swearing predicts higher rates of honesty and integrity. It signals a willingness to prize candor over courtesy.
A little profanity shows that you're being real and you do give a damn.
How important is tenure? No matter how much students love your classes, how many books and research articles you publish, how many citations you get (82,935), how many dissertations you chair, or how many awards you win, universities would fire you WITHOUT CAUSE if they could save a buck. Tenure is the only thing stopping them.
newsrecord.org/news/cech-sen…
Justin T. Pickett retweeted
How common are “survey professionals” - people who take dozens of online surveys for pay - across online panels, and do they harm data quality?
Our paper, first view at @polanalysis, tackles this question using browsing data from three U.S. samples (Facebook, YouGov, Lucid):
Justin T. Pickett retweeted
Our new paper finds that AI can overcome partisan #bias
We find that AI sources are preferred over ingroup and outgroup sources--even when people know both are equally accurate (N = 1,600+): osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/2t…
People trusted ingroup over outgroup sources, but...
- In a political fact-checking task, people preferred AI over outgroup and ingroup sources
- We found a similar pattern for a task that was completely unrelated to identity
- This was not driven by priors, but by how people accumulate evidence
AI’s perceived neutrality could help reduce political “echo chambers” by broadening people’s exposure to diverse information--so long as AI systems remain trusted as impartial and prioritize accuracy.
This was led by @laura_k_globig
The former editors of Criminology sent this letter (pictured) to the journal's editorial board. It accuses @ASCRM41's leadership of unethical behavior. Recently, these editors also accused ASC's Ethics Committee of misrepresenting data. My understanding is that the recent editorial change at the journal was, in part, reflective of ongoing problems with review times. In particular, a complaint was filed with ASC a few weeks ago about a first decision this year (in 2025) that took OVER 2 YEARS (the paper was submitted in 2023). That is, an author had to wait over 2 years to receive an initial decision on a paper they submitted.
Has anyone ever seen interaction terms made like this? The product term was made from residuals, and then the original variable was used in the model along with the residual-based product term?
Justin T. Pickett retweeted
🚨The Supreme Court today gives Trump a license to engage in racial profiling, with Justice Kavanaugh writing in concurrence to expressly endorse ICE and Border Patrol targeting any Latinos they observe in Los Angeles speaking Spanish and then demanding their papers.
BREAKING: A 6-3 Supreme Court ALLOWS the Trump administration to resume sweeping immigration raids in Los Angeles supremecourt.gov/opinions/24…
Justin T. Pickett retweeted
I've been saying this for ages: banning standardized tests allows rich people to game the system.
If you *only* used SAT to admit to elite colleges, share of admits from top 1% income falls 15.8% → 9.9% and representation from <$200k rises by +8.8%, with no reduction in post-college outcomes.
It's 'holistic review' and 'ban SAT' policy that allows the most wealthy and powerful to virtue signal while getting an edge.
Justin T. Pickett retweeted
As someone who studies discrimination, I have a hypothesis:
All else equal, studies that find no discrimination get less attention on social media, get published in worse venues, and get fewer citations.
The primary mechanism is because the consumers and producers of scientific researchers mostly believe that discrimination is everywhere.
Justin T. Pickett retweeted
Most researchers have nothing on Larry Richardson. Racking up more than 130 citations in 4 years, he seemed like a scientific superstar in the making. Except the studies were gibberish—and Larry is a cat.
This “exercise in absurdity” is an eye-opening look at byzantine world of scientific rank, and just how easy it is to manipulate. scim.ag/46HmdMu #InternationalCatDay
Justin T. Pickett retweeted
These Americans served with honor for more than a decade. Put their lives on the line. Trump fired them, just for being who they are - and now is denying retirement benefits our nation promised them for their service.
Treating troops this way is dishonorable, unfair, and harmful to our national security.
Exclusive: US Air Force denies early retirement for group of transgender service members reut.rs/3J7ccOL reut.rs/3J7ccOL
Justin T. Pickett retweeted
End of the week, do you have any fucks left to give? I hope so, if nothing else to join my team in celebrating a new pub!
Fuck: Public Opinion is an extension of last year's Fuck: The Police. Top-line - the public seems to be a bit more chill than police executives when it comes to a bit of fuckery on the job.
