Curtis Puryear

New preprint! We developed new measurement tools to study moralization in ~2B X & Reddit posts and ~5M traditional media texts. Key finding: moralization increased markedly on social media from 2013-2021; more than traditional media; associated with multiple user dynamics 🧵👇

👀New preprint! In 3 prereg experiments we study how engagement-based algorithms amplify ingroup, moral and emotional (IME) content in ways that disrupt social norm learning (and test one solution!) w/ Josh Jackson and my amazing lab managers @merielcd & Silvan Baier 🧵👇

New paper out in @ScienceMagazine! In 8 studies (multiple platforms, methods, time periods) we find: misinformation evokes more outrage than trustworthy news, when it does it's shared more + ppl are less likely to read before sharing. w/ @killianmcl1 @Klonick @mollycrockett 🧵👇

Sharing without clicking on news in social media nature.com/articles/s4156… - 75% share without clicking - > partisans content - conservatives share without clicking more (76.94%) than liberals (14.25%) - "the vast majority (76–82%) of [false info] originated from conservative…

👋 I'm recruiting a PhD student @KelloggSchool @NorthwesternU For students interested in themes of morality, AI, social learning, computational social science. Check out my lab here shorturl.at/OcVpx | apps due 12/15 (shorturl.at/028CE)

The Twitter exodus has started, but maybe it should have started long ago? Our new study in @NatureComms shows that political abuse on X is a global, widespread, and cross-partisan phenomenon nature.com/articles/s4146…

New #SPSPblog: From Doomscrolling to Moral Panic, How Social Media Hijacks Your Social Mind by @CurtisPuryear ow.ly/5BxE50U4tWP

🚨New preprint🚨 Prejudice is widespread today. But has it been historically constant, or has prejudice varied with social structure? A cross-cultural study of 90 societies and an analysis of Chinese historical records suggest that prejudice was higher in centralized states.

Check out our piece in @sciam about some of my recent work on cross-partisan perceptions! scientificamerican.com/article/people…

New paper now published in PNAS Nexus 🚨🚨! We test how empathy beliefs can act as a motivational lever to strengthen Americans support for democractic principles — even when these principles conflict with partisan goals. (1/7)

The science version of “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”: Scientists with ‘near misses’ early in their careers outperform those with ‘narrow wins’ in the longer run. nature.com/articles/s4146…