People sometimes face a conflict between intuition (system 1) and reasoning (system 2) In cases like these, which will be seen as the person’s true self?

💖This paper has been ~11 years in the making - and probably my favorite project of all time. Thrilled to see it in @pnas.org! I'm so lucky that Zach decided to do a second PhD and join my lab @psychillinois.bsky.social back in 2014 - a fabulous scientist & human being! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The fabulous @jrabanos.bsky.social and @BojanSpaic discussed experimental jurisprudence with me in their awesome podcast! If you want to know why experimental jurisprudence is not like theoretical physics, or what does lying and reasonableness have in common, check it out!

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

Ep. #10 of Heavily Accented Philosophy of Law Podcast is here! In this episode, we delve with Iza Skoczeń (@izaskoczen.bsky.social - Jagiellonian Centre for Law, Language and Philosophy) into the topic of experimental jurisprudence. Listen to it here 👇 creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...

New paper with @jowylie.bsky.social and @anagantman.bsky.social on art, morality, and the true self, forthcoming in Cognition! #philsky #psysky

Does ‘discrimination’ inherently imply unfairness, hence making it an evaluative (rather than a descriptive) term? Research by Willemsen et al concludes it is a “thick concept” that fundamentally blends descriptive and evaluative content: buff.ly/DUysv3c HT @xphilosopher.bsky.social

Experimental philosophy paper by Pascale Willemsen et al. on on what it means for something to be "discrimination" The studies focus specifically on discrimination -- but I think they also showing something more general about how thick concepts work philpapers.org/archive/WILD...

What People Think Self-Deception Is and Why Philosophers Should Care A summary of our x-phi paper (w/ @ivarr.bsky.social ) in the terrific Imperfect Cognitions blog. 🙌

Final call for global collaborators on this replication collaboration on @bioxphi studies — moral psychologists and x-phi researchers wanted! especially based in SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE! global-bioXphi | moral science lab www.mscilab.com/globalbioxphi/

🚨Publication Alert🚨 “Are the concepts of truth and lying shared across cultures?” 5 years in the making ~ 5000 participants 10 countries 6 languages Forthcoming in American Psychologist With @louisareins.bsky.social, . Mizumoto, A. Erut, Q. Li, and S. Orr. Short thread and preprint below

XPrag Meets X-Phi An online event bringing together two research communities: experimental pragmatics and experimental philosophy sites.google.com/view/xprag-w...

atest papers: Somogy Varga, Andrew J. Latham & Edouard Machery investigate the influence of evaluative judgments, specifically regarding an individual’s moral character, on judgments of health and disease in this #openaccess paper

Here is a ‘blame-praise curve’ for the percentage of household chores done by husbands People think husbands are blameworthy if they do 20%, but praiseworthy if they do 40% (!) Perceived average is above 40%, so people think below average is still praiseworthy [Thread]

Does this book offer groundbreaking research? No. A life-changing self-help plan? No. A workable taxonomy of spiritual experience? Still no. The most comprehensive review of the state of the science so far? Quite possibly... If interested, pre-order paperback at reduced price!

Professors from my generation sometimes complain that younger researchers don’t engage enough with earlier work (e.g., work from the late 20th century) In my view, this is *not* the problem we should be focusing on [Thread]

Ordinary folks often have trouble grasping the technical concept of doing something "knowingly," as used in the criminal law What would make people understand it? Giving them a definition? No! These beautiful studies Christian Mott and Larisa Heiphetz shows that it is something else entirely...

Recent studies suggest that manipulating "growth mindset" might not improve students' academic performance This new research suggests that it has a different effect. Growth mindset makes people more inclined to *blame* students for their failures escholarship.org/content/qt4k...

Research into intuitions around philosophical thought experiments often shows strong intuitions on either side. Is this indicative of a division in the population? No, argues @xphilisopher—people have *conflicting* intuitions: buff.ly/DSh8gx2

I realize that this may be a true post-tenure post™, but it really seems settled now that people think empirical research can be valuable and important to draw on in philosophy. 🧵 It was a weird time in the earlier 2000s... /1

🚨 Global BioXPhi Research Initiative 🚨 Assessing Replicability and Cross-Cultural Generalisability of Experimental Philosophical Bioethics (@bioxphi) studies! Exciting initiative led by Ivar Hannikainen (@moralsciencelab) and @briandavidearp (@NUS_CBmE) www.mscilab.com/globalbioxphi/

🧵1/ 🚨 New article out! How robust is the psychology of social class? Together with Nicolas Sommet and ‪@frederiqueautin.bsky.social‬, we conducted large-scale replications of 35 hypotheses across four countries. Published in Nature Human Behaviour: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I loved this interview about shamanism with @manvir.bsky.social It offers *such* a radically different perspective on why we see shamans all over the world entering altered states of consciousness that one might call "trance" youtu.be/Ijf8cNBgztA @thedissenteryt.bsky.social

Attention philosophers, x-philosophers and moral psychologists - I'm hiring! Two, 3-year research fellowships on an interdisciplinary project in the Philosophical Moral Psychology Lab at the Uehiro Institute, Oxford. Pass it on! For more info and to apply: tinyurl.com/mrwwuyaw

Interesting new paper by @protzko.bsky.social argues for the exact opposite of the view I’ve defended about what experimental philosophy shows about people’s philosophical intuitions The key question: How do make sense of the variance in responses on our studies? osf.io/preprints/ps...

People normally think that certain things should not be for sale (e.g., organs) But what happens when people consider the principled arguments economists have given for the view that these things *should* be for sale? link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Our new paper at the intersection of causal cognition and linguistics Take a sentence of the form “[AGENT] caused [OUTCOME]” Our studies suggest: Some surprising effects in intuitions about these sentences can be explained using theories from linguistics about the “agent role”

There’s something funny about saying that someone caused something to happen when they didn’t act intentionally — as if that phrasing assigns unintended agency to them. Why is that? In this new paper below, we take a linguistic approach to answering this question. Lots of interesting data here!

I just posted a new pre-print where I argue that dual character concepts are something new and interesting in legal philosophy and beyond and that they can't be reduced to ambiguity, prototypes, or metalinguistic negotiations. Comments are very welcome! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Intriguing experimental philosophy study on the ordinary concept of suicide If you ask another agent to kill you and they comply, are you thereby committing suicide? @ivarsneiders.bsky.social scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=e...

A popular and very old argument for the value of philosophy claims that studying philosophy cultivates important intellectual abilities and dispositions. But empirical evidence for that claim has been hard to come by. Until now! 1/4

If you have a pain in your foot, is the pain something in your mind? Or something in your foot? Experiments from Emma Borg and colleagues indicate: People can see it either way - either as something in your mind or as something in the world Do any other concepts work in that same way?

Surprising new result: Participants with vmPFC lesions *do not* show the usual effect where moral judgments impact intuitions about whether a behavior was performed intentionally

Yale Philosophy offers a course on “Formal Philosophical Methods” — a broad introduction to probability, logic, formal semantics, etc. Instructor Calum McNamara has now made all materials for the course (78 pages) freely available static1.squarespace.com/static/6255f...

New studies on the ordinary concept of disease (from Varga, Latham & @edouardmachery.bsky.social) The surprising result: People are more inclined to think that what you have counts as “disease” if you are a morally bad person philpapers.org/archive/VART...

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

Our new developmental psych paper: People can think in a purely statistical way (e,g., about the statistical average)…. but sometimes they instead mix together the statistical with the prescriptive (e.g., a mix of the average and the ideal) Which of these comes first in development?

People differ in their capacity for visual imagery This new study finds that this individual difference predicts people’s philosophical intuitions (!). For example, people with a lower capacity for visual imagery have different intuitions about free will

Experimental Jurisprudence (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) plato.stanford.edu/entries/expe...

Some researchers, including some I very much respect, think that we need to stop pussyfooting around and start being more brutal in our way of talking about bad work in our field I disagree. When you are refuting someone’s work, I think it’s important not to be a dick about it

"We do not expect serious work in the philosophy of physics from students who have never studied physics – but there is not even a hint of a suggestion that courses in sociology and psychology should be a prerequisite for graduate work in moral philosophy." - Alasdair MacIntyre

Researchers used to talk about priming effects and framing effects as two pieces of evidence for the same larger claim: that people’s judgments are easily pushed around With the spectacular collapse of priming research, perhaps we should rethink the core lesson of framing xphi.net/2025/05/23/p...

Breaking news: There will soon be a specialist journal devoted to the interdisciplinary field of EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPHY This will be enormously valuable to the field

The journal Religious Studies has a new special issue on “experimental philosophy of religion” Broadly speaking, this emerging field aims to bring together cognitive science of religion (CSR) and philosophy of religion www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

What makes people feel entitled to rewards—the effort they put into their work or the outcomes they achieve? Out now in PNAS; with Jin Kim and Jared Wong: Achievement. Effort seems to matter very little (if at all). www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

This is a job in political theory/philosophy that is specifically for someone interested in empirical work. Looks perfect for folks doing experimental philosophy

The dataset of this survey (data anonymised) is open and available to anyone. Please use it! Federico and I conceived of it and carried it out in 2021 while at @crasshlive.bsky.social. Part of Expertise Under Pressure project. Many UK colleagues, namely 1188, completed it. Thank you! #openscience

If you just ask people whether there can be free will in a deterministic universe, they say No Some of my fellow experimental philosophers have argued that this response is misleading In this blog post, I argue: This response should be taken very much at face value xphi.net/2025/05/02/d...

Is anyone else going to the 5th European Experimental Philosophy Conference this year in Norwich? x-phi.uea.ac.uk/EuroX-Phi202...