As we head into break, I've been thrilled to welcome two of my favorite colleagues to my senior seminar on AI empathy. On Friday @lasanaharris.bsky.social Zoomed in from London to talk about agency & AI. I've known Lasana since rotating through his lab at Duke, we've talked on empathy for decades.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has chosen four areas of New York City to kick-start his push to provide free child care for 2-year-olds — an early step in what is sure to be a long road to fulfilling his promise to create a universal child care system.

My group is hiring a full time research coordinator to work with our collaborators in Houston on understanding speech and language development in children with epilepsy. Great for folks looking to get direct experience with clinical/translational research. Please repost! jobs.bcm.edu/job/Research...

🚨 Job alert! 🚨 We are looking for a PhD candidate for my Vidi project on factual belief polarization and its attitudinal consequences. The position will be at the Department of Political Science of Radboud University (Netherlands). Check out the full job profile below! www.ru.nl/en/working-a...

The Cornell R User Group is meeting today (3/3) at 4pm in 102 Mann Library and on Zoom. All are welcome! @cornelluniversity.bsky.social @cornellgrad.bsky.social

Our new short piece in TiCS on intuitive theories of truth: how people judge whether statements could be true, whether statements are true, and whether to assert them as true. A great collab with @keremoktar.bsky.social @ihandleyminer.bsky.social @kevinzollman.com @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social

At least 115 people, most of them likely children, were killed in a strike on a girls’ elementary school in Iran on Saturday, health officials and state media said. It was not immediately clear which country hit the school. Our reporters are trying to confirm details of the attack. trib.al/HxXybV9

And, quick plug for Elon University undergraduate student Dani Rudd’s poster on a theoretical approach to thinking about authenticity in human-AI relations. This is Dani’s first #SPSP2026. She was in my Careers in Psychology class last Fall and is looking at PhD programs and lab manager positions!

If you're at #SPSP2026, come check out what folks in my lab are up to!

We’re all set up at #SPSP2026 Annual Convention. Booth is built, goodies are being unpacked, and our team is excited to meet you. If you’re here, come by the Verasight booth #8. Thanks @spspnews.bsky.social#SPSP2026#8or the opportunity to connect with psychologists and scholars from around the world.

🚨🚨 My lab is hiring a Postdoc! 🚨🚨 Postdoc opening in my lab at Harvard Psych (start: Summer/Fall 2026). We study identity, group dynamics, language, & politics. Rolling review begins 3/14 Apply: academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15806 Please repost + tag folks who might be a good fit! 👇

Come join our academic family!

We've been getting a lot of submissions by folks excited by juries resisting the federal government, and monitor much bemoaning by MAGA folks that this constitutes jury nullification, but the vast majority of such cases are being thrown out by juries over weak evidence or lies.

Bots have made their way to Prolific experiments. Our lab has stopped online testing of adults entirely now for this reason - we want to know if what we study is real. Probably data collected 2-3 years ago are ok, but moving forward we just can't know. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

BREAKING: The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide. This is a victory for academic freedom and education equity.

Are you a junior faculty member interested in spending 2-4 weeks at Princeton Psych? Consider applying for our Microsabbatical program! It’s a fully funded visit for professional development and creating long-term collaborations. psych.princeton.edu/diversity/mi...

Our next Consortium workshop will be this Thursday at 12:30pmEST, with @zberry.bsky.social on "Demographically Diverse Teams are Perceived as Less Corruptible”. It will be on Zoom. Check out even if you haven't attended a Consortium workshop before! events.la.psu.edu/event/zachar...

SPSP is pleased to launch a new series that recognizes scholars for their dedication to their science as well as evidence-based policy. We hope their stories inspire other psychologists to explore advocacy in the future! Read their stories: https://ow.ly/z8aG50YcwsA

After a Border Patrol agent shot a Chicago woman five times in October, Gregory Bovino reached out to the agent via email to offer his praise, newly released evidence shows.

Iranian authorities have sentenced the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi to a second prison sentence even before she had completed her last jail term, her family and lawyers said on Sunday.

The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy. It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.

The parents of Alex Pretti, who was killed by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday, joined a chorus of criticism of the Trump administration over its response to the shooting. The family said in a statement that they were heartbroken, but also “very angry.”

Does anyone else get the sense that Stephen Miller grew up playing Civilization and took it too seriously?

I'm thrilled to share news about this new EMP Lab pre-print on empathic AI--led by my student @jdweng.bsky.social & with the amazing @mgreinecke.bsky.social. We lean into meta-science & philosophy of science to consider what empathic AI means for *empathy* as a construct, now & into the future. 1/n

Many “savvy” folks argue protests can’t work. Evidence suggests otherwise. “Muslim ban set off a fury of protests across US, garnering tremendous media attention and discussion… Portraying ‘Ban’ at odds with inclusive elements of American identity prompted some citizens to shift their attitudes…”

We're hiring! The Computational Clinical Science Lab @ Yale is seeking a full-time lab manager/research coordinator to start in early summer 2026. For more information about the position and to apply: forms.gle/LtQwVgPUfaGk... Please share widely & consider applying!

So a CBS Evening News reporter actually did a pretty solid breakdown of the ICE murder video, talking to a former agent who details all the ways Ross messed up. And yet: It didn’t air on the actual show tonight. CBS did post it to YouTube—and it has nearly 800k views already youtu.be/6ywLEESFDu0?...

New paper from the IMC lab! I am very excited about this one. For years, I have been arguing that one of the main claims of the so-called "simulation heuristic" is likely not true for episodic counterfactual thinking, namely that the harder it is to mentally simulate it, the less plausible (1/n)

The Polymarket bettor, the identity of whom is unknown, bet $30,000 on the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro less than a day before he was abducted by U.S. forces.

Nvidia, the maker of A.I. chips and the world’s most valuable public company, agreed to license the technology of the chip start-up Groq and hire its top executives.

🔭 Did you miss out on the inaugural Curiosity, Information-Seeking, & Exploration conference? Videos of our entire 2-day program are now available: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... #CISE2025 @socforneuroecon.bsky.social @drjocutler.bsky.social

Reminder that award nominations are due in two days!

🚨 New in Nature+Science!🚨 AI chatbots can shift voter attitudes on candidates & policies, often by 10+pp 🔹Exps in US Canada Poland & UK 🔹More “facts”→more persuasion (not psych tricks) 🔹Increasing persuasiveness reduces "fact" accuracy 🔹Right-leaning bots=more inaccurate

China closed off Japanese seafood imports after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of Japan declared strong support for Taiwan. Suddenly, sushi is everywhere on Taiwanese social media.

🚨🚨🚨 Our 52nd Annual Meeting will be held from June 18–20, 2026 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, with a pre-conference on Mental Control and Agency held at JHU on June 17 🚨🚨🚨 We are currently inviting submissions of papers (talks and posters)!

New perspective paper (w/ @sedaakbiyik.bsky.social, Joseph Outa, & @minjaek.bsky.social ) in @natrevpsychol.nature.com ⚽💭🧠👶 : www.nature.com/articles/s44...

The billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott is funneling tens of millions of dollars into tribal higher education, months after the Trump administration sought to cut one of the system’s most essential funding sources.

POSTDOC POSITION in social psychology at Cornell @cornellpsych.bsky.social! We will begin reviewing apps Dec 1st. Please repost! academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31185 @spspnews.bsky.social @spspsc.bsky.social @aplssc.bsky.social @spssi.bsky.social @psychscience.bsky.social

The Department of Homeland Security has purchased two Gulfstream private jets for Kristi Noem, the secretary, and other top department officials at a cost of $172 million, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

I wrote a short commentary on Anil Seth's wonderful forthcoming paper in BBS. It is largely inspired by the work of Andy Clark, although some ideas I owe to Ned Block and Dan Dennett (probably not the same ideas!). I highly recommend Anil's paper to anyone interested in consciousness [1/2]

Are you a scientist, journalist, or civil society researcher studying New York State's distraction-free school policy, the one that bans internet-enabled devices in schools from bell to bell? If so, I want to hear from you, as I refine a project to archive & classify published school policies.

Public displays of virtue like donating or speaking up can set norms, but they’re often met with skepticism (“virtue discounting”). Our new paper asks: do people expect their own public virtue to be judged differently than others’ similar actions? bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Thanks to our amazing moderators working on this 24/7, we are now 50% done with the PsyArXiv backlog! 🎉 For all our PsyArXiv users, thank you for your patience. If you would like to help us, here are some tips to help your next preprint sail through moderation: #PsychSciSky

This paper holds a special place in my heart. I was working on an earlier draft (almost 3 years ago!) when my wife went into labor with my son. We still call him Bouba, although lately he has been more of a Kiki ;)

👋 Good evening, folks! We want to celebrate your latest achievements across our social media channels. Do you have a new project, article, or professional update you're excited about? DM us here or email a link to [email protected], and we'd love to share your news!

🚨We're hiring! The Mind & Morality Lab is seeking a Lab Manager to start this September. Excited about research on social cognitive development? Apply here: forms.gle/4rKXD2x1vmkD.... Learn more about us: sites.brown.edu/mindmorality.... ⏳ We’re reviewing applications on a rolling basis—apply early!

excited to share our june newsletter, with guest editor @z-fergu.bsky.social‬ ! check it out here: open.substack.com/pub/marginal...

How long SHOULD we take to make a decision? At some point the costs of deliberation outweigh the benefits - but that’s NOT how we decide. Instead we try to get as much info as possible. And the more we care about information, the faster we learn, which pays off. Javier Masis. #SSM2025 #APS2025

super excited that the first paper from my PhD is now out! we develop a "philosophical toolkit" for computational cognitive modeling & use it to conceptually re-analyze a long-standing debate about evidence accumulation models of decision making 🧠📈 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....