Thank you to @joshcjackson.bsky.social and Dan Medvedev for a fascinating recent lab presentation on how attitudes toward the rich vary globally! Innovative methods and fascinating findings, all around. @robbwiller.bsky.social

What happens when we model the detective archetype at scale? 🕵️‍♂️📚 Our new paper, accepted for #CHR2025 combines literary history and computational modeling to trace how the figure of the detective evolves across 150 years of French fiction. arxiv.org/pdf/2511.00627

Our "Historical Psychology" special issue is now out in CRESP! www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu... Co-edited with @mohammadatari.bsky.social and featuring historical perspectives on love, racial identity, emotion expression, well-being, collectivism, religion, and more! Brief 🧵

On election day, I wanna announce that I am recruiting social psych PhD students for my lab at UIC. My lab focuses on racial identities (esp Asian, Latino, MENA Americans) and intra-minority conflict/ coalition. So please tell your students to pick me! All details on my website: www.pbandjlab.com

This thicc 71-chapter book (academic.oup.com/edited-volum...) arrived just in time to use as the textbook for my new "Cultural Evolution" class I've just started teaching! Featuring this chapter from @cailinmeister.bsky.social @psmaldino.bsky.social & Jingyi Wu as well as much more including...

Adam Smith wrongly predicts that celebrity wages will drop once people begin to like celebrities (Wealth of Nations was published in 1776)

How do humans keep inventing tools and technologies that no single person could create alone? Our new preprint, led by @anilyaman.bsky.social & @ts-brain.bsky.social shows that semantic knowledge guides innovation and drives cultural evolution. 🧠📘 arxiv.org/abs/2510.12837

Only two days left to apply!

Has anything great happened in your life because of social media?

🚨Historical Psych Pre-Conference🚨 We have a great lineup of speakers for the #SPSP2026 edition! Submit your poster or data blitz abstract by Oct. 23 (link below!). Open to folks from any career stage Any research on psychological change or historical context of social psych is welcome!

We're accepting poster & data blitz abstract submissions from all career stages. If your work is broadly related to morality, you should apply! We welcome a wide range of topics and approaches. Submit here: spsp.wufoo.com/forms/2026-p... Deadline to submit an abstract: Oct. 23.

@elijfinkel.bsky.social & I are recruiting a postdoc in the #LitowitzCenter for Enlightened Disagreement at Northwestern University. We seek research excellence regarding navigating conflict. Application deadline: Nov. 17. Salary: ~$80k. facultyrecruiting.northwestern.edu/apply/MjQzNw==

I am happy to announce that our project on risk and social learning is now in press at Psychological Review. Several new additions and revisions thanks to detailed feedback from colleagues and anonymous reviewers. osf.io/preprints/so... @psmaldino.bsky.social @babeheim.bsky.social

🚨New preprint🚨 osf.io/preprints/ps... In a sample of ~2 billion comments, social media discourse becomes more negative over time Archival and experimental findings suggest this is a byproduct of people trying to differentiate themselves Led by @hongkai1.bsky.social in his 1st year (!) of his PhD

The @spspnews.bsky.social Religion & Spirituality Preconference is accepting applications for talks, data blitzes, & posters until 10/23! We're excited to hear from Kathleen Corriveau, @alexandraworm.bsky.social, @drmeltemyucel.bsky.social & @joshcjackson.bsky.social. More info: tinyurl.com/33x9za7r

One of my favorite conferences, @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social, just released key dates and other info! I highly recommend checking it out for great research from across the social, behavioral, and natural sciences

🚨 New paper alert! (slightly belated) We (with @joshcjackson.bsky.social) suggest that complex technologies, as they need several (often many) people to use them, require innovations that distribute cognition to help regulate cognitive load and coordinate. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Below is my new post about our Three Stages of Religious Decline paper (www.nature.com/articles/s41...). We argue that a similar process of decline affects countries on every populated continent, including countries in which Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism is the largest religion. A🧵

@helenamiton.bsky.social and I have a new paper out: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Past theories focus on how we evolve complex technologies (jet engines), but neglect cultural innovations that help us operate these technologies (pilot checklist) Paper has tons of examples and new theory!

Social media often feels saturated with politics and morality - but is that feeling accurate? Our new paper finds that moralization has increased markedly on social media from 2013-2021, more than traditional media. See 🧵 below!

One of the largest-scale analyses of historical text data that I have contributed to The finding: language on social media has become more moralized over the 21st century; we don't see the same trends on news media Kudos to the first author @curtispuryear.bsky.social on the enormous effort

English language is filled with trait words like “caring” and “smart” These words are the currency of personality/social psych, yet key questions remain about their evolution, function, and structure We take on these questions in a preprint led by @yuanzeliu.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/ps...

Look what you could publish (anonymously) in Nature in 1970.

If anyone is submitting to SESP and looking for a speaker to complete their symposium, I have a collaborator doing really interesting work related to culture, income, and social cognition. He has multiple cool projects on all of those topics. Feel free to message me and I can connect you

I'm disappointed to share that my NSF career grant on anti-Asian dehumanization was terminated. This affects ongoing project activities, which have shown great progress so far, and support for my research team and more. I'm sad to share that the hiring of the postdoc role is currently on pause.

This paper is now published. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Working with an interdisciplinary team, we have developed a website to communicate how the White House's proposed cuts to health research would cause losses of $16B and 68,500 jobs. Find out how your community may be impacted. Explore more at SCIMaP: scienceimpacts.org a 🧵

I'm hiring a new lab manager! Deadline to apply is April 1st. More details here: www.chicagobooth.edu/-/media/facu... I formed some of my deepest and most impactful partnerships as a lab manager, and it's a position that I highly value. If you are a PI, please circulate to possible applicants!

Wyd at 8AM this Saturday? If at #SPSP2025 in Denver, and willing to tolerate such an aggressive time slot, please join us for our symposium on High-Dimensional Social Cognition, featuring @gandalfnicolas.bsky.social , @chujunlin.bsky.social, @joshcjackson.bsky.social, and myself

This was a really interesting project to be part of, and cool use of causal methods to study a big societal question. I recommend reading the preprint, and looking at our last theoretical paper (linked here) that generated the predictions tested in this paper.

My first PhD project is out there. Thank you to my advisor @psmaldino.bsky.social and to mentor, co-author and friend @babeheim.bsky.social for encouraging and helping build this exciting and insightful collaboration. Onwards!

How do job seekers react when orgs quantify their diversity commitments? In a 🚨new paper🚨 with @ikesilver.bsky.social & Edward Chang, we explore competing predictions about how women and racial minorities react to measurable goals vs. vague, values-focused commitments.

Applications open for SFI’s Summer 2025 residential Education programs in Santa Fe! santafe.edu/education Details below. In this photo, SFI Professor Sid Redner meets with summer students at the SFI Cowan Campus (image: Doug Merriam)

I am delighted to share our latest piece of research: ‘A global cross-cultural analysis of string figures reveals evidence of deep transmission and innovation’. This was long in the works and is by far the largest project I’ve led to date. A thread: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

🚨A four-year making @naturehumbehav.bsky.social with @UmitKeles @markthornton.bsky.social @Ralph Adolphs Across large sets of mental states, traits, situations, faces, & participants in five continents🌎 face impressions shape mental state attributions in various situations doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Horrified at the government cuts to basic research funding in NZ. No more funding for humanities and social sciences. 50% focused on economic outcomes. business.scoop.co.nz/2024/12/04/m...

Announcement! The next @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social CES conference will be at UM6P in Rabat, Morocco, provisional dates 11-13th May 2026! Hosted by Mathieu Charbonneau, @sarahalami.bsky.social, @zhgarfield.com & @edseabright.bsky.social. Save the dates! culturalevolutionsociety.org/news-and-eve...

I worked on this project during my undergrad at UNC, and seeing it come to life as a preprint feels surreal. I feel incredibly proud to have contributed to such a remarkable project. Check it out and let us know your thoughts!

New preprint on prejudice and state centralization: osf.io/preprints/ps... Our team of historians, psychologists, and anthropologists analyzed 90 historical societies and Chinese records from 206 BCE - 1911 CE In both studies, we find a link btw group prejudice and historical state centralization

📢 The Historical Psychology Pre-conference at @spspnews.bsky.social is accepting submissions. 📢 Check out our fantastic lineup of speakers ⬇️ Please submit posters/talks, and please share widely!

Abstract submission deadline is October 17th at 11:59pm PT -- consider submitting data blitz or poster applications! spsp.org/events/annua...

Thanks to all who signed up so far! We are going through emails over next few days to finalize participation (there are currently some open slots to sign up). I know many were sad about the U.S. citizen eligibility requirement, but we hope to expand recruitment in the future!

Want to get paid ($40)💰 for browsing Bluesky as you normally would? Explore new feeds designed by a research team at Northwestern University and report back on your experiences. Help shape the future of social media ranking algorithms 👀 🔗 Sign Up: tinyurl.com/nufeedstudy 💌 FAQ: bit.ly/bluesky-faq

Just launched the new website for the Chicago Culture Lab! www.chicagoculturelab.com Summarizes the people, topics, and news involving our cross-department group at UChicago, led by me, Shige Oishi, and Thomas Talhelm. Please share with folks interested in culture!

Over time, people's values are diverging not only within countries but also between countries. Countries with higher GDP are diverging from other countries even more. Globalism does not mean everyone gets the same values. From @joshcjackson.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... #psychsky

Now out in @PNASNews - We identify organizational celebrations of history as a social identity threat for Black Americans tinyurl.com/historythreat

Our paper "Worldwide Divergence of Values" has been published today. We find that values have diverged between countries over the last 40 years. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Co-authored with Dan Medvedev

We (w/ Josh Jackson) are very excited to announce the Special Issue “Historical Psychology” to be published at CRESP. Send your papers our way! Deadline: 9/1/24

Announcing a special issue on "Historical Psychology"at Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology Co-organized by me and @mohammadatari.bsky.social! Submit your papers to us by September 1st!

In our new Psych Science article (led by @marahalkire.bsky.social & Chad MIller w/ Sam Perry & Clara Wilkins), we show that this type of rhetoric, which highlights the perception of Christians being under threat, can serve as an effective racial dog whistle. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...