All News

As More Seniors Head Online, Efforts Are Needed to Help Their Digital Media Literacy Skills

Research shows that older Americans are more likely than any other age group to engage with and share misleading or false political content online, but why? Nadia Brashier of Psychology told CBC (Canada) that seniors "expect to see credible content because they assume 'my close friends and my family wouldn't share false stuff.’" To help improve their digital media literacy, Brashier advocated for tech companies to incorporate seniors’ feedback and needs into product development and educational interventions that teach older adults about how to fact-check online content.

Formerly Incarcerated and System-Impacted Students Thrive with Community and Camaraderie


At UC San Diego, formerly incarcerated and system-impacted students – those who experience the negative fallout of a close relative’s incarceration, for example – are beating the odds stacked against them with the help of a robust scaffolding of support and nurturing community offered by the Underground Scholars Initiative (USI) and Triton Underground Scholars (TUS). UC San Diego Today highlighted the involvement of USI faculty advisor Michael McCullough of Psychology.

Climate Crisis Survey Reveals Scientists’ Willingness to Act – and Barriers to Action
A large-scale survey led by investigators at the University of Amsterdam has found that scientists worldwide and across disciplines are extremely concerned about climate change and its cascading effects on every sphere of life. Many scientists surveyed report a willingness to make lifestyle changes and engage in advocacy and protest, but also see key barriers that can limit action. Adam Aron of Psychology is a co-author of the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Featured on UC San Diego Today.

Wixted Awarded Academic Senate 2024-2025 Distinguished Research Award

Congratulations to John Wixted of Psychology! The Academic Senate Distinguished Research Award is a sign of the respect of peers for the ground-breaking research conducted by members of the UCSD faculty.

Pilegard Awarded Academic Senate 2024-2025 Distinguished Teaching Award

Congratulations to Celeste Pilegard of Psychology! This prestigious award honors those who exhibit creativity, innovative teaching methods, the ability to motivate students to actively seek out knowledge, and an extraordinary level of teaching commitment.

Two former graduate students for The 2024 Jean Piaget Society Dissertation Prize

Congratulations to Elizabeth Lapidow and Haleh Yazdi for the winner/finalist prize!

How to make envy work for you

Is envy taking over your life? Try practicing gratitude, Christine Harris of Psychology tells the New York Times. Listing reasons you appreciate your own life can help negate envious emotions, since “it is hard to simultaneously be in both states at once” according to Harris. Her research also shows that young adults feel envy more frequently than older adults, so these feelings can dissipate with age.

Winkielman Elected to Academia Europea 

Congratulations to Piotr Winkielman of Psychology on being elected to Academia Europea! Academia Europea is a non-governmental association acting as a pan-European academy to promote learning, education and research. Membership is by invitation only and includes “leading experts from the physical sciences and technology, biological sciences and medicine, mathematics, the letters and humanities, social and cognitive sciences, economics and the law.”

U.S. Universities Must Tackle Their Huge Carbon Footprints

“The carbon emissions from running large U.S. university campuses greatly exceed those produced by individual laboratories’ use of plastic and electricity,” writes Adam Aron of Psychology, with a UC Davis colleague, in Nature. “Those institutions have a responsibility to urgently retire their fossil-fuel infrastructure.”

ChatGPT Tricks Teachers

Can you tell if what you’re reading right now was written by a human or generated by artificial intelligence? Do you care? Those are essentially the questions that researchers asked in an experiment with ChatGPT at a regional high school. The study – by Gail Heyman of Psychology, postdoc Tal Waltzer and local high school student Riley Cox – showed that even confident educators have trouble recognizing AI-generated essays.

2024 Boyd McCandless Award

Kudos to Caren Walker of Psychology! Walker has been recognized by the American Psychological Association “as a young scientist who has made a distinguished contribution to developmental psychology.” The award is for continued efforts rather than a single outstanding work.

It Rocks in the Treetops, But Is That Bird Making Music?

“Birdsong has inspired musicians from Bob Marley to Mozart and perhaps as far back as the first hunter-gatherers who banged out a beat,” reports the New York Times. “And a growing body of research is showing that the affinity human musicians feel toward birdsong has a strong scientific basis. Scientists are understanding more about avian species’ ability to learn, interpret and produce songs much like our own.” The story includes insights from Psychology graduate student Jeffrey Xing, describing some of his work with Timothy Gentner on the Australian pied butcherbird.