HBES 2026 registration is officially open! The conference will take place in Rabat, Morocco, with both in-person and online attendance options. Early bird registration runs until March 29, 2026.🧵

HBES members: Nominations are open for the 2026 Evolution in the Public Eye Award 🏆 Help recognize those who have gone above and beyond in communicating human evolutionary science and countering misinformation. Self-nominations are welcome. Deadline: Feb 7 Nominate here: forms.gle/VXJgczHA1irD...

"experience sampling with adolescents...being good leads to being well...virtues like compassion, patience, and self-control might benefit their possessors" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Using randomly assigned identities, ppl were more likely to accept identity-congruent misinformation despite equal knowledge, supporting identity-protective motivated reasoning as a key driver of misinformation acceptance. #EvPsych #cogpsyc #SocialPsyc #polipsy journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

"The problem...which recurs throughout 'Spandrels', is not that this criticism is wrong, it’s that Gould & Lewontin...make only cursory and superficial remarks about how test those alternatives, or about how to pursue an alternative research programme built on different conceptual foundations"

"findings suggest that monogamy arose repeatedly under similar socioecological conditions and cannot be fully explained by theories based primarily on Indo-European history" www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

One more study finds MTurk is not reliable as researchers assume. #perpsyc #EvPsych #cogpsyc

⏰ Friendly reminder! The abstract submission deadline is January 16. Looking forward to seeing your work at #HBES2026 in Rabat 🇲🇦 Don’t miss it!

🧪Leia também o artigo publicado pelo Brazilian Journal of Biology doi.org/10.1590/1519...

“I thought we were just friends.” At what age do sexual misperception biases emerge? New research with adolescents (16–19) shows when—and how—over- and under-perception of romantic interest begins to take shape. Read more 👇 🔗

"how universal mate choice mechanisms—attentiveness to health, fertility, and sociality—are expressed through locally adaptive values shaped by subsistence strategies and settlement contexts" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

An experiment w/ 71 research teams showed that analytical decisions made on the same dataset varied according to teams’ pre-existing ideology toward or against immigration. These choices also received ⬇️ grades from "peer reviewers". #metasci #socialpsyc #cogpsyc www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Amazing, not only the mPFC encoded categorical scales, but also it did it independently of linguistic similarity, suggesting construct-sensitive integration during self-report and a neural basis for psychological assessment. #cogpsyc #cognition #perpsy #socialpsyc

Competition for heritable wealth, not cultural group selection, drives the evolution of monogamy | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

⏳ONE WEEK LEFT⏳ We hope you’re rested and ready for an exciting new year!🚀 Don't forget: abstract submission for #EHBEA2026 closes THIS FRIDAY, 9 January—don’t miss your chance to present your work in Leiden, 14-17 April 2026!🌟 Submit now: ehbea2026.com #EHBEA2026 #BehaviouralScience #AIvolution

1/ Romantic kissing 👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨 is common across cultures—but NOT universal. Of note, societies with little contact seem to “reinvent” it. We argue this is b/c kissing sits in a cultural basin of attraction carved by our early‑emerging understanding of intimacy. 🧵 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Daredevil (1964) #263 (via Reddit)

"the study directly evaluates whether the economic-game framework is capable of capturing the classical evolutionary triggers of romantic jealousy—namely, cues associated with sexual infidelity in men and with resource diversion in women" id.elsevier.com/as/authoriza...

"Cultural evolution thus operates through a feedback loop: humans engineer affordances to fulfill ultimate goals, and in doing so, they sometimes modify the regulatory variables that set the salience and priority of those goals."

I’m happy to share our new paper accepted for publication at Evolutionary Human Sciences: Comparing Predictions of Anger in Conflict Situations: Recalibrational Theory vs. Dark Triad Traits, authored by Isabella Righi and me www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The evolution of scientific concepts isn’t random; new research shows ideas grow and stabilize following principles from thermodynamics, much like physical systems. #cogsci #science dailyneuron.com/evolution-of...

If you know someone who works and contributes to the research community on human evolution and behaviour, please do not hesitate to nominate them! Deadline: December 19 👇 👇 👇 👇

From cognitive science and evolutionary work on communication, Thom Scott-Phillips brings a new proposal to a classic debate on linguistic intuitions and grammar—linking judgments of “oddness” to communicative relevance. Read: doi.org/10.25189/267...

An interesting contribution in the Journal of Informetrics www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...; transparent peer review is associated with higher scores for information content

A new PNAS paper finds that polarization increased immediately after the invention of smartphones and the advent of social media, which both appeared around the same year, 2008. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A global study of minimal groups finds discrimination in favor of the in-group in all 20 countries, yielding a large overall effect (OR = 4.58). The degree of intergroup discrimination was related to higher societal uncertainty www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Using a within-subjects experimental design, children’s early STEM behaviours during solitary play with loose parts (e.g., acorn, cardboard) were examined with findings indicating that play with loose parts offers strong potential for STEM exploration and learning. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

How do some children learn to eat some animals while continuing to care for others? New research suggests that this is caused by resolving the conflict between moral values and human cultural practices. Read more in #SPPS: https://ow.ly/81NL50XHCS7

Just published in Behavior Research Methods: The individual-level precision of implicit measures w/ @ianhussey.mmmdata.io 🧵👇 link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Are more reflective thinkers better at games that require empathy or perspective-taking? In two experiments, reflective thinking performed better on such games, seemingly because they paid more attention to the other players' incentives. doi.org/10.1017/S193... #econ #cogSci

By @chrisvonrueden.bsky.social

Feeling down from all the talk about humans being biologically wired to destroy the planet? Our new paper in Frontiers in Psychology highlights the flexibility of human nature — a reminder that there’s room for optimism: www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy...

EHBEA awarded a workshop grant this year to researchers aiming to strengthen evolutionary approaches to the study of behaviour in Chile & elsewhere in Latin America, as we're keen to use these awards for outreach beyond our usual community. Congrats to the organisers, & hope the workshop goes well 😊

in conservative areas, extraverts and agreeable people more conservative...in liberal areas, extraverts and agreeable people more liberal..."highlights the importance of considering geographical context in personality research" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Not all sexual swellings signal fertility. Some signal strategy. In our new Current Biology paper, we show how gelada females “fake it” during male takeovers—and why it works. authors.elsevier.com/a/1m7%7E93QW...

"not only misinformation but also its coverage contribute to epistemic uncertainty by eroding confidence in credible sources of knowledge, and warrant further inquiry into the potential harms of news media’s attention to misinformation." link.springer.com/article/10.1...

📢 Call for abstracts! 🚀 The time has come — abstract submission for #EHBEA2026 is officially OPEN since this week! 🎉 🗓 Submission Nov 1st – Dec 15th 📝 300 words 🧠 Important: Make an OpenReview account before submitting — it takes time! 👉 www.ehbea2026.com

So, lots of people picking up Kevin's post to declare all Evolutionary Psychology/ists misogynistic pervs. And I get why but look: I trained in Evo Psych. I trained in Behavioural Ecology too which maybe helps but I came into academia an enthusiastic researcher of sexual selection. 1/

Delighted to announce the publication of 'From Questions to Knowledge', my new and updated statistics and data analysis handbook. www.danielnettle.eu/2025/09/14/f...

 “maybe in the current polarized discussion of identity and sex/gender, people will find the dimensional and empirical approach of this paper a tool to communicate better than the categorical approaches let us do"

Researchers analyzed 102 “just-so” stories shared in online antifeminist spaces. 83% focused on sex differences and rarely acknowledged speculation. The authors call for renewed discussion and reflection on evolutionary hypothesizing. 🔗 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

New preprint! You may have seen Netflix’s Adolescence. It quickly became their most-watched mini-series ever, even prompting roundtable discussions between writers & the Prime Minister. osf.io/preprints/ps...

In a preregistered, multi-site, an evolutionary explanation of anxiety vs. genetic framing was rated substantially more useful for patients, enhanced perceived efficacy of psychosocial interventions, & recognition of functional roles of negative emotions. osf.io/preprints/ps...

"Narcissism, both adaptive and maladaptive traits, varies across cultural contexts...This study examines the measurement invariance of the Five-Factor Narcissism Inventory (FFNI) between the Brazilian Portuguese and the US versions"  econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/full/10....

Just learned of the passing of psychology professor and former ISHE president, Glenn Weisfeld. My sincere condolences to Carol Weisfeld, the family, and friends during this difficult time.

Study shows how the human pelvis was reshaped for upright walking | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Male Sex, Masculinization, Sexual Orientation, and Gynephilia Synergistically Predict Increased Sexual Jealousy link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Thanks, Ed for the great review. BTW, I agree with Ed, and I have made the same point to Brazilian audiences: LGBTQIA+ rights (and everyone’s rights) should not depend on claims about biology or evolution — human rights stand *regardless* of biological sex or other traits.