Complexity is ubiquitous in the world around us. But different stimuli are complex for different reasons. Does the mind nevertheless represent a ‘unified’ notion of complexity across domains? In @nathumbehav.nature.com, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I show the answer is: yes! osf.io/preprints/ps...

When I will respond to your email

he was so real for this

For 99% of human history, children were free to roam their environments at will. No longer. So kids are roaming online worlds instead. Today in Psyche, I write about how the Internet became the last refuge for childhood freedom, and why that might be okay. psyche.co/ideas/have-o...

Don't be shy to take on a little two-week side project. These five months will be the most precious three years of your academic journey.

It's time for my favorite manuscript submission ritual! Scrolling through every single ManuscriptCentral login I've ever used in my career in a futile, fifteen-minute attempt to gain entry before I inevitably give up & reset my password to a new one which will also be lost to the sands of time.

Meet @dorsaamir.bsky.social, director of the Mind & Culture Lab at Duke University & 2026 APS Spence Award recipient! #Psychology Learn about her research, her career, & her advice for the upcoming generation of psychological scientists: www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

Hyperfixation of the week: there is apparently a field called “forensic hairdressing” where people try to reconstruct ancient hair techniques. Below is one from Ancient Rome ca. 120 AD. The leading figure is a hairstylist-turned-archaeologist named Janet Stephens who also does video tutorials. Cool!

I will never forgive AI for taking the em-dash away from me. I was — gratuitously — using it first!

The Cognitive Construction Lab is hiring a full-time lab manager! Come work with me at UMass Amherst, starting this Fall. Apply here: tinyurl.com/3dpz5m3j

Did you know that the spinning top is one of the most common forms of traditional play worldwide? Our research found tops to be nearly universal across human cultures. Wherever you come from, your ancestors probably spun tops. New preprint: Top of the World osf.io/preprints/so... Thread:

What does it mean for culture to “shape” cognition? In our new TiCS paper, @benjaminpitt.bsky.social & I offer a typology of four possible effects: culture can Privilege one cognitive process over others, Prune out disfavored ones, Produce new ones, or have no effect. www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

"...it remains unclear how exactly culture ‘shapes’ cognition. The study outlines four pathways: culture can privilege one cognitive process over another, prune out disfavored processes, produce new processes, or have no effect on cognition." www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Quite honored to be included in this amazing cohort of 2026 APS Janet Taylor Spence Award recipients. Grateful to APS for the recognition, and to the mentors & collaborators & friends who make it all possible.

Congratulations to the 2026 APS Spence Award Recipients! @dorsaamir.bsky.social, @williambrady.bsky.social, @esfinn.bsky.social, @andrewgrotzinger.bsky.social, @ycleong.bsky.social, @danieljamesyon.bsky.social, www.psychologicalscience.org/members/awar...

Fascinating research by @dorsaamir.bsky.social et al finds marked variation in 4 cooperative behaviours—fairness, trustworthiness, forgiveness, and honesty—among children aged 5-13 in five societies, which converges toward the societal norms in middle childhood: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

People form beliefs not only as individual agents, but as members of social groups. Children (4-6 years old) who belonged to a group were more convinced by evidence that supported their ingroup’s belief (and were less convinced by evidence that opposed their ingroup): www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Fun etymology fact (which is maybe obvious but I just learned!)— The word “galaxy” comes from the Greek “galaksias” meaning “milk” (same root as “lactose”). The Greeks thought our galaxy looked like a ring of spilled milk, which is also why we (& others) call it the Milky Way, but metaphors vary!

Our lab has the capacity to test ~500 uni students each semester If you’re a researcher in cognitive psychology or metascience and need data collection support, we’d love to collaborate. We can help collect high-quality data from a large student sample. Get in touch to discuss potential projects!

If you work at the intersection of computational neuroscience and machine learning, consider applying for this postdoc position (January 2027 start date): academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15868 An opportunity to work with a great group of people across Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley.

No matter where they live, kids cooperate according to their community’s social norms by middle childhood. Learn more in #ScienceAdvances: https://scim.ag/4r0Rxga

Thrilled to share our latest paper, out now in Science Advances! We explored the development of cooperative behaviors — fairness, trustworthiness, forgiveness, & honesty —  across five societies, culturally contextualizing them & seeing how they correlate. (1/5) www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Very excited that this paper is out! www.science.org/doi/full/10.... Led by the fabulous @dorsaamir.bsky.social with invaluable contributions from many awesome collaborators.

Why do otherwise rational people disagree about the same evidence? Our new paper finds that group membership is a deeply rooted influence on how we form beliefs, leading even preschoolers to bias their evidential standards and form inaccurate beliefs. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"The relationship between childhood exploration and population-level innovation in cultural evolution" with @ndersen.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @felixthehauskat.bsky.social out in Proc B royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

A fascinating & damning exposé on Oliver Sacks, author of “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”. It turns out, by his own admission in his private journals, that much of his work was akin to “fairy tales” — based on “lies”, “falsifications”, & “fabrications”. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Did I spend about an hour making this title slide? Yes. Did it come at the cost of prepping the actual talk? It did. But.. was it all worth it in the end? No, no it wasn't.

In the running for greatest human accomplishment.

Wheeled toys were all the rage in the ancient world. Here are four lovely examples: a Greek horse, a Mesopotamian ram, an Iranian hedgehog & a Mesoamerican jaguar. The jaguar one is particularly cool because it shows that Mesoamericans knew about wheels; they just didn't use them for transport.

Somehow I spoke to more anthropologists for my silly little podcast than Yuval Harari did for his bestselling book

Really enjoyed chatting with @michaelhobbes.bsky.social for this episode! In addition to being a delight to talk to, Michael was _extremely_ committed to getting the facts right & engaged very earnestly with our feedback. A scientist's dream.

⚠️ New Postdoc or PhD position open (3 years+) ⚠️ 🚩Developmental milestones across cultures 🌍 Based @leuphana.bsky.social , in collaboration with @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social Please share/apply! Link: tinyurl.com/58dsn43u

Fully funded #PhDposition in Comparative Cultural Psychology @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social. We will use touchscreen experiments & eyetracking to study mental simulations in nonhuman apes & human children across different cultures. All info here: www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit... Please share / apply!🙏

Child’s tunic with hood, Egypt, ca. 600-900 AD. Turns out hoodies have been around for a while!

In a world without forest and creeks, where do the children play? My new essay explores peer cultures and the strangeness of Western childhood. Heavily inspired by work from @dorsaamir.bsky.social and Sheina Lew-Levy :) open.substack.com/pub/unpublis...

Really enjoyed this podcast with @sheinalew.bsky.social and @dorsaamir.bsky.social on evolution and childhood. Super-smart people talking about a super-interesting topic podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/m...

Another great PhD opportunity: An ERC-funded project on “Children as agents of cultural evolution,” lead by @sheinalew.bsky.social at Durham University. Come do fieldwork with Mayan groups in Belize with her, @dorsaamir.bsky.social, and I! One of three, 3-year PhD positions starting Fall 2026.

1/ Alright, this one’s been sitting in my drawer for a year now, after @mcxfrank.bsky.social and I got turned down for a public commentary. But before I forget about it completely, here’s the preprint: Can we harvest insights for rice theory from two state farms in China? osf.io/preprints/ps...

Spread the word: I'm looking to recruit a PhD student for Fall 2026 to @ucsb.bsky.social! Reach out if you are applying this cycle and hoping to study infant and child social cognition, specifically expectations about friendship and/or groups. Bonus: live in paradise! And.. 1/3

This is a big one! A 4-year writing project over many timezones, arguing for a reimagining of the influential "core knowledge" thesis. Led by @daweibai.bsky.social, we argue that much of our innate knowledge of the world is not "conceptual" in nature, but rather wired into perceptual processing. 👇

Every developmental psychologist Is like “but my lecture slides!”

If you could win a prize by guessing the number on a die 🎲 hidden under a cup, would you want to guess before the die was rolled, or after? The odds of winning are the same in both, but they can feel different. 🧵

While this looks like it could have been painted yesterday, it’s actually a 1,700 year old (!) portrait from a Fayum mummy in modern day Egypt. This is one of ~900 of these portraits from the era, which broke from a more stylized tradition, and represented the subject more naturally.

@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised! 3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution 2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions. Please share and apply! www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...

Been reading recently about attempts to circumnavigate the globe & how 16th century ships pulled it off. Steering a ship was complicated & relied on hundreds of adjustments to complex rope systems. So, it often took a new sailor a long time to..... "learn the ropes"! So that's where that comes from.

Do you fall for the Müller-Lyer optical illusion? Psychologists had long thought that it depends on your cultural background—the famous "carpentered-world" hypothesis. Now, that hypothesis is widely disputed. Here's why. 🧪 by @norabradford.bsky.social www.scientificamerican.com/article/does...

Why do societies reliably develop strikingly similar traditions like dance songs, hero stories, shamanism & justice institutions? In a new BBS target article, I propose a theory for such "super-attractors" + cultural evolution more broadly. Now open for commentary: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

A little write-up of our Psych Review paper (with @chazfirestone.bsky.social) on culture and visual illusions — out now in Slate! 👇

Thanks so much @dorsaamir.bsky.social and @chazfirestone.bsky.social, along with @mcxfrank.bsky.social, for your input on this! And ofc @sarahexplains.bsky.social and @parshallison.bsky.social for your editing!