Thorsten M. Erle
tmerle.bsky.social
Thorsten M. Erle
@tmerle.bsky.social
Assistant professor in social psychology at Tilburg University (https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/staff/t-m-erle)

Social Cognition 🧠 | Empathy 💞 | Perspective-Taking 👀 | Emoji 🤓 | Sustainability 🌱
Reposted by Thorsten M. Erle
Results from study of mental health in 92 countries (n>53,000): People are not doing well.

- U-shape for age is gone: Young adults lowest health, highest illness
- Education still matters (a lot)
- 45% of older people live alone
- Hybrid work > 100% remote or in-person

Preprint: osf.io/3jyda_v1
November 12, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Reposted by Thorsten M. Erle
Onze narratieve game Digitaal Dapper leert scholieren wat ze kunnen doen om pestslachtoffers te helpen: digitaaldapper.tiltale.com

#weektegenpesten #cyberbullying #middelbareschool #interventie

@sarapabian.bsky.social Jan de Wit @tmerle.bsky.social, Eefje v Moorsel Bianca Sips Marije v Amelsvoort
September 22, 2025 at 8:21 AM
Reposted by Thorsten M. Erle
Today is #WorldEmojiDay 🤩✨📱So we’re spot-lighting our amazing past chair and current careers, industry and outreach rep on our committee Professor Linda Kaye @lindakkaye.bsky.social - the emoji expert 👏 You can find more about Linda’s work on her website: lindakkaye.wixsite.com/dr-linda-kaye 📓😎📑⭐️🎉
an emoji wearing a party hat is blowing a party horn .
ALT: an emoji wearing a party hat is blowing a party horn .
media.tenor.com
July 17, 2025 at 1:13 PM
Reposted by Thorsten M. Erle
Extraversion, narcissism, and histrionic tendencies predict the desire to become an influencer
Extraversion, narcissism, and histrionic tendencies predict the desire to become an influencer
Teens who score higher in extraversion, narcissism, and dramatic emotional expression are more likely to want to be influencers, according to a new study. The findings suggest that personality shapes how young people see their future in the digital age.
www.psypost.org
June 2, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Reposted by Thorsten M. Erle
We’re back to the “hundreds of psychological studies cannot all be wrong, educate yourself”-stage of discourse.

I recommend that onlookers to this discourse pick some of the cited studies & see how compelling they find them, wrt causal identification & strength of statistical evidence.>
May 19, 2025 at 6:19 AM
Reposted by Thorsten M. Erle
Also, *please* don’t compare this to the climate change (denial) discourse. I’m strongly opposed against such rhetorical moves that try to cash in on the hard-earned trust that *other* scientific fields have built up.
May 19, 2025 at 6:28 AM
Highly recommend this thread. Not only because of its analysis of the current study, but it got me thinking about how rigor and consensus building play(ed) out in the smartphone vs. the climate change debate. Scientists should consider which side they ultimately want to fall on and why.
"Evidence is mixed" ("missing/uncertain" would have been a better option) should have been the answer for most of these. These "experts" lack humility.
Are #smartphones and #socialmedia harming a generation?

This is a hotly debated and often polarizing debate. So we surveyed over 120 experts on the topic to see where there was genuine consensus (or not), like experts have previous done for climate change.

See our paper: osf.io/preprints/ps...
May 18, 2025 at 12:19 PM
It baffles me that when we see these aggregated trainwrecks everyone goes "this looks unbelievable...", yet for individual manuscripts every second review I see is "the evidence is not consistent enough, probably bad science, reject".

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It is weird everyone knows ego-depletion as one of the research lines where hundreds of studies were performed, but there was no effect - but the Mortality Salience literature has become a historical example of much larger research waste. 825 studies, absolutely nothing real about it.
April 30, 2025 at 9:42 AM
Reposted by Thorsten M. Erle
Forscher‘s Letter was the topic of @lakens.bsky.social Podcast a year ago. I would advise against focusing on AI as the main culprit. AI is merely a symptom of the underlying problem.
March 22, 2025 at 7:48 AM
Well written piece on problems with mediation analysis and how to productively report them in spite of their flaws. Although at this point I fall firmly in the "avoid" camp...
March 21, 2025 at 6:28 AM
Reposted by Thorsten M. Erle
Research shows that inconsistent activity and light exposure patterns may contribute to depression risk. People with more stable daily routines had fewer depressive symptoms.
Fluctuating activity and light exposure patterns linked to depression
Research shows that inconsistent activity and light exposure patterns may contribute to depression risk. People with more stable daily routines had fewer depressive symptoms.
www.psypost.org
March 13, 2025 at 8:03 PM
Interesting piece... One the one hand, I because I am curious myself and because it is often also hard to forsee what will ultimately be useful for society in (psych) science. On the other hand, this quite elitist stance probably contributes/contributed to the current anti-science/funding climate.
March 11, 2025 at 5:28 AM
Reposted by Thorsten M. Erle
Der Parenthesis Blog ist an der #teap2025 mit einem Poster vertreten. Der Blog illustriert anhand individueller Karrierewege, ob und wie eine wissenschaftliche Karriere mit Familie vereinbar sein kann. Erfahrungsberichte können hier nachgelesen werden: parenthesis-blog.de @teap2025.bsky.social
March 10, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Resonates quite well with my experience reviewing neuroscience papers. That being said, the predictive power of theories in psychology/neuroscience is currently also generally poor, so the role of observationalism should not be underestimated in the current iteration of how we conduct our science.
Sam Gershman writes beautifully about how theory-free neuroscience prevents the field from reaching its promise. Beautiful and true. Most folks do not test hypotheses. Running a NHST does not a hypothesis make. www.thetransmitter.org/theoretical-...
Breaking the barrier between theorists and experimentalists
Many neuroscience students are steeped in an experiment-first style of thinking. Let’s not forget how theory can guide experiments.
www.thetransmitter.org
March 9, 2025 at 6:59 AM
Reposted by Thorsten M. Erle
Eefje van Moorsel and Bianca Sips gave their first ever conference presentation at #etmaal2025 🤩

Our interactive narrative intervention to empower bystanders when they witness cyberbullying can be found here: tiltale.com/cidn/

#cyberbullying #bystanders #interactivenarratives #intervention
February 4, 2025 at 11:10 AM
Reposted by Thorsten M. Erle
📣 Submit a Session Proposal for SIPS 2025 📣
SIPS is celebrating 10 years of improving psychological science with two dynamic events:
📍 Budapest (In-person): June 25–27, 2025
💻 Online: May 21–22, 2025

We invite you to help us shape the program of those events!
Program – SIPS 2025
The tentative dates for the program release are end of February 2025 for SIPS Budapest and mid March 2025 for SIPS Online.
buff.ly
January 29, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted by Thorsten M. Erle
Roy Baumeister called ego depletion "one of the most replicable findings in social psychology." As someone who spent 20 years studying it—and ultimately had to admit it wasn't real—I have to respectfully disagree. Here's my perspective of what went so wrong.
The Collapse of Ego Depletion
Science's Biggest Self-Control Failure
open.substack.com
January 29, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Reposted by Thorsten M. Erle

Bluesky appears to be the official social media platform for science:

In Jan 2025, a Nature survey of 6,000 scientists found:

▶️ 70% are now on Bluesky

▶️ 53% say they left X

▶️ 13.6% say they use X more than Bluesky

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
January 24, 2025 at 8:13 PM
Alright, I finally took the plunge and deleted some more problematic social media. I want to give this one a real chance and try to be more active for a while at least. But I still find this place a tad quiet and would appreciate good, active follows for science/psychology-related content.
January 25, 2025 at 10:48 AM