Do kids prefer to play with helpers? Our paper on children's trait attribution and partner choice is out! doi.org/10.1111/cdev... We wanted to know if kids, after observing other agents' behaviors, spontaneously (!) interpret them in terms of traits and choose cooperation partners accordingly. 🧵...

A comparison of MACQ and MFQ in Iran (featuring moral vignettes) osf.io/preprints/ps...

The average American got 7 out of 11 questions correct on this @pewresearch.org science 🧪 quiz. Let us know how you compare!

A Registered Report of 7,978 people in 20 countries by @cmolho.bsky.social et al finds that decision-makers willfully ignore inconvenient information. Information about the negative consequences drives prosociality, especially among guilt-prone individuals. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨Preprint alert 🚨 Forager food-sharing is often portrayed as “a positive insistence on equality” (Woodburn) or an “instinct” to equalise inequalities (Fehr). A new paper with @kris-smith.bsky.social, exploring Hadza reallocation decisions, challenges this view. 1/10 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Thinking about writing a pop science book about the brain (“Your Brain on Everything”) where the big reveal is that all the brain names were randomized and I was actually talking about psychology the whole time.

"People decide whether to share social information–and whether to share it accurately–on the basis of self-interest" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@oliverscottcurry.bsky.social on the seven transcultural principles of morality as cooperation: family, group, reciprocity, deference, property, heroísmo, and fairness. #HBES2025 @humbehevosoc.bsky.social

We're looking forward to your #HBES2025 plenary too, Oliver!

I'm looking forward to speaking @humbehevosoc.bsky.social in a couple of weeks. Here's the abstract of my talk:

The hits keep coming: another meta-analysis (k=10, N=4674) finds "no significant effects of social media abstinence interventions on positive affect, negative affect, or life satisfaction" (g = 0.03). (No relationship with abstinence duration either) #smma doi.org/10.1038/s415...

If you are interested in extracting moral values from text corpora, check out our latest resource, the extended Morality as Cooperation Dictionary (eMACD). Led by the brilliant @musamalik.bsky.social, we show that eMACD surpasses the (predictive) validity of previous moral foundations dictionaries 📕

Finally, it is published 😀 open access: The Extended Morality as Cooperation Dictionary (eMACD): A Crowd-Sourced Approach via the Moral Narrative Analyzer Platform www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....

🧵New paper out in Cognition Why do people moralize harmless carnal sins (e.g. gluttony, masturbation)? @danielnettle.bsky.social & I find that these behaviors activate reciprocity-based moral judgment—no need for a distinct "purity" module. 50 days free link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1l18D2Hx2-...

It is weird everyone knows ego-depletion as one of the research lines where hundreds of studies were performed, but there was no effect - but the Mortality Salience literature has become a historical example of much larger research waste. 825 studies, absolutely nothing real about it.

I am hiring a new Lab Manager to help run the NYU Center for Conflict & Cooperation. We start reviewing apps on MAY 1st and it pays over $58,000. Please share with anyone who might be interested! Please apply here: apply.interfolio.com/166620 See more details below:

Independent hunter-gatherer societies from all over the world have used diss songs in the midst of their conflicts. traditionsofconflict.substack.com/p/diss-songs

Too good to be true? "altruistic individuals are regarded as less moral…participants evaluated those who distributed all (vs. half) of their resources to others as being less predictable and having a lower moral character" 🤔 doi.org/10.1002/ejsp...

Can anyone provide a link to the study of ultimatum game behaviour (?) at a field site (a Las Vegas bus stop?)? Many thanks, O

New article ft. Sholei Croom's research, in @sciam.bsky.social www.scientificamerican.com/article/whic...

I'm looking forward to giving a plenary – on the science of morality – at this year's HBES. Hope to see you there! O

We tested MFQ-2 and MAC-Q in a Turkish sample (N=1099). 1️⃣ Both fit well. 2️⃣ MFQ-2 explained more variance in psychological variables. 3️⃣ MAC-Q better predicted moral behavior (e.g., generosity, cooperation). #MoralPsychology #moralfoundations #moralityascooperation 🔗 doi.org/10.1007/s121...

The argument for altruism given by eg Singer & Nagel ('other people have ends, therefore you ought to promote them') seems so bad that I'm surprised there aren't more, more well-known critiques of it (or at least I can't find many). Any suggestions?

how it works

"When information about our cooperative intentions is ambiguous or unavailable to others, it pays off to advertise them by condemning behavior that indicates uncooperativeness... The strategy appears to be quite effective"

Matt, I'm pretty sure the anisogamy concept arose earlier than the 1970's: api.pageplace.de/preview/DT04...

New paper! Now in press at Cognition: Experimental evidence that exerting effort increases meaning Check out @aidanvcampbell.bsky.social's new paper. This was a real effort...and boy was it meaningful (especially now that it was accepted!). Check out the preprint here: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Today seems like a good day to share this Scientific American story on how vaccines have saved more lives throughout history than any other intervention www.scientificamerican.com/article/see-...

**Check out our pre-print!** 1. Greater wealth is associated with higher prosocial preferences and behaviours across 76 countries. Holds for BOTH objective and subjective wealth. Resource scarcity (precarity), makes a difference. Read: psyarxiv.com/zc5a3

Do we cooperate because of institutions, or do institutions exist because we cooperate? In this @pnas.org paper led by @jliep.bsky.social, with @lfitouchi.bsky.social & N. Baumard, we develop a mathematical model that answers this question. 👇 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New paper out this week - again finding no evidence to support panic over smartphones & teens’ wellbeing. “Our findings contribute to the growing counter-narrative that technology use does not have as large of an impact on adolescents’ mental health and well-being as the public is concerned about.”

A start on who to follow for the science on social media and adolescent mental health! Who else is here? go.bsky.app/2PqckAy

I saw a large cross-cultural study ~recently that showed cooperation was largely dependent on the expectation of others' cooperation... but now I can't find it. And suggestions? Thanks, O

Never timelier #BBCFreeThinking on How Do We Think About Evil. @drmatthewsweet.bsky.social @jacksymes.bsky.social @lyndseystonebri.bsky.social @ruthwarewriter.bsky.social @oliverscottcurry.bsky.social & @zrinka.bsky.social on banality, best lines & the #Stanford buzz. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

I'll be discussing evil on BBC Radio 4 tonight at 9pm www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

There seem to be a lot of BlueSky users interested in evolutionary game theory and related areas of theoretical ecology and evolution. I made a preliminary starter pack for EGT and related topics. Please let me know if you would like to join or if you have any suggestions. go.bsky.app/N2SMwCN

A meta-analysis of 100s studies finds that people strongly agree about how beautiful others are (r=.90), including across ethnicities (r=.88) and across cultures (r=.94) doi.org/10.1037/0033...

Scientists, academics, researchers: We’re excited to share that @altmetric.com is now tracking mentions of your research on Bluesky! 🧪

The Manybabies4 paper is out! Infants' Social Evaluation of Helpers and Hinderers: A Large-Scale, Multi-Lab, Coordinated Replication Study onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... 1000 babies tested in 37 labs; "Overall, 49.34% of infants preferred Helpers over Hinderers in the social condition"

Starter pack for evolutionary behavioral science! I know I am missing many ppl working in this area. Please add yourself and your colleagues! go.bsky.app/Rt4Kh26

Our paper "Worldwide Divergence of Values" has been published today. We find that values have diverged between countries over the last 40 years. www.nature.com/articles/s41... Co-authored with Dan Medvedev

Just launched the new website for the Chicago Culture Lab! www.chicagoculturelab.com Summarizes the people, topics, and news involving our cross-department group at UChicago, led by me, Shige Oishi, and Thomas Talhelm. Please share with folks interested in culture!

Who Americans spend their time with changes a lot over the course of their lives.

New paper: in what we think is one of the largest meta-analyses of animal behaviour, we find no evidence for inequity aversion in nonhumans (in accept/reject paradigms) royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... Led by Oded Ritov & with @engelmann.bsky.social & Christoph Völter

No evidence for inequity aversion in non-human animals: a #meta-analysis of accept/reject paradigms royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... New paper led by Oded Ritov and w/ @nicholaraihani.bsky.social and Jan Engelmann.

This is going straight into my lectures. Large 'ManyBabies' replication attempt of the famous 'infants prefer Helpers over Hinderers' effect finds no evidence of such a preference. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Zotero is great and I think that anyone who needs to organise and cite more than a handful of references should be using it. Here's an intro to Zotero that I made for my undergrad students (but the info is relevant for anyone new to Zotero). Full vid [13 mins]: youtu.be/SlUHjOqVCyU Preview ⬇️

Is there any good research (preferably reviews or meta-analyses) on how/why/whether 'doing bad feels good' or 'whether evil people enjoy being immoral' etc?

When forming an evaluation of another person's moral character participants placed most weight on the traits of honesty, helpfulness, compassion, loyalty, & responsibility & seemed to aggregate trait information in a linear fashion. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...