The psychology of everyday authoritarianism: Authoritarians will pay money to impose arbitrary rules on others

We tend to assume that rules are mostly about maintaining order, reducing prediction errors, and generally helping people cooperate. But not all rules do that--and, as Connie Chiu and I found in our most recent paper, people will buy rules in economic games of little use osf.io/preprints/ps...

📣 New BBS preprint out now! 📣 "Models casting egalitarian societies as crucibles of equality perpetuate the factually uninformed notion that foragers are somehow more noble. Critiques portray egalitarianism as romantic fantasy. Neither characterization is wholly justified." doi.org/10.1017/S014...

What do kids choose to do when they think that someone will help them? What about when no one will help? New paper: "Young children strategically adapt to unreliable social partners" - led by Kat Shannon, with @hyogweon.bsky.social and Willem Frankenhuis. osf.io/preprints/ps...

🚨 New preprint 🚨 How do people's mental models shape memory, prediction, and generalization? We find that people spontaneously construct goal-dependent causal abstractions that compress experience to privilege relevant information. 📃 osf.io/preprints/ps... 🔗 github.com/cicl-stanfor...

Here's a link to access our article "People Can Find Their True Selves Outside Moral Pursuits" (Cognition) for free for the next 50 days @jowylie.bsky.social @anagantman.bsky.social 📄 📎 authors.elsevier.com/c/1lznW2Hx2-... #moralpsychology #philsky

Thrilled to see this paper out! It's the culmination of a project begun in the depths of the pandemic with Sabrina Karjack and @zoengo.bsky.social . We continue our exploration of how children generalize when their episodic memory is not yet mature. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Why do some ideas spread widely, while others fail to catch on? Our new review paper on the PSYCHOLOGY OF VIRALITY is now out in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social (it was led by @steverathje.bsky.social) Read the full paper here: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

We propose that the everyday psychology of rules and 3rd party punishment is at the core of authoritarianism Our view posits no new constructs, is ideology-agnostic, & considers relevant only interactions w the state See our new working paper "Authoritarianism in Action" osf.io/preprints/ps...

Can large language models stand in for human participants? Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research. One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want. THREAD 🧵

🚨 NEW PREPRINT: Multimodal inference through mental simulation. We examine how people figure out what happened by combining visual and auditory evidence through mental simulation. Paper: osf.io/preprints/ps... Code: github.com/cicl-stanfor...

One common view in moral psychology is “the primacy of the moral” - the view that people think your moral traits are what’s most fundamental about you These new studies challenge that view, suggesting that people sometimes see artistic creation as just as fundamental as morality

you're having a sliding doors moment--you can either become a great artist or a great philanthropist. what path will make you feel like you've found your true self? @jowylie.bsky.social & @mattlindauer.bsky.social and i find that arts provide a unique one static1.squarespace.com/static/679ee...

In a new paper, my colleagues and I set out to demonstrate how method biases can create spurious findings in relationship science, by using a seemingly meaningless scale (e.g., "My relationship has very good Saturn") to predict relationship outcomes. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Large Language Models Do Not Simulate Human Psychology arxiv.org/pdf/2508.06950

@anagantman.bsky.social @jowylie.bsky.social and I are starting to study everyday revenge. Have you ever successfully gotten back at someone after being wronged? We would love to hear about it. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... #PsychSciSky #socialpsyc #cognition

@paulbloomatyale.bsky.social @jowylie.bsky.social, and I are starting to study everyday revenge. Have you ever successfully got back at someone after being wronged? We would love to hear about it: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... #PsychSciSky #socialpsyc #cognition

In this finally out (!) paper, I argue no—and cognitive science backs this up. We can keep the orthodox rationalist view of belief *and* recognize the difficulties in changing minds. The key is thinking of belief as requiring a *capacity* (not a reliable disposition) to respond to evidence.

🥂 officially promoted to associate prof of psych at brooklyn college & the CUNY grad center--and appointed in the philosophy department at the grad center 🥂

I have a new paper on "The Psychology of Virality" with @steverathje.bsky.social We explain how similar psychological processes (eg preferential attention to negativity, social motives, etc.) drive the spread of information across online and offline contexts: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A now-classic experiment from Kevin Tobia found an effect of morality (becoming morally worse vs. becoming morally better) on intuitions about personal identity A new study now looks at that effect across a variety of different cultures www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Now out in paperback! Advances in Experimental Political Philosophy. Very glad to have put together such a stellar lineup of contributors. #philsky

so the word 'corporation' comes from the latin 'corporatio' meaning "having taken bodily form" and in a new paper @gfloresrob.bsky.social nirupika sharma and i interrogate this corporation-body metaphor and its implications for how we think about blame wrt corporate wrongdoing osf.io/preprints/ps...

Honored to receive this award, which @anagantman.bsky.social also received! Go PsyPhi Lab! 👽

Congratulations to the Graduate Center’s Feliks Gross and Henry Wasser Awards winners: @anagantman.bsky.social, Qiushi Guo, Catherine Kramarczuk Voulgarides, @mattlindauer.bsky.social., Sarah Ita Levitan, and Vladimir Rosenhaus! www.gc.cuny.edu/news/six-cun...

Congratulations, Dr. @gfloresrob.bsky.social 🌟🧠🥳 so proud of you! And so jealous of your future mentors at princeton!

great thread on our working paper on the role that pursuits besides moral goodness--specifically aesthetic or intellectual ones--play in access our feelings that we are our free and authentic selves love working with these two @jowylie.bsky.social @mattlindauer.bsky.social

Academic research focuses so obsessively on morality, but people also care deeply about other parts of life (Lou Reed might not have been a moral exemplar, but we might think he was an exemplar of something else) This @jowylie.bsky.social paper explores this other side of people’s values

Fun thread on our recent work looking at the contributions that non-moral forms of value, such as aesthetic value, make to our lives. @jowylie.bsky.social @anagantman.bsky.social

so so proud of @gfloresrob.bsky.social who will be a post-doctoral fellow in psychology and public policy at Princeton in Fall '25! so happy for you and your lucky new adviser and students too ❤️🤩

Our paper in Nature (@mkwittmann.bsky.social et al.): the brain does not only process the *identity* of a person but primarily our *relationship* to them. Even on a neural level, who someone is *in relation to others* is key. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #PsychSciSky #socialpsyc #neuroskyence

Decades of scholarship on gender have shown that women are judged to be more caring and more communal than men--a core component of moral goodness. We used multiple methods (N= 5,376) to test a basic claim: People think that women are morally superior to men. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Are women morally wonderful? Excited by this paper, with @jowylie.bsky.social, @anagantman.bsky.social, @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social, Peter Mende-Siedlecki, and Heleni Singer. osf.io/preprints/ps...

@curtispuryear.bsky.social a study of a decade of twitter posts shows and new measure of moralization shows that moralization has substantially increased over time (d = .45!). Driven by both self selection and within-user increase over time! #comppsych #spsp2025 (also stay tuned for this paper😎)

rereading Wegner's 2004 precis on conscious will, one of the paper's that got me into psychology, and still finding new gems. he argues that our intentions are more like previews than causes of our actions, and he asks "does the compass steer the ship?" will be thinking about that for a while!

I’m hiring a lab manager to start July 2025! Submit CV and cover letter as soon as possible as review will begin immediately. Link to the job ad is here: tinyurl.com/22ye3wsv Please share with any undergrads or mentees who might be interested!

There have been lots of great experimental studies about how people attribute the mental states relevant to criminal responsibility (purpose, knowledge, recklessness, negligence) A thread of some interesting findings:

been thinking a lot in my lab about what it means to use the state to go after your enemies (for no reason at all). the beginnings of that thinking are in our paper on what makes state punishment unique (now in press at EJSP) #psychscisky #cognition #socpsyc #philsky osf.io/preprints/ps...

there are so many rules to follow! only some of them the state enforces; in our new preprint "the psychology of state punishment" @jowylie.bsky.social connie chiu, nicolette dakin, wil cunningham & i argue state punishment is unique 🧵 #psychscisky #cognition #socpsyc #philsky osf.io/preprints/ps...

Our new paper on why people love sad art The key question: You probably wouldn’t enjoy it if someone started telling you about how she is addicted to drugs and her life is failing apart. So why do you love it when she creates a work of art about that very same thing? osf.io/preprints/ps...

what counts as breaking a rule? you might think this q is easy, but people actually integrate signals from morality, legality, punishability, and normativity to figure it out, new preprint w/ @jowylie.bsky.social & dries bostyn osf.io/preprints/ps... #psychscisky #cognition #socpsyc #philsky

We have a new paper explaining all the ways you can use natural language processing to analyze text data in @natrevpsych.bsky.social We provide user friendly recommendations for using NLP to ensure rigour and reproducibility Here is a free link: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Excited to share that our BBS target article — "Children as agents of cultural adaptation" — is online & open for commentary! In it, @sheinalew.bsky.social & I argue that children's peer cultures might play an important & understudied role in cultural adaptation. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

been seeing lots of work lately on whether LLMs can give ethical counsel, but i am not so optimistic. it's pretty hard to know good advice when you get it! and sometimes the best moral advice transcends the prompt. www.scientificamerican.com/article/plea... #socialpsyc #PsychSciSky

my coauthor and brilliant friend @anagantman.bsky.social on why we're so eager to take moral advice from LLMs like ChatGPT. Ana's advice? talk to a friend instead. at least for now. www.scientificamerican.com/article/plea...

now in press at PSPB #psychscisky #CogSci #socialpsyc

ever notice how only some people can break the rules and get away with it? in new preprint w/ @jowylie.bsky.social Kaitlyn Milless and John Sciarrapo, we examined whether the race of the rule breaker affects the enforcement of phantom rules osf.io/preprints/ps... #psychscisky #CogSci #socialpsyc

what are the rules for? cooperation, right? but history and increasing psych evidence tell us that rules can be used to oppress & dominate. @jowylie.bsky.social and i argue for these twin functions of official codified rules and their enforcement osf.io/preprints/ps... #socialpsyc #PsychSciSky

is paid care labor a taboo tradeoff? in our new paper, @gfloresrob.bsky.social and i examine the perceived tradeoff between love and money in jobs like nursing & teaching, and what it can tell us about the gender pay gap, now in press at Psychology of Women Quarterly osf.io/preprints/ps...

This is a cool confirmation of moral perception. @anagantman.bsky.social and I anticipated this a decade ago in a series of papers arguing that people rapidly attend to moral information in vision sciencedirect.com/science/arti... I hope more research examines this topic!