Are we more predators or prey? We’ve guessed wrong for a century. Today we can shoot wolves from helicopters but—I argue in the @nytimes today—humans evolved more as hunted than hunters. Link ⬇️

Why some celebrate the murder of Brian Thompson. I talked with @AnnieDuke about the psychology of victimhood and harm for her latest @washingtonpost column. Link below

Online ahead of print in Annual Review. How to make sense of moral differences across cultures and politics.

🏯🕌🏦 New paper in @PNASNews: Historical Large Language Models (HLLMs) can be a tool in behavioral science for collecting data from *past societies* by simulating responses from “participants”—namely, the dead—through history. https://dir.lat/zuydaF 🧵1/3

How Do We Turn Down the Heat in U.S. Politics? https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_do_we_turn_the_heat_down_in_us_politics Great coverage of the work of @CurtisPuryear on the power of Balanced Pragmatism to bridge divides.

Moms Doesn't Return Grocery Cart When She Shops With Kids Mom is worried about pedophiles, commenters call her a monster. I argue it’s the dilemma of the commons. (Also not great for civil discourse to end a video with “F— off.”)...

🚨Book!🚨 "Outraged: Why We Fight about Morality and Politics" has an Amazon listing: "A groundbreaking new perspective on the moral mind that rewrites our understanding of where moral judgments come from, and how we can overcome the feelings of outrage that so often divide us"

The real reason why we fight about morality and politics. It’s not because we have different values. It’s because we see harm differently—especially about the powerful and othered. (Also because we evolved from terrified little hominids) ...

Worrying about kids on social media is the latest moral panic. We explain why panics thrive online and why we can't just quit feeling afraid. DANGER! Why MORAL PANICS(!) Are Irresistible to Your Brain w @sampratt99 & @CurtisPuryear ...

🚨Job🚨 Come join the Deepest Beliefs Lab! We're hiring a full-time RA/outreach person. Perfect for a media-savvy graduating senior thinking about grad school. We have a great record of placing folks! https://bit.ly/3TU7ky2

Why is politics (literally) a firestorm? In the @guardian, I argue that bc we evolved feeling threatened, it's easy to convince ourselves that *we* are victims and *they* are evil predators bent on destruction. But in reality, everyone is afraid. ...

Real world debates are not about "foundations" of liberty or fairness. They are about *victims*--who is most vulnerable to mistreatment. Cops? Black people? Fetuses? 8 studies show moral debates are explained by diff "assumptions of vulnerability" (AoVs) btw libs and cons.

Many social ills are blamed on being alone, but ancient traditions celebrated solitude Maybe the real problem is pathologizing solitude, turning being alone into being "a weird evil loner" We uncover surprising complexity in aloneness. Sometimes bowling alone is OK. Link in pic

Faculty jobs at @UNC, spread the word! Two positions at the new School for Civic Life and Leadership, one tenure-track and one teaching focused. T-t: https://unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/274868 Teaching: https://unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/274867 Come join us!

I won’t be at SPSP, but I discovered that my lab and alum are having a Deepest Beliefs Lab happy hour. It warms my heart to know a) that I’ve mentored enough people that they can have a happy hour, and especially b) they like each other enough to hang out!! ☺️

It’s fun being a social psychologist and raising kids. The schools sent this home and – note that the seal snap bracelet is marked “rare“ and now the kids want it so bad. I love that you don’t even need to experience scarcity, but just see it explicitly labeled!

To Lead a Meaningful Life, Become Your Own Hero. Our piece in @sciam research (led by @benrogersOB) on how framing your life as a hero's journey can make it more meaningful. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/to-lead-a-meaningful-life-become-your-own-hero/

My lab is hosting a booth at a Halloween themed 21+ night at the North Carolina Museum of natural Sciences. They practiced the rubber hand, illusion on me, I think, because they just wanted to stab me in the “hand“

New Job posting at @UNC: Director and Dean of the new School of Civil Life and Leadership https://college.unc.edu/2023/10/scll-director-and-dean/ After this, there will be 10-20 lines for new tenure-track faculty across the humanities, psychology, poli sci, and more.

Yesterday, I spent two hours perfecting four paragraphs in one section. Today, I deleted that whole section. Writing is so cruel and maybe that’s why I ❤️ it?

Great read. Also made me feel better that I tried for 5 years (unsuccessfully) to replicate some dishonesty effects.

Today I learned that cats seldom blink…except when they want to send love to their humans!

Our new substack on how the quest to help victims can blind us to the plight of other victims. The explanation behind (and costs of) our hyper-focused moral mind.

Tobias Ebert just won SPSPs Emerging Scholar award! In recent work, he found that a person’s spending reflects their own personality traits as well as the personality traits of the people around them #socialpsyc #PsychSciSky psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-... discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10...

The Myopia of Heroism, our latest post The overpowering drive to help some victims can blind us to others' suffering. What our moral minds, superheroes, lessons from Syria, and rational compassion suggest about the war between Hamas and...

Nightmares: Asst Prof: Forgetting to give your exam Assoc Prof: Giving big talk, no pants Full Prof (just had this one): A massive WhenToMeet spanning thousands of potential times. What a time to be an academic.

Finally, somewhere to spend more time that I don't have on the internet!

The “Research to Impact” Convening is complete! What an amazing group of folks working toward pluralism. Thanks to everyone who came to Chicago to learn, discuss, and connect. Hope to see y’all soon, and special thanks to the @newpluralists for making it happen.

How can we foster pluralism in 🇺🇸? We @newpluralists recognize it’s key to connect science to practice. I’m thrilled to be co-hosting the “Research to Impact” convening, with @MoreInCommon_US, @GreaterGoodSC, and Over Zero starting today in Chicago. See y’all soon! 🎉

A reminder: you can usually ignore campus parking tickets. Found these from ~2008 when cleaning out our car. Harvard police haven’t come for us yet.

Sad Google? Angry Tesla? @FastCompany covers our new paper on whether companies have minds and why it matters. Two factors influence company mind perception: the goals of the org (profit? helping?) and the members (friendly? cold?)....

Back home safe and sound with our kiddos (who know nothing of consequence about it all). My first grader’s first day of school was “amazing”, just as it should be. ❤️

Chapel Hill carrboro schools got the all clear but we were told to stay out.

Already misinformation on Twitter about #unc. No suspect IDed yet. No confirmed tally of injuries or worse.

We’re locked in our offices. Hoping for good news about the active shooter situation. Stay safe all my @unc people.

I’m 42 today. Not super excited about being squarely middle-aged, but emotionally it seems better than 32 and way better than 22. As research shows, uncertainty is aversive, and at least by now, you mostly know who you are and where you’re at.

Writing is so uninteresting to write about. Just finished a 100,000-word book draft, and that’s all you can really say. All the challenges/triumphs of many past months are so banal. It’s a shame the bulk of this job makes for such a dull story!

Bad people demonize the other side👿 But you can feel good about yourself 👼 You just see political opponents as idiots😵‍💫 Isn't condescension more charitable? In this new @substack we show why seeing people as sheeple is so...

In at JPSP, a multi-study paper on the function of morality "Generalized morality," the idea that other people are overall good/evil, is *not* universal Ideas of inner good/evil culturally evolved to simplify cooperative partner choice in big societies https://psyarxiv.com/sx4rt

I had a brilliant time speaking with Michael about morality, values, and the 'problem of other minds.’ https://michaelashford.com/episodes/ep-108-dr-kurt-gray-morality-values-and-the-problem-of-other-minds

How do pluralistic efforts address demographic change & partisan division in the US? A new research review digs into the ecosystem https://bit.ly/GestReny_LitReview @newpluralists

In celebration of sending off a draft of a book, I am taking the rest of the day off. But I still need to pick up my kids at daycare, so...get ready for the MOST RELAXING 15 MINUTES EVER.

Great @nytimes piece (and study) by Sapna Cheryan and Therese Anne Mortejo--telling students to "follow their passions" leads women away from STEM. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/22/opinion/stem-women-gender-disparity.html

Salad bar behavior: Take big scoop of thing. But wait, do I need more?! Take very small scoop of thing. Dump off some to make it even smaller. Now put tiny tiny scoop of thing on plate. Great, I've backed up the whole line to take 3% more of thing. People are weird.

Thanks to #BBArt for the lovely headshot. Looking good in Carolina Blue. To get yours contact @BBBPACK!

No matter how much of a big deal you feel like because of some paper or grant, remember this: The band Smash Mouth has over 8 million monthly listeners on Spotify.

Job alert: Patty Van Cappellen at @DukeU is hiring 2 full time lab manager-type positions to work on grant-funded psych of religion projects. Info and application form: https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/24794

A thoughtful end to a fantastic conference by @OneAmericaMvmt. I learned so much from faith leaders about living with—and overcoming—toxic polarization. And hopefully my session on our harm-based moral mind was a least a little useful. Looking forward to next year!

We gave GPT 464 moral scenarios from past papers, and asked it to make moral judgments--they correlated .95 with human ratings Because GPT (almost) perfectly captures human judgment, we wondered: can AI LLMs replace participants in the study of the mind? New at @TrendsCognSci