Fast and slow insight. New paper with @jeremiebeucler.bsky.social showing that good convergent thinking is driven by sound intuitions. Modelling work links this to a denser semantic memory structure among good intuitors.

Interesting megastudy on the (in)effectiveness of climate messaging: tiny effects on attitudes, no effects on donation www.nature.com/articles/s41... "Persuasiveness varied little across party lines", another win for Persuasion in Parallel @aecoppock.bsky.social

The Kinsley gaffe to end all Kinsley gaffes

This week, we talk to Léo Fetuchi about the moralization of self-control and the lack thereof. youtu.be/duLUU9e0i0k podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e... www.podbean.com/eas/pb-99f5i...

🚨Excited to share our new paper published in PNAS (joint with @yamilrvelez.bsky.social and Don Green)! AI can enhance political knowledge and provide balanced information about politics with proper guardrails and vetted sources (e.g., party platforms). www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

"misinformation is widespread in biological systems spanning levels of organization, and [...] is probably an inevitable property that inherits from fundamental constraints on biological communication systems, rather than a pathology" royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article...

Why do humans have linguistic intuition? And why should you care? A short thread about my new paper in @cadlin.bsky.social This work has the most original insight I've ever had, a genuinely new idea about the nature of language cadernos.abralin.org/index.php/ca... 1/20

Woah. Argentina's 1990s preschool expansion program appears to have been a smashing success. The program increased high school completion by a whole 11.9 percentage points. The authors estimate that for every $1 spent, the preschool expansion generated about $11 in benefits.

Excellent job opportunity: Full professorship in Digital Society and Democracy @ddc-sdu.bsky.social and @d-ias.bsky.social. Top conditions, environment & colleagues. Candidates welcome across places and disciplines. 🗓️ DL: March 15, 2026 fa-eosd-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

🌟 JOB ALERT! 🌟 I’m hiring 1 postdoc for my ERC project ECONENGAGE (@ Gothenburg 🇸🇪)! Starting ca. Aug '26! Congenial colleagues + int'l & supportive environment. 💸 for conferences + workshops! Lots of professional networking opportunities with scholars! Deadline Jan 7th. Apply! (see more below 🧵)

The "smartphones/social media" discourse suffers from some amazing historical amnesia. There was no 2008 financial crisis and no global pandemic starting in 2020, it's all SCREENS SCREENS SCREENS. Major world events? Just the backdrop against which SCREENS happened.

New paper out in @science.org! We unveil the online manipulation market with the Cambridge Online Trust & Safety Index (COTSI). We show in real time the cost of purchasing fake accounts across every social platform around the world - so they can be held accountable www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New! We worked with the Public Interest Research Group to test a bunch of LLM-driven toys ahead of the Christmas. That sexual talking teddy bear wasn't a one-off; it turns out disturbing behavior is deeply built into these toys across the board.

It's out!! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... Big thank you to my coauthors @small-schulz.bsky.social and @lorenzspreen.bsky.social, and to all participants who discussed 20 political issues over 4 weeks in 6 subreddit, 3 experimental conditions and let us observe.

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

The Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton invites applications for a Postdoctoral Fellow to work with an interdisciplinary team (me, @bstewart.bsky.social, and @manoelhortaribeiro.bsky.social). Link: puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app... Please apply by THIS SUNDAY, Dec. 14!

This week, we talk to @hugoreasoning.bsky.social about all things "epistemic". Are we gullible and prone to misinformation? Are we vigilant in favor of our interests? Enjoy the wide-ranging conversation! www.podbean.com/eas/pb-wphps... podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e... youtu.be/nf42LNg6y-A

🚨 3-Year Postdoc in Political Science at Aarhus University 🚨 I’m seeking to recruit a postdoc for my @erc.europa.eu research project 𝑬𝑸𝑼𝑰𝑳𝑰𝑩𝑹𝑰𝑼𝑴 on state-citizen interactions. Link and more information in second post. Position Start: Fall 2026 Application Deadline: ‼️ February 5, 2026, 23:59 CET ‼️

Our new study provides rare causal evidence about NYC’s speed camera program. We find large reductions in collisions (30%) and injuries (16%) near intersections with cameras. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... @astagoff.bsky.social ky.social @brendenbeck.bsky.social nbeck.bsky.social 🧪

Paper out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com: 1) those groups (women, African Americans, lower SES, rural) that are underrepresented in science have been less trusting of science. 2) If you improve representation in science, you improve trust among those groups. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Spread the word: I'm looking to hire a postdoc to explore the concept of attention (as studied in psych/neuro, not the transformer mechanism) in large Vision-Language Models. More details here: lindsay-lab.github.io/2025/12/08/p... #MLSky #neurojobs #compneuro

Trump's new National Security Strategy: what if groypers cosplayed George Kennan? www.programmablemutter.com/p/america-ha...

📣 One week left to apply to our Toulouse Summer School in Quantitative Social Sciences! We have an exciting program for this year: www.tse-fr.eu/sites/defaul... 🗓️ May 26 to June 19, 2026 📍 Toulouse Application deadline: December 15 Apply here: www.tse-fr.eu/toulouse-sum... @tse-fr.eu @iast.fr

If you read one piece on Trump’s pernicious new National Security Strategy, read this by @himself.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/programm...

"Replication rates are higher than experts predicted and p-hacking is much less common than we expected!" replications.clearerthinking.org/three-surpri...

Want to make nice graphs with me, starting next year? I'm hiring for a position at the University of Witten/Herdecke. uni-wh.softgarden.io/job/61280592...

"The Credibility Revolution in Political Science" osf.io/preprints/so...

Well this is exciting! The Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University (@jhu.edu) invites applications for a full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty member in Cognitive Psychology, in any area and at any rank! Application + more info: apply.interfolio.com/178146

Has this been posted yet

So, is "When Prophesy Fails"—the foundation of cognitive dissonance theory—debunked? Unclear. The article making this claim is... odd. It describes Festinger and Schachter as leftwing radicals, critiques the political slant of their funding, generally refers to their work as failed... 1/n

CogSci in Aarhus is hiring, open rank (assi, asso or full prof). We want somebody working on and teaching computational modelling of cognitive processes and/or social processes. Students are amazing, work/life balance very satisfactory, and colleagues are nice! international.au.dk/about/profil...

🚨Friends, we’re happy to share that our book is available for pre-order! 🎉 We aimed to cover all the foundations of the topic in an accessible manner for a large audience. It could help set up a bachelor-level curriculum on the topic. Pre-orders are very key for the fate of books: shorturl.at/Dxbif

Happy to share our latest study published in PNAS. Using data from 274,316 French students, we find that lower-SES students are less likely to wait for better university offers, even when waiting would lead to more prestigious or better-fit programs. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Thrilled to teach again this year, on the evolution of social cognition, at the Toulouse Summer School in Quantitative Social Sciences! Apply before December 15th 👇 Brochure: lnkd.in/e_R7cQTP Application: lnkd.in/eey-fEJ

As @seanjwestwood.bsky.social's terrifying new PNAS article demonstrates, LLMs can now pass almost every attention check, mirror personas, stay consistent across pages, and systematically bias responses in the aggregate. So here’s a different angle: verify physical presence, not text.

Postdoc call‼️ I am opening a call for a postdoctoral position within my ERC project CONSENT. Come to Madrid to be part of my research team and more broadly of the @ipp-csic.bsky.social community. Application deadline: December 10th. Call details: tinyurl.com/yfu83p9m

Origins of language, one of humanity’s most distinctive traits, may be best explained as a unique convergence of multiple capacities each with its own evolutionary history, involving intertwined roles of biology & culture. This framing can expand research horizons. A 🧵 on our @science.org paper.🧪1/n

This is such a cool study. A parasitic ant queen tricks worker ants into murdering their own queen, so the parasite can take over the colony.

Postdoc position in individual-level incentives, social learning, and payoff-biased imitation shape group-level accuracy in complex prediction and decision-making tasks in Konstanz files.newsletter2go.com/l3slzozn/s_i...

The deadline has been extended - there is still time to get your abstracts in to join us in Morocco!

I'm recruiting a grad student! My lab at NYU (psych dept) studies the computational basis of moral cognition and aims to build AI systems that are aligned with human values. Now admitting a PhD student for Fall 2026. Apps due 12/1. sites.google.com/corp/site/sy...

imagine being hit on by gross old Larry Summers when you just wanted professional advice and then finding out he was getting advice on how to hit on you from Jeffrey fucking Epstein one of the grossest things I’ve ever read

🎉 New preprint: Bayesian Competence Inference guides Knowledge Attribution and Information search If someone knows that Venus is the only planet in the Solar System that rotates clockwise, will they also know what Earth’s only natural satellite is? What about which planets have no moons at all?

Right now, Karoline Leavitt is being coached on how to say “ephebophilia” in the least creepy way possible.

Two postdoctoral opportunities in evolutionary anthropology at Duke University! The Pontzer Lab is hiring for projects on human ecology, energetics, and aging & health. More info: www.hbes.com/two-postdoct...

Three preregistered experiments with prolific participants (N = 2,254) found no evidence for experimenter demand effects osf.io/preprints/ps...

Opening for a tenure-track assistant professor in the history of science, with a preferred focus on water issues: 👇 #HistSTM

Rarement, un livre m'a autant stimulé intellectuellement ! "Pas né de la dernière pluie", d'Hugo Mercier démonte l'idée reçue que les gens seraient majoritairement stupides et les foules crédules. J'extrais ici trois arguments très pertinents pour défendre son hypothèse. ⤵️