1. A long post-reproductive lifespan is exceedingly rare in wild animals, so why do humans have one, i.e., menopause? In my new paper, I find that menopause averted a midlife energetic crisis: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... 🧪 #BioAnth 🧵

New review out today in Evolutionary Anthropology on arranged marriage, coauthored with @dconroybeam.bsky.social and @davidwlawson.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1002/evan...

Congratulations to our #HBES2026 Early Career Award winners: Daniel Conroy-Beam and Anne Pisor! 🎓

Agreed! HBES was my first ever conference. It has been my academic home and the highlight of my year ever since. So this award is a special honor for me. But it means even more to share it with such a wonderful scientist and person as @annepisor.bsky.social. I'm flattered to be in her company.

Despite my face in this thumbnail, I really enjoyed this conversation about a project I've been working on lately! Thanks for having me on again, @epthepod.bsky.social

This week, we talk to Martin Daly about inequality, homicide, and the foundational early days of evolutionary psychology. youtu.be/ufjRoVcQfR4 podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e... www.podbean.com/eas/pb-m6qak...

This week: Leda Cosmides. youtu.be/_R93dcbdAYY epthepod.podbean.com/e/leda-cosmi... podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

Why is domain-generality so intuitive? This paper makes a case for why we need an evolutionary psychology of psychology, and what it has to say about the study of intelligence, consciousness, domain-generality, and the theory crisis. @pdurkee.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New article out exploring great ape name recognition! We find partial evidence that zoo-living chimps & bonobos know each other's names 👀 Huge thanks to Animal Behavior and Cognition (a great open-access journal) & co-authors for your collaboration!🎉🐵 unsvr1.com/web/abc/work...

This week, we talk to @hugoreasoning.bsky.social about all things "epistemic". Are we gullible and prone to misinformation? Are we vigilant in favor of our interests? Enjoy the wide-ranging conversation! www.podbean.com/eas/pb-wphps... podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e... youtu.be/nf42LNg6y-A

This week, love and regret with Cari Goetz! www.podbean.com/eas/pb-mazyp... podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e... youtu.be/XWTV4Wj-v4s

One of my favorite podcasts interviews one of my favorite mating researchers

Come join the Moral Minds Lab as a grad student at MSU! Brand-new lab equipped for child & adult testing, with motivated undergrads in a happy department. 🤩 Learn more: www.moralmindslab.com/join-our-tea... (P.S. @tedmond.bsky.social is also taking a student!) @msupsychology.bsky.social

Looking forward to this!

An especially good episode against even a strong background

Come work with my colleague, @anniewertz.bsky.social. She's awesome, our department is awesome, and if you come here, you'd be awesome, too.

This week, we talk to Keelah Williams about Evolutionary Psychology and the Law. youtu.be/hmpfZajB2UI podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e... epthepod.podbean.com/e/keelah-wil...

Saw some real nice birds in South Africa #birds

Released today! SEVEN DECADES: HOW WE EVOLVED TO LIVE LONGER Now available at your favorite bookseller. Leave a review on Goodreads or Amazon if you can. Please help spread the word! #sevendecades @princetonupress.bsky.social

This week, Language and Communication (and the Lindy Hop) with @thomscottphillips.bsky.social! youtu.be/Gex5b6Nbq7I?... www.podbean.com/ew/pb-dur6p-... podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

I’m admitting 1–2 Ph.D. students to join my lab in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at CU Boulder, starting Fall 2026. We study person perception, stereotyping and prejudice, and intervention science. Application info: www.colorado.edu/psych-neuro/... Lab info: www.svmlab.org

This week: The evolutionary psychology of humor with @davidpinsof.bsky.social! An account of why the mind finds things funny, and why "funny" has the features it has. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGm-... www.podbean.com/eas/pb-ppaqi... podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

"people are sensitive to the amount of population variance on a trait, and flexibly adjust their partner preferences to focus on traits which vary more among others" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Annie Wertz plants a flag for plan and learning research!

BBS just announced a call for commentaries on @manvir.bsky.social's target article, "Subjective selection, super-attractors, and the origins of the cultural manifold" Deadline is Sep 10! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Great episode! Pat is one of my favorite psychologists out there today. And it was super interesting to hear from the Daly and Wilson lineage for the first time on the podcast

Always love a chance to hear Ed Hagen's perspective on...anything

📣From Kyle Landrum: Good Explanations and the Causal Metasemantics of Inductive Concepts

Late on this one but really enjoyed this conversation. Let it be known that @dpietra.bsky.social feels affection toward flat earthers

Job announcement 📢 @shawnrhoadsphd.bsky.social and I are looking for a joint postdoc interested in computational models of social interaction! Interested? If you’ll be at #rlc2025 (or I missed you at #cogsci2025) feel free to reach out with any questions! apply.interfolio.com/165809

Our new #cogsci2025 paper led by @maxtaylordavies.bsky.social is a task analysis of agent representation under resource constraints: 🧵

New short paper with @kevingoneill.github.io and Paul Henne: We re-analyse data from a recent study on causal judgment, and find that a counterfactual model explains why temporal order influences people's intuitions. 🧵 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I keep looking forward to these conversations every Tuesday

New episode is up! We talk to Deb Lieberman about morality, disgust, and kinship. Had a blast!! youtu.be/C2Qba5BoFVk?... www.podbean.com/ew/pb-4h4by-...

🧵 Very excited (w/ @omarjcamanto.bsky.social) to share our preprint tutorial for using our R 📦 dySEM for #dyadic data analysis with latent variables, in cross-sectional data sets. This paper has been literal years in the making, and provides three distinct tutorials. osf.io/preprints/ps...

A new episode is up! In this one, we talk to @mikemoncrieff.bsky.social about terrorism, his studies of ethnic conflict, and the drag queen phenomenon. www.podbean.com/ew/pb-xa3zf-... youtu.be/gEL1V0SmPDI?... podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

Man, even Phineas Gage doesn't replicate?!

New paper from Qi, Vul and Powell introduces a clever way to measure a participant's Welfare-Tradeoff Ratio in a single trial: journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Nobelist: U.S. Scientists Took Support ‘For Granted’ Before Trump Cuts Frances Arnold, who won the 2018 Nobel Prize in chemistry, says U.S. science is “paying the price” for not explaining the... Read the latest from @timeshighered.bsky.social ➡️ #HigherEd #EDUSky #AcademicSky bit.ly/3Gsdd2Q

A great conversation in which the Davids talk about what they think makes for good evolutionary psychology

📅Let's meet on Dec 4 & 5 to ̶d̶i̶s̶g̶u̶s̶t̶ discuss about Disgust accross borders, a theme that's anything but tasteless ! 👃 As you'll see very soon, the program is still appetizing. ⬇️Interested in presenting? Subdmissions are now open!⬇️ @cmolho.bsky.social @csarabian.bsky.social @atognetti.bsky.social

The conventional story of modern AI is that success arrived when we stopped trying to hand-craft specialized systems and instead built general-purpose systems that could learn from data. However, I think people often overlook that this pivot did not really remove humans from the loop.

Excited that this paper is finally out (in collaboration with @zoeliberman.bsky.social @saraburke.bsky.social & Brenda Major) in PSPB! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

I’m honored to share that I’ve been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure @ucsb. To mark this, our lab, the Yu Emotion Science (YES) lab releases its official logo (credit: @avamadesousa.bsky.social )

Ok, @ryanenos.bsky.social and @stevelevitsky.bsky.social were able to calmly explain what I was failing to articulate earlier this week. Today's must read on why capitulating to authoritarian extortion is very very bad (and won't stop the attacks). Stay 💪 Harvard www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Helicopter parenting is not a human universal! In our sixth episode, @sheinalew.bsky.social discusses studying childhood in the Congo basin. www.podbean.com/ew/pb-bpsfw-... www.youtube.com/watch?v=12mI...

My NEW FAVE PODCAST: Real evolutionary social scientists talking about actual research (+ other weird stuff). I talked FRIENDSHIP with @dpietra.bsky.social + David Pinsof!

My friends talk about friendship!

Your next Fall read, my new book: SEVEN DECADES: HOW WE EVOLVED TO LIVE LONGER Longevity is shaped by our evolutionary past—imagine aging as opportunity rather than burden. Out Sept 16, preorder w/ code PUP30 for 30% discount: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... @princetonupress.bsky.social

New paper from Laura Lewis and Jan Engelmann et al. (including me) with a clever new method. Chimps and kids will forgo reward to get a chance to look at social interactions royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....