Grading final exams, rooting for my students, getting so excited when they get something right on the exam that they struggled & worked through during office hours.

Thrilled this is out! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 🧵 Do we have 2 kinds of beliefs? Some beliefs seem insensitive to evidence and rarely guide behavior, etc. To explain this, several theories divide belief into 2 types. I argue the explanation isn't in the *mind* but in the *world*

another classic of the genre

1. Two of our fabulous RAs are graduating and moving on to new adventures! Ben Sherak, who is interested in moral injury from a clinical perspective, will enter the PsyD program at Rutgers this fall. . .(see next post for another fabulous student)

New preprint, Asian American mythology and pathways to solidarity by Chyei Vinluan, Iseul Cha-ju, and Daniel Sanji It's about how model minority mythology acts as a barrier to solidarity within Asian ethnic groups and btwn Asian and other marginalized groups. osf.io/preprints/ps...

1. New paper with @dymoral.bsky.social in press in @journalphp.bsky.social! Main result: race informs how adults use info about intent when making moral judgments. More in thread below, full text here: columbiasamclab.weebly.com/uploads/5/9/.... #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc @socphilpsych.bsky.social

Quote from a former colleague: "Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."

NEW Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion @jssreligion.bsky.social Open Access Inhabiting the White Church: Divinized Diversity and Antiracist Projects in Progressive Religious Organizations By Daniel Cueto-Villalobos 👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/UEKJVI...

One more shout-out today, this one to @oyaserbest.bsky.social. Thank you for sharing your interesting work on children's anti-atheist biases across cultures with my moral psych class this morning! More info here for those who are interested: oyaserbest.com

Thank you so much to @mtrenfield.bsky.social for sharing his work on morality & cooperation in our lab meeting on Friday! Lots of food for thought about the effects of considering prosocial behavior as a form of generosity vs. justice.

One-year-olds watching cartoon characters help each other don’t necessarily expect a helper to also help new characters, suggesting that infants assume prosocial behavior is based on relationships rather than innate dispositions. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/6bTH50YPGUo

Still thinking about this note I found in the children’s section of the public library when I worked there back in 2018. This kid tried to warn us…

New publication alert! After four years of analysis, synthesis, and careful writing, I am pleased to announce a brand-new article, “Desistance”: A Multimethod Review of the Literature on Gender Identity Variability in Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth (1) 🧵 psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-...

nice 'journal club' piece from @rtompkins.bsky.social in this month's Nature Reviews Psych, on one of my fave social cognition findings (and not just because i'm married to the person who came up with it)

1. A few weeks ago, I learned that there was a negative vote on my tenure case at Columbia. Posting some quick thoughts below:

Our lab's paper on the functions of religion is now published! Pretty version here: compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1.... Full text & more info in thread below. #AcademicSky #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc #CogPsyc @socphilpsych.bsky.social 🧪

Thank you so much to Ashley Jordan for sharing her work on children's similarity-based social preferences with our lab this morning! Learn more about her fabulous research here: psych.wisc.edu/staff/jordan...

New paper! Had lots of fun writing this with @lauriebayet.bsky.social There is so much more to say about extrinsic and intrinsic experiences which shape infants' face perception and learning, hopefully this keeps & starts conversations about a topic we love! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Congratulations to DR! @cjmott.bsky.social, who successfully defended his dissertation today! His work integrates legal scholarship with psych theories & methods, with the dissertation focusing specifically on how people evaluate risk when making punishment decisions... (continued in next post)

So excited for former post-doc Young-eun Lee, who recently started her own lab as an assistant professor at Yonsei University (a return home since this is Young-eun's alma mater)! Learn more about the amazing work this lab is doing here: www.mindlab.yonsei.ac.kr

Culture was assumed to be unique to humans, but recent scientific discoveries have revealed that it's in fact widespread in the animal kingdom. This #PhilTransB issue is the first to present a comprehensive picture of the science & implications of this: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...

Very much looking forward to this!

Thank you to @jonds7.bsky.social for sharing work on how people respond to transgressions, particularly in the context of policing, with my moral psych class this morning! More info here: jedoriscar.wixsite.com/jonathandori....

1. New in-press paper on religion's functions, co-authored with amazing lab manager James Nesbit! Full text here, more info in thread below: columbiasamclab.weebly.com/uploads/5/9/.... #AcademicSky #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc #CogPsyc @socphilpsych.bsky.social 🧪

I am thankful that I got to talk about these papers in tandem. They feed off of each other by crafting a stronger framework for implementing EFFECTIVE equity efforts.

Big thank you to Tyler Jimenez for sharing his work on bias against Native Americans in our lab meeting today! Important research distinguishing between commission (eg hate speech) & omission (eg saying that Native people no longer exist). More here: psychology.arizona.edu/person/tyler...

These studies found that the intervention increased support for inclusive anti-discrimination policies, and the study of those policies. Anyway, check out the paper here: online.ucpress.edu/collabra/art... ...and congratulations to A. Chyei Vinluan for bringing it into the world!

Excited to share this preprint with Yahel Nudler and @thatadammorris.bsky.social in which we provide further evidence that people’s awareness of implicit evaluations is shaky at best — when explicit evaluations provide a misleading cue, participants systematically mispredict: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Most recently, a project looking at how kids & adults think about intent when making moral judgments, and how social experiences shape these judgments. Would have supported a grad student, lab manager, etc as well as professional dev opportunities (eg conference travel for trainees).

I’m thrilled, yes, & also stunned and bewildered, to announce that my job talk paper, Religion as Public Law, will be published in the Yale Law Journal next year. 1/6

OK folks, getting toward the end of my first mass public opinion survey on antisemitism (N=1,000) -- I showed Americans 100 pieces of real graffiti about Jews and/or Israel-Palestine, and asked them to rate the whether they were antisemitic (yes/no/unsure). Even a cursory look is interesting...

I just met Annie B Jones's book Ordinary Time & am loving it. Are you looking for stillness and wisdom? This book is for you. bookshop.org/p/books/ordi... #booksky

Thanks to Drew Jacoby-Senghor who shared fascinating studies on inequality in our lab meeting today! Advantaged group members misperceive equality-enhancing policies as harmful to their group. One paper he discussed: psycnet.apa.org/buy/2021-826.... And more here: haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/jaco...

Thank you to @pearlhanli.bsky.social for sharing her work with my moral psych class today! Neat data on how kids react when adult testimony conflicts with their own moral judgments: psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/201.... Plus many other cool findings about which you can learn here: www.pearlhanli.com.

I was surprised by this distribution of intuitions among a group of Yr12 (aged 16-17) students yesterday! Turns out most 16-17 year-olds are motivational externalists! #philosophy

I drafted one section of one chapter for the book I'm writing on religious conflict, and a few paragraphs may not seem like a huge deal, but I am counting this as a big win for today.

The end goal of Christian nationalist policies likely aren't greater religiosity, but power. New research shows laws that support Christianity or restrict non-Christian groups actually incline committed religious citizens to *disengage* from religious & civic participation. doi.org/10.1111/jssr...

Thank you to Yejin Park Roberts for presenting her work on religious & political polarization in lab yesterday! Interesting findings showing that, contrary to pastors' predictions, religious frames don't always reduce polarization. More here: www.yejinparkroberts.com.

What if you find out your own brother is a thief? We asked how people respond when a close other commits a moral transgression. -> It gets people to feel both as the victim + as the perpetrator & changes what punishment they seek. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #socialpsyc #PsychSciSky

Important news for us writers from across the NYC subway tracks:

New paper, conceived of and led by Chyei Vinluan on how people tend to think of Asian Ams as overrepresented in STEM, but that this ISN'T true when considering ethnic subgroups now available at @commspsychol.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s44...

January's office hours are 1/29 10-12 Eastern. Theme=your professional goals for 2026 (how best to achieve them etc). More info in thread below, sign-ups here: calendly.com/lah2201/open... #AcademicSky #PhdSky #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc #CogPsyc

This paper about inferences that kids draw on the basis of parental incarceration is now published! Pretty version here: psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-.... Link to full text & summary in thread below. 🧪 #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc @socphilpsych.bsky.social

Now out in JEP: General, "How working memory and reinforcement learning interact when avoiding punishment and pursuing reward concurrently" psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-... Preprint with final version: osf.io/preprints/ps... 1/n

How appealing an explanation is, is only in part down to how well it actually *explains*, research by klopfenstein.bsky.social & @hugoreasoning.bsky.social suggests. Usefulness and surprisingness matter too, the latter especially explaining why poor explanations become popular: buff.ly/NaSAlaJ

Numerous studies show Christian nationalism's effect on social & political views often varies by race. In a series of papers (& a book), I'm finding CLASS is a big moderating factor. Here I find the link between CN & support for organized labor diverges by class. Free link: doi.org/10.1093/socr...

Have you noticed how we often describe people from disadvantaged backgrounds as “strivers” or “go-getters” (💪🏼) rather than naturally gifted (🧠)? This may sound benign, but our new KiDLAB research shows that it reveals a harmful, early-emerging stereotype. (1/5)

🧵 New preprint with my advisor, Alex Shaw! We asked: What does “popularity” actually mean? Is it a distinct status category with specific features? We turned to elementary-schoolers, who have just begun to experience their own "popularity hierarchies," for some answers. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Wrapping up the year with this new paper and framework led by the phenomenal, and always innovative, @mdphamm.bsky.social !

The whole point of being an academic is that you need to be willing to spend three days creating a 700-word footnote that you will later delete. And you need to LIKE IT.