Tara Behrend

📣Campuses across the country: we’re inviting you to participate in the 2025 State Opportunity Index survey and to receive confidential and benchmarked results, free of cost. linkedin.com/pulse/preparin…

This is a repost of my original thread about Trump's election, which has since disappeared. This time I am reposting it is a single message. I feel anxious and saddened by Trump’s election. Years of turmoil and uncertainty await us. I have also come to believe that this is not Trump’s win. It is the Democrats who have lost this election. This is not because Biden stayed on as a candidate despite his age. It is not because Kamala Harris is not qualified (I believe she’s amply qualified). It is because of Democrats’ campaign. Dems have been losing the American workers and did nothing to regain them in this election. Dems have ceased to be the workers’ party long ago, owing to their support for digital disruption, globalization, large immigrant flows, and “woke” ideas. The transformation is really striking, as I have argued before: now it is the highly educated, not manual workers that vote for Democrats, and if the center-left does not become more pro-worker, it and democracy will suffer: project-syndicate.org/commentary/tru… For a while it looked like Dems could still win elections with support from Silicon Valley, minorities, some portions of organized labor and the professional class in large cities. But this was never a healthy coalition, and even organized labor wasn’t going to remain faithful for long. This coalition made Dems increasingly alienated from workers and the middle class in much of the country, especially in smaller cities and the South. The message was loud and clear in 2016, and all of the soul-searching that followed was healthy. It was part of the reason why Biden adopted a pro-worker industrial strategy. Biden’s economy delivered for the working class in terms of jobs and strengthening the industrial base of the country. Wages at the bottom rose rapidly. Policy started moving towards the views of the American workers on immigration, protectionism, support for unions and public investment. And yet, I fear that Dem activists and the establishment never fully internalized the woes of the workers and never made enough of an effort to bring them back to the fold. They sounded distant and detached. My test is the following: if stranded in an unknown city, would a Dem elite (typically a professional or bureaucrat from a coastal city, with postgraduate education) prefer to spend the next four hours talking to an American worker with a high school degree from the Midwest? Or would he or she prefer to spend it with a professional with postgraduate education from Mexico, China or Indonesia? Or name your country? I asked this question to colleagues and friends, they all think is the latter --- as do I. Most Dem elites are now alienated from American workers. It seemed at first that Harris-Walz may try to change that, emphasizing bolstering up the middle class and patriotism, in an effort to appeal to the working class deserting the party. A true effort in that direction would have been commendable, and if credible, perhaps win the election. But at the end, the campaign focused on abortion and other issues appealing to the base. The main effort to broaden the base came from using Liz Cheney to appeal to suburban women ­--- on abortion. Of course, abortion is a critical issue. But focusing on it was never going to win the working class, and certainly not the working-class men. On the economy, Dems can talk about opportunity and jobs (which they need to do). But they never distanced themselves from the Silicon Valley and the global business elite (but ironically, Silicon Valley started leaving them!) I fear that, now, Trump and Vance’s Republican Party will be the main home for workers, especially manufacturing workers and those in smaller cities. I am saddened and fearful for the United States, and I am deeply saddened about the Democratic Party --- unless this time it gets the message can truly change. This is not just essential for the Democratic Party but for US democracy, which needs to refocus more on egalitarianism and voice for everybody, as I have argued recently: project-syndicate.org/commentary/us-… and nytimes.com/2024/07/19/opi… What is tragic is that Biden’s agenda had started paying off for workers already (and also proving that it was possible to adopt policies that would help workers and disproving the claim that globalization and inequality were acts of nature that could not be influenced). What is even more tragic is that the Trump-Vance policies are likely going to be for the plutocrats and not for the American workers. I will write separately on my views of what to expect from Trump’s policies in the next thread and follow that up with another one on what this presidency might mean for the world.

🎉 My dissertation research on who feels they contribute to society is out in JPSP! 🎉 - 📄 paper @APA_Journals ➡️ psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/ps… - 🚨 @APA press release ➡️ apa.org/news/press/rel… 🧵👇(1/12)

ICYMI: SIOP is accepting nominations now through midnight ET September 30 for Executive Board positions that will be open in spring 2025. Learn more: bit.ly/47p92xP #IOPsych #SIOPSmarterWorkplace

New: @BLS_gov is now making information available about the importance of skills for each of the occupations that are included in their annual Employment Projections. Learn more ⬇️ blog.dol.gov/2024/08/29/new…

Expert Alert: How we can view the future of work? This #LaborDay weekend MSU's Tara Behrend & Hye Jin Rho @MSU_SocSci & @MSUSHRLR can answer questions about the future of work & issues facing the workforce. spr.ly/6010mWBRM

MSU’s Future of Work Initiative led by @TaraBehrend @MSU_SocSci & @MSUSHRLR held its first summer research incubator, hosting graduate & doctoral students from across the country to address issues facing the future of the workforce. spr.ly/6016lqR6C

JVB special issue on Technology and the Changing Nature of Work, edited by @TaraBehrend, @CortRudolph, and I, is now in press! The issue includes imaginative research on topics like exoskeletons, AI, lifelong learning, and surveillance. Check it out! sciencedirect.com/special-issue/…

This summer, the MSU Future of Work Initiative brought students from across the country together for its first ever Summer Research Incubator. spr.ly/6012lHbTm The full story: spr.ly/6016lHbTq #MSUSocialScience

Session on human-technology interaction at #apa2024. ⁦@TaraBehrend⁩ talks about employee monitoring. Concern is increasingly less about robots taking over and more on humans being treated like robots.

Video now available for your weekend viewing pleasure!

We are recruiting #Asian #workers to participate in an interview study “Asian Workers’ Experiences in the United States”! Participants will receive a $30 Amazon gift card. Scan the QR code below or follow this link to our interest form: bit.ly/awexp.

There are 6.6M high schoolers who are not expected to enter a bachelor’s degree program by age 22 and who do not currently specialize in CTE. If these youth received more high school CTE instruction, 186K more young adults could have good jobs at age 30. bit.ly/43Kpbvs

Dropping a new report today: NIST is a national treasure, and we’re asking it to do a lot (e.g. building the foundational science of AI measurement and safety). Proper funding & patching leaking roofs will help, but to fully supercharge NIST, we should give it a foundation. 🧵

For decades, social scientists have studied verbal behavior from a words-as-attention perspective. In American Psychologist, @DrRyanBoyd and I chart a path forward for studying NLP in a more thoughtful and accurate manner to match behavioral theories. psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2024-…

"Human behavior is a key component of every major national and global challenge we face." The social behavioral sciences are essential to understanding the causes of these challenges, as well as to the development, implementation, & evaluation of policies to address them.

We are hiring a Vice President & Research Director of the Strada Institute for the Future of Work. 📊 ➡️ Learn more and apply: jobs.lever.co/stradaeducatio…

Join us in recognizing the 2024 recipients of the 2024 Dunnette Prize: Ruth Kanfer and Phillip Ackerman. You can learn more about each award winner in the 2024 SIOP Salutes: tinyurl.com/prsn6pja. #IOPsych #SIOPSmarterWorkplace #SIOPSalutes

For PhD graduates in I/O and OB, here is a terrific postdoc opportunity, working with @TaraBehrend and Kevin Hoff at @michiganstateu careers.msu.edu/en-us/job/5195…

We are pleased to welcome the fourth cohort of our Dean's Research Associates Program this coming fall. Read more about the new cohort and the program at: spr.ly/6019jJPt7 #MSUSocialScience @MsuPsychology @MSUSocialWork @MSUSHRLR @MSU_poli_sci