Cat Hicks

@grimalkina
10.4K Followers
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13.1K Posts

Psychologist for the humans of tech.
Evidence strategy for technical teams at: https://www.catharsisinsight.com/

Co-host at Change, Technically: https://www.changetechnically.fyi/

Author: Psychology of Software Teams (CRC Press, coming 2026)

Seizing the means of scientific production. Quant Psych PhD (but with a love for qual). Chronically underpublished. She/her

Founded: Catharsis Consulting, Developer Success Lab
Neighborhood Cool Aunt of Science

Podcasthttps://www.changetechnically.fyi/
Bloghttps://www.drcathicks.com/blog
Developer Sciencehttps://www.drcathicks.com/projects
Newsletterhttps://fight-for-the-human.ghost.io/
Show threadCat Hicks21h ago
Personal rather than professional because I need to ask the neuroscientist in my house to evaluate the strength of this evidence
Cat Hicks21h ago

I have like a quiet personal hot take brewing that is like, "most of our folk theories about attention are wrong"

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)01373-X

Show threadCat Hicks22h ago

One of the authors chatting about the selection effect issues I and others have wondered about and clarifying goals of the claims:

https://bsky.app/profile/brookemacnamara.bsky.social/post/3mahqgzo2hk2l

Brooke N. Macnamara (@brookemacnamara.bsky.social)

This is the focus of the paper—the pattern is quite different for the broader population than the associations observed within the highest levels.

Bluesky Social
Show threadCat Hicks22h ago

Cookies are also thematic because we are making the grilled baby bok choy with miso-gochujang butter and crispy chickpeas recipe from Hetty McKinnon's Tenderheart (also highly recommend the kale dumplings + brothy butter beans recipe in this book)

we LOVE this cookbook and if you have vegetarian or vegetable-forward cooking needs and also are tired of bland vegetarian dishes this one is such a winner imho

Cat Hicks23h ago

The holiday baking has begun 🌟

this is a very exciting year for me because it is the first Christmas of my life that family has come to visit MEEEE and all I had to do was get massively & frighteningly ill for most of the year (I'm ok!!!) to guilt everyone into it 😈😈😈

anyway, Christmas cinnamon rolls have begun and I toasted and salted the pecans in browned butter which I feel truly uplevels it

next milk bread

and Eric Kim's gochujang caramel cookies for my bro who loves gochujang

Cat Hicks1d ago
I would absolutely take a fellowship just doing research on assessment equity in engineering work if that were a thing tech companies did (they don't)
Cat Hicks1d ago
Ok my wife will not be happy if I keep thinking about assessment on the internet :) back to making felt ornaments
Show threadCat Hicks1d ago

-- achievement is *movable*. It had better be, otherwise what is education for.

And it is movable *after school,* too. So I think we should think carefully about how we are detecting potential and who has never been given the opportunity to show their potential. Particularly when you are planning for a rapidly-changing, multidisciplinary, wild set of technology problems, you want to be very concerned about this.

Show threadCat Hicks1d ago
Likewise, in 2020 I was a statistical author on a large-scale assessment report about whether providing free SAT practice with validated tests in a test-like scenario could measurably boost learners' SAT scores. Using observational causal inference, we argued that it could, and that engaging in a more valid testing scenario and hitting a threshold (it was at least six hours on the platform + best practices) of practice increased scores by ~21 points across demographics. This is just to say that
Show threadCat Hicks1d ago
Fun fact: after I was offered a job at Google and they were following up with me for various paperwork, I had to explain quite a few times over that I did not GO to high school, so I did not have a high school grades and therefore a high school GPA. What on earth they thought they were going to do with that information, I cannot say.