newsletter: october 2024
happy october! meet this month's guest editor, Mikaela Spruill 🍂
hi, it’s ivy!
🪦🐈⬛🕷️🔮🍁 october is here 🍂☠️🦇🎃🕯
important reminder: our second marginalia science x boston college symposium will be held on december 9th. apply to give a short talk at this link by october 25! three people will be selected, and speakers will be awarded a $250 honorarium plus travel assistance.
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…. and i’m so thrilled to introduce this month’s guest editor, Mikaela Spruill!
Mikaela Spruill ✨🪴🌞
about me: I am currently the Criminal Justice postdoctoral fellow in Stanford SPARQ at Stanford University, and just last year I earned my Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Cornell University. I study how our judgments and decisions at the individual level sustain systemic inequities in the legal system.
My research is rooted in social psychology; however, it also takes an interdisciplinary approach that merges psychological theory with sociological principles to study how lay citizens’ understanding of the law informs their judgments of legal cases and policies. The work has come together really organically and getting to ask these questions is so fulfilling.
Beyond researching and writing, I spend my free time in community with my friends and family. I’m also very active and running has become a big release for me. I am actually training for my first 5K right now! I also love music. I have a great (if I say so myself) collection of vinyl records and love traveling to see my favorite musicians perform.
📚reading 🤓 : I read quite a lot. I am always reading at least one fiction and one nonfiction book simultaneously. Currently I am reading Children of Virtue & Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi (excited for the third book in the series) and Angela Davis: An Autobiography. Next on my list is Paradise by Toni Morrison and I can’t wait to step into that journey.
🖼️experiencing🌅: I thoroughly enjoy a good museum. I recently visited Simone Leigh’s exhibit at the CAAM in Los Angeles and it was just beautiful. I also traveled down to Montgomery, Alabama and went to The Legacy Museum by the Equal Justice Initiative. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. It was fully immersive, emotionally moving and beautifully honest. I truly feel like every single human being should go experience it for themselves.
🎵 listening 🎶:
when the poems do what they do by Aja Monet This is a poetry album and it is sooo good. It makes you think, reflect and feel all the feelings. Truly a gift of an album.
Malibu by Anderson .Paak I recently saw Anderson perform this entire album, top to bottom, at the Hollywood Bowl and it has been on repeat ever since. It is as much of a masterpiece today as the day it was released.
Live at the Jazz Cafe by Olivia Dean My favorite live album at the moment. It's so fun hearing the live arrangements of this stunning collection of songs.
📚📚 some papers that i’m reading this month:
A raceless legal psychology in a system marked by race
Rubí M. Gonzales & Victoria C. Plaut
Journal of Social Issues | 2024
Cinoo Lee, Kristina Gligorić, Pratyusha Ria Kalluri, Maggie Harrington, Esin Durmus, Kiara L. Sanchez, Nay San, Danny Tse, Xuan Zhao, MarYam G. Hamedani, Hazel Rose Markus, Dan Jurafsky, and Jennifer L. Eberhardt
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2024
Kengthsagn Louis, Alia J. Crum, Hazel R. Markus
Social Science & Medicine | 2023
THIS MONTH’S ROUND-UP 🤩
💎 awesome work by marginalia and affiliated scientists 💎
Spruill, M., & Hans, V.P. (2024). Trial by jury: Psychological research contributions to an dnduring legal institution. In R. Hollander-Blumoff (Eds.), Research Handbook in Law and Psychology (pp. 108–121). Elgar.
Legal decision-making is a complex psychological process with weighty consequences. This has led some to question why a group of lay citizens with no relevant background or training in the law should decide legal cases. This chapter addresses these concerns by summarizing psychological theory and research that sheds light on how jurors approach their task and that confirms the general soundness of the jury as a fact-finding body. The chapter outlines current psychological models of decision-making that map out how individual jurors and juries come to their decisions in civil and criminal trials. It describes how the diversity of juries contributes positively to the jury’s fact-finding competence and the fairness of its decisions. The chapter also presents evidence about the effectiveness of various jury reforms, from the jury’s size and decision rule, to trial aids such as notetaking and question-asking, to instructions on the law and on implicit biases. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future jury research, including research on global systems of lay legal decision-making.
👓 OTHER THINGS THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU 🚀
Psychological and Brain Sciences Early Career Colloquium speaker series at Johns Hopkins for senior doctoral students or postdocs (deadline 10/15/24)
Boston College Dept. of Psychology & Neuroscience’s Pre-Doctoral Mentorship Program: one-on-one mentorship to psychology & neuroscience doctoral programs. sign-up here (deadline 11/15/24)
Apply for an APA Editorial Fellowship! (special shout from Mikaela to Psychology, Public Policy and Law)
The NSF SBE Postdoctoral Fellowship deadline is November 6 2024
Andrej Karpathy’s Survival Guide to a PhD blog post
🌱 JOB-MARKET RESOURCES 🌱
no matter where you’re at right now -- offer in hand, fingers-still-crossed, looking at post-docs, tenure track jobs, or exploring options outside academia -- we support you!
UCLA is hiring: 1 TT assistant professor specializing in affective neuroscience (deadline 10/27/24), 1 open-rank position in computational and behavioral neuroscience (deadline 10/31/24), and 1 open-rank position in social influence (deadline 10/24/24)
Dartmouth is hiring a TT assistant professor of cognitive science / natural and artificial intelligence (deadline today, 10/1/24)
Oberlin is hiring for a TT position in cognitive development (deadline today, 10/1/24)
Harvard is hiring a preceptor in quantitative psychology (deadline today, 10/1/24)
and, of course, feel free to email us with questions, ideas, etc to add to this list!
in support & science,
📚 MARGINALIA SCIENCE 📚
eliana hadjiandreou
ivy gilbert
jordan wylie
minjae kim