Andy Delton

Do you want to date someone *willing* to protect you? Someone *strong* enough to protect? Both? Michael Barlev and colleagues test this. Based on a lot of work in evolutionary psychology, you might think that both would matter about equally. Nope!

JEP:G paper: doi.apa.org/doi/10.1037/xg… Cognition paper: linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S…

Importantly, kids didn’t think everything should be up for a vote. For instance, no voting to commit obviously immoral acts (killing the class pet). Again, pretty sophisticated.

Should everyone be allowed vote on things? Or should we turn it over to philosopher kings? Fascinating new research by Hannah Hok and colleagues in JEP:General on how children think about voting. Kids are pretty sophisticated.

What “Western Civilization” Really Means: Enlightenment, yes; Christianity, not so much. An important reminder from @FukuyamaFrancis open.substack.com/pub/persuasion…

When you collect data online, are the results from humans or AI? In a project led by Booth PhD student Grace Zhang, we estimate the prevalence of AI agents on commonly used survey platforms: osf.io/preprints/psya… 🧵

I wonder how much of this is dumb errors? It's easy after hours working with data to make a mistake.

Another lower bound on likely fraud in biomed literature -- using suspicious copy/pasting in Excel files -- comes in at 3%. It feels very uncomfortable but I think we all have to update our priors to fraud being quite common

I just gave a closed-book, pen-and-paper midterm exam in my 300-level course at UBC with 100 students. All exams were graded by an experienced graduate-level TA according to a rubric. *** The average was 64/100.*** My class averages at UBC are usually 80-85. Context: • This was the first midterm, covering ONLY 4 weeks of material. • Students had a list of possible questions in advance: no surprise questions. • Questions included (a) 3 concept definitions, (b) 3 paragraph-long questions, and (c) a 1.5-page essay. • I have taught this class multiple times. Nothing in my teaching style changed this semester. • We read entire paragraphs of text in class, so students don't have to do something on their own that wasn't covered during the lecture. • Students take a 10-question multiple-choice quiz at the end of every class (30% of the final grade). • Attendance is 95-99% every class. Attention during lectures and participation in pair-work activities are very high → anticipating the end-of-class quiz. *** But unfortunately, I suspect many students are not reading the material on the syllabus. They are asking LLMs to summarize it instead.*** After the midterm, students reported: • They thought they knew concept definitions but couldn't produce them on paper. • They thought they understood the arguments but struggled to connect them or identify points of agreement and disagreement. My view: It might be “cool” or “innovative” to teach students to summarize readings with ChatGPT or write essays with Claude. But we may be doing them a disservice: reducing their ability to retain material, think creatively, and reason from what they know. If you only read what AI has summarized for you, you don’t truly "know" the material. Moving forward: We have a second midterm coming up. I don't know how to convey to students that the best way to do better on the exam is to rely on and improve their own reading skills.

Lots more in the paper, including about preferences for friends and preferences in same-sex relationships. Go here: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

But strength barely matters: It does a bit for women and not at all for men. (The vignettes always described the date as being average in physical attractiveness, to avoid cuing attractiveness by mentioning strength.)

Related work by Adar Eisenbruch & Max Krasnow: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

Related work by me and Tess Robertson: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

For friends, do we want rich or generous people? Great new study by Yuta Kawamura and Pat Barclay. In general, people prefer generosity, but with important nuance.