About Me
My name is Ravi Iyer and I am a data scientist with a PhD in social psychology, as well as 15 years of experience with database technologies. Among my current roles, I am an active moral psychology researcher at the University of Southern California, a data scientist at Ranker.com, co-founder of BeyondThePurchase.org (a consumer psychology data site), YourMorals.org (where people can learn about moral psychology), PsychWiki.com, and VoteHelp.org, a director of CivilPolitics.org, and a consultant for companies like Siemer & Associates and New Releases Now.
One of my enduring focuses is to help ideas from social sciences reach non-academic audiences and this blog is part of that. I believe that social science research benefits from being more engaged with the public at large, in all phases of the hypothesis testing process (e.g. see this paper on the wisdom of crowds approach applied to academia). While some may see academic psychology and the technology industry as separate career paths, it is my view that they are converging as technology companies increasingly serve psychological needs (see my SXSW presentation on this subject) and psychology departments seek to use more real world data that produces real world value.
Here is a link to my academic publications. I do occasional data science consulting, and am open to short term projects where I am quite comfortable using my scripting and SQL skills to manipulate your data into a format where I can do statistical analysis that I can turn into a powerpoint presentation to answer questions of interest to your organization. If you're interested in inquiring about my services, email me iyerland (at gmail . com). Aside from statistical and SQL/database expertise, I am uniquely qualified to answer questions that relate to consumer or moral psychology, as I regularly publish papers in psychology journals concerning these topics, and can leverage my knowledge of these fields.
I use this blog to write about data oriented findings that I think could be on interest to the average informed politically and socially aware reader, who is interested in a perspective informed by academic psychology. I probably won't be able to resist the urge to write the occasional off-topic observation about whatever comes to mind though.
Selected press:
Comments
Main Themes of This Blog
- •Post-Materialism: People are increasingly motivated by values and higher order psychological needs.
- •Book Reviews – Consilience between psychology and books I read.
- •Hypermoralism – Morality causes ordinary people to do immoral things.
- •What are the psychological differences that make people liberal democrats, conservative republicans, or libertarians?
Vote for the Best Psych Books
Categories
- book reviews
- business of psychology
- civil politics
- consilience
- consumer psychology
- data science
- differences between republicans and democrats
- drug laws
- gross domestic product
- hypermoralism
- justice and fairness
- libertarians
- Links
- main themes of this blog
- misc
- moral confabulation
- moral confabulation in the news
- moral emotions
- moral foundations
- moral imagination
- moral psychology
- news commentary
- political psychology
- positive psychology
- Post Materialism
- ranker
- replications of other studies
- technology business
- the old polipsych
- unpublished results
- War and Peace
- yourmorals.org
Blogroll
- AboutMyJob.com
- Consumer Psychology Self-Tests @ Beyond The Purchase.Org
- Pilates Anytime – Online Pilates Classes
- Ranker Votable Lists
- Ranker's Data Blog
- Tal Yarkoni's Psychology/Informatics Blog
- Tara Met Blog
- The Music is Over – Musician Obituaries
- YourMorals.org
Explore
academia
aggression
big 5
big data
civility
coherence
conservatives
consilience
differences between liberals and conservatives
disgust
empathy
equality
equity
fairness
hypermoralism
idealistic evil
incivility
jon stewart
liberals
liberals and conservatives
libertarians
libya
mitt romney
moral absolutism
moral foundations
moral maximizing
moral psychology
neuroticism
new york times
obama
openness to experience
partisanship
peace
peer review
personality traits
political psychology
religion
romney
social dominance orientation
social psychology
stephen colbert
sxsw
technology
votehelp.org
war book reviews (10)
business of psychology (17)
civil politics (16)
consilience (18)
consumer psychology (7)
data science (3)
differences between republicans and democrats (20)
drug laws (3)
gross domestic product (1)
hypermoralism (11)
justice and fairness (6)
libertarians (9)
Links (1)
main themes of this blog (4)
misc (1)
moral confabulation (10)
moral confabulation in the news (8)
moral emotions (3)
moral foundations (4)
moral imagination (2)
moral psychology (28)
news commentary (47)
political psychology (70)
positive psychology (13)
Post Materialism (7)
ranker (5)
replications of other studies (8)
technology business (1)
the old polipsych (4)
unpublished results (26)
War and Peace (7)
yourmorals.org (84)
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.
Archive
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- April 2009
- September 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- June 2006
- May 2004
- April 2004
Consumer Psychology Posts
- The Costs and Benefits of ?Living for Now?
- You are Not That Great
- Money and Happiness: The Costs and Benefits of Living for Now
- The First International Day of Happiness
- Money and Happiness: Materialists Not Happier When Purchasing Life Experiences
Last 10 Posts:
- May 7, 2013
Personality Types in Business: Conscientious CEOs & Open Technologists - April 25, 2013
Big Data Stocks? Invest in Data, not in Tools. - April 4, 2013
The Moral Foundations of Environmentalists - March 26, 2013
Your Values Predict the Stories You Choose - December 14, 2012
How to Prevent Mental Illness: Help others with their stressful life events - November 24, 2012
When is investment banking immoral? A review of Greg Smith’s book, Why I left Goldman Sachs. - November 21, 2012
On Mitt Romney and The X-Files - November 18, 2012
The Gaza Conflict and Being Pro-Peace rather than Anti-War - November 8, 2012
Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin and Paul Krugman need to get out of Maslow’s Basement. - November 5, 2012
Early Voting is a Social Influence Tool, so tell everyone when you vote!
Civil Politics Posts
- The Driven Snowe: Centrist as Outsider May 17, 2013 Beau Lebette
- Millennials: Not Immune to Extreme Partisanship May 8, 2013 Beau Lebette
- A Civil Exploration of Religion May 7, 2013 Connor Wood
- Does President Obama Golf Enough? April 30, 2013 Beau Lebette
- Ever Redder More Truly Blue: The Fate of States April 25, 2013 Beau Lebette
Popular Search Terms
- libertarian psychology
- Brother sister incest stories
- Brother and sister incest story
- real brother sister incest stories
- real brother sister incest story
- examples of limitations in psychology experiments
- hypermoralism
- http://www polipsych com/2010/12/29/tony-washington-brother-sister-incest/
- the differences between gross national happiness and gross domestic product
- brother sister incest true stories
April 29th, 2010 - 07:52
awesome blog! we had the same idea for a title and i wanted to just assert that i’m a huge fan of your take on our mutual idea
May 19th, 2010 - 01:50
Just discovered your blog today, you’ve earned a special bookmark in my mental space
All the best
Chris
October 27th, 2010 - 18:14
I’m looking forward to reading the rest of this fascinating blog. We have a lot of common interests, as you will see from the email I sent you. I have also done research on political activists, libertarians, and on moral judgment. Let’s talk!
December 14th, 2011 - 05:26
I’ve done some of your “yourmorals” surveys and find them quite interesting, but I’m wondering, will the research always be so US-centric? I know all the researchers are American, but I’d find it interesting to see how moral beliefs correlate among Canadian partisans (especially since the “liberal-left” spectrum isn’t regarded as a continuous unit in Canada, but rather is broken up into reform-liberals who vote for the Liberal Party and social democrats who vote for the NDP).
December 19th, 2011 - 04:00
It’s really just a matter of getting enough people from Canada (or other countries) to take our survey. I do think we likely have enough Canadians and I’ll try to do an analysis of Canadians if I can think of a good research question. Do you have a particular hypothesis to test?
January 17th, 2012 - 09:13
A good area of research might be measuring something like support for same-sex marriage among people of various partisan affiliations and then somehow measuring the reasons for support or opposition. In the case of Liberal Party members, I suspect support would more be hovered around notions like freedom or let live whereas with New Democrats equality would be a bigger factor in motivating support for same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage isn’t a hot issue in Canada now – it’s been legal since 2005 – but it’d still be interesting to test.
January 17th, 2012 - 16:06
Thanks for the idea. I don’t know if we have enough data for that analysis, but I’ll put it on the list of things to try next time we do a big data download.
March 11th, 2012 - 14:22
I’m sitting in your talk at SXSW-interactive right now, and I just wanted to thank you for being here! Interesting stuff. As a feminist sex writer and activist I think a lot of this could be helpful for me.
March 11th, 2012 - 22:45
you’re very welcome and thanks for your interest.