Ma discussion avec le grand Peter Barrett 🇬🇧 🇫🇷 sur la polarisation politique et comment rendre nos discussions politiques plus productives est maintenant disponible en podcast sur son Substack, "Debatology": debatology.substack.com/p/comment-pa...

"The more fundamental reason social media features a vast amount of unsober, unreflective, uninformative, and injudicious content is that it gives a platform to large numbers of shockingly unsober, unreflective, uninformed,

🔥 All political movements, left and right, engage in speech repression when it favours their interests and worldviews, or offers status-enhancement opportunities. Even those claiming to be “pro-freedom”. The default is a state of *moral hypocrisy*.

Happy ERC grants submission day to all those who are going through it 😀🫶🏻

✨ Voici les points clés des présentations : 💡 @a-marie-sci.bsky.social montre que dire “moraliser la rationalité” est associé au partage de fake news hostiles. À l’inverse, l’humilité intellectuelle protège contre ce phénomène.

Deeyah Khan just released on YouTube her magnificent documentary on the US "neonazis" (Meeting the enemy, 2017). It is one of the most moving and important documents there is out there about political hatred and how to reduce it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvt5...

The shooting of Charlie Kirk is a tragic and appalling event. To be clear: I emphatically do *not* support the socially conservative and MAGA-enthusiastic version of America he advocated for. apnews.com/live/utah-va...

English translation of my essay expressing skepticism of the notion of a "post truth" era--from a cognitive perspective. Critical comments welcome.

Why is it taboo to publicly express discriminatory or "dangerous" statements? A "common knowledge" approach. New post on substack, open access: antoinemariesci.substack.com/p/why-is-it-...

*Why is it taboo to publicly express discriminatory or "dangerous" statements? A "common knowledge" approach.* In all human societies, there exist "taboo" statements and topics in the sense that their public expression causes fear or is strongly morally disapproved of.

If jihadism is primarily a set of mentally invasive beliefs, then killing the most devoted jihadis in the Gaza strip can't be enough. The invasive beliefs will colonise future minds. To reduce the beliefs' spread, *do not* give valid reasons to Palestinians to hate Israel.

While it was primarily a left-wing thing (2015-21), canceling attempts are now dominated by the right in U.S. academia: open.substack.com/pub/heterodo...

I seem to see what I’d like to call the “jihadism-in-Gaza” fallacy in how some informed people discuss the conflict. What do you think?

New open access paper in the Journal of Computational Social Science with mathematicians Louis Abraham and Charles Arnal: "Prompt Selection Matters: Enhancing Text Annotations for Social Sciences with Large Language Models" doi.org/10.1007/s420...

Instead of spending so much energy denying the existence of stable psychological diffces between men and women, progressive activists should work to make "female" qualities and jobs be perceived as more noble & socially useful. A viable 'social construction' work.

🔥New Open access paper in @pnasnexus.org with @m-b-petersen.bsky.social 🔥 "Motivations to connect with like-minded audiences increase partisan sharing on social media" academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Sam Harris, I like you, but you wonder why Israel has lost the moral ground in the eyes of most of the world with Gaza? Two hours of show and 0 mention of the 40'000 dead. Appalling ingroup bias. You've got your answer. open.spotify.com/episode/7roi...

🔥Proud to be one of 15 recipients of a two-years grant by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche @agencerecherche.bsky.social 🔬🇫🇷 It's a start-up grant given by the French state to support young international scholars in their pursuit of European ERC Starting grants, the holy grail in public research 😵‍💫

🔥New preprint on why political activists sometimes try to censor free speech🔥 “Speech repression and threat narratives in politics: social goals and cognitive foundations” osf.io/preprints/os...

I understand academics' willingness to penalize Musk, but leaving X/Twitter suppressed many smart info sources from the network, giving far right a monopoly, and likely made no difference for Musks' profit. Also, Bluesky sucks.

💡Nouvel article dans Analyse Opinion Critique dans lequel je propose une analyse assez... critique de l'idée que nous serions parvenus à une époque de "post-vérité" Open access: drive.google.com/file/d/1Xaz3... AOC: aoc.media/analyse/2025...

Currently reading History of free speech by @mchangama.bsky.social Speech repression is practiced by *all* political groups, right and left, when it favors their interests. It aims to preserve people’s commitment to moral causes, and signal devotion to political camps.

Happy to have assisted data scientists Louis Abraham and Charles Arnal on this working paper: "Prompt Selection Matters: Enhancing Text Annotations for Social Sciences with Large Language Models" arxiv.org/abs/2407.10645

🔥Ma tribune dans @lexpress.bsky.social : de Musk a l’Abbé Pierre en passant par les dictateurs africains et communistes, lorsque des figures jouissent d’un prestige moral considérable, la vigilance critique de leurs audiences tend à décliner, facilitant l’abus de pouvoir... 😤

Where do moralizing religions come from? Useless cognitive by-products?Cultural group selection for complex societies? Our Psych Review paper argues: neither. Let’s rethink their cognitive & evolutionary origins🧵 w/ @manvir.bsky.social @nbaumard @jbaptistandre.bsky.social doi.org/10.1037/rev0...

The cancel culture sweeping across academia around 2015-23 was truly shameful and caused US academia to loose much of its standing in liberal Europeans’ eyes. Now there’s an even more appalling reactionary revolution blowing.

🚨 New working paper on people's judgments of environmental policies with @hugo_trad and @stricklandbrent 🚨 "Laypeople Have Difficulty Processing Efficiency When Assessing Environmental Policies" osf.io/preprints/os...

Conservative budget wonks (Manhattan Instiutte, Tax Foundation) confirming that this is a consittutional crisis. Not liberal hysteria. Happening right now.

Demain, Trump redevient malheureusement président des Etats-Unis. Lors de son premier mandat est monté en puissance le terme de « post-vérité », theconversation.com/sommes-nous-...

🥳 My first publication ever in Personality and Individual Difference, with @edgardubourg.bsky.social and @hugoreasoning.bsky.social. Insight can arise from a wide range of experiences, from making groundbreaking discoveries to reading a whodunit. Are some people more interested in this feeling?

Fabrice Arfi et le procès Sarkozy : “La corruption n’est pas un rhume de la démocratie, c’est un cancer” www.telerama.fr/cinema/le-jo...

Honoré de faire partie des 14 lauréats du prix de la Fondation pour les sciences sociales 2025 🎆 Thème: “Vérité et croyances au 21e siècle” 😳🤥🤫🫣 www.fondation-sciences-sociales.org/decouvrez-la...

For the first time in history, each governing party in developed countries with elections saw a decline in vote share. Inflation is a big factor, but I wonder if the rise of negativity as the go-to attention-grabber in today's social media ecosystem might also play a role.

Cognitive scientists, do you think the astonishing performances of LLM‘s will help the public and social constructionists understand that you need (innate) cognitive machinery to produce any behavior and intelligent task?

New working paper with @hualinxiao.bsky.social “From Parenthood to Prejudice: Associations Between Parenthood and Anti-Immigrant Sentiments in 38 Industrialized Nations” osf.io/preprints/os... Upshot: Parenthood slightly increases your chances of being xenophobic in ESS data from 38 countries

Ever wondered why walking around museums is weirdly tiring? At normal speed our legs act like pendulums, swinging forward from the hip & saving us a huge amount of energy. In "museum shuffle" our muscles must do ALL the work of constant readjustment. So cake in the cafe is scientifically justified 🥳

Sign the petition! “Open letter of psychologists and neuroscientists for peace in the Middle East” docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAI… We, psychologists and neuroscientists from around the world, call the international community to urgently put pressure towards an immediate ceasefire in

Motivated thinking? :) Besides it’s not possible to reply to your comment, so it’s not ideal to debate your claim…

Watch the growth of #Bluesky live (ish): bcounter.nat.vg 📈

I’m a big proponent of replicability and transparency, but I agree with Carl We have too few empirical evidence that the various tools used to (theoretically) improve replicability actually work I wouldn’t be surprised if many of these tools just add more bureaucracy

Seeking to protect a threat-based mobilization narrative from contestation and gaining status among allies are significant and underrated motivations for outrage and repressing speech among activists, argue @a-marie-sci.bsky.social & Michael Bang Petersen: buff.ly/3MOKjJW HT @robsica.bsky.social

Alarmist media coverage of disinformation has negative downstream consequences, including increasing support for heavily restrictive speech regulation, finds @ajungherr.bsky.social & @adrauc.bsky.social doi.org/10.1007/s111...

In a new essay, I give some thoughts on: - When the "marketplace of ideas" works. - When it merely generates appealing falsehoods and rationalisations - What these failures mean for questions about censorship, expertise, and public debate. www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/the-market...