Ever wanted to read about an old problem almost nobody cares about anymore? Well, I wrote about it. 🧵

Can we use the way that people attribute intentions to others in order to infer people's intuitive preferences and attitudes? I've written a short letter highlighting ways that this strategy can go wrong: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Very excited to announce my student Andreas Arslan's first paper, "Causal coherence improves episodic memory of dynamic events" in Cognition! Out now open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Andreas isn't on bsky, but he very kindly wrote a summary thread for me to share. 🧵 (1/24)

"Critics charge EP with producing unfalsifiable 'just-so stories.' Yet EP explicitly employs Popper’s hypothetico-deductive method: abductive reasoning from proximate data to hypothesize evolved functions, deduction to generate novel predictions, and empirical testing to confirm or falsify them."

Save the date! Remote participation will be also possible:)

The TiCS issue featuring our paper on "A timeline of cognitive costs in decision-making" is now available online 😄 Honored to have been a part of this awesome interdisciplinary mega-collab led by Christin Schulze (UNSW Sydney) www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Great to have another paper with @chazfirestone.bsky.social @ianbphillips.bsky.social and the brilliant Hanbei Zhou out! In this paper we demonstrate that stimuli within events are perceived further apart in time — an event-based analog of “object-based warping”. psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

The human visual system has specialized modular processing for multiple distinct categories of causal events. My new paper with my lab manager Katharina Wenig in Cognitive Science, "Causal Perception(s)" Free open access: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... #CogSci #PsychSciSky 🧵(1/22)

Visual adaptation is viewed as a test of whether a feature is represented by the visual system. In a new paper, Sam Clarke and I push the limits of this test. We show spatially selective, putatively "visual" adaptation to a clearly non-visual dimension: Value! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

My review of Sex is a Spectrum, by Agustín Fuentes 🧪 #BioAnth blog.edhagen.net/posts/2025-0...

When an animals' groupmates go out of sight, do they also go out of mind? In a new paper in Proc B @royalsocietypublishing.org, Luz Carvajal and I show that a bonobo (Kanzi) can keep mental tabs on the whereabouts of multiple hidden social partners royalsocietypublishing.org/eprint/4GI7G...

Hot on the tail of our Tsimane IGE study comes the theory paper that motivated it! What are the ecological causes and evolutionary consequences of social plasticity in dynamic environments? See our new Functional Ecology paper to find out more besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

my review 'core systems of music perception' is on the cover of TICS this month (algorithmic art by @kennyvaden.bsky.social) www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

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

It’s Friday night (somewhere) so settle in for a 🧵that combines fermented fruit, scrumping monkeys, etymology, Larson cartoons, & Gothic art to tackle the enduring mystery of why humans are so astoundingly good at metabolising alcohol! or read our new 🧪 paper ;) academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

Our *new paper* explores how flexibility in social categories like gender and race can undermine unfair norms. If we can't read an identity, we can't use it to underpin discrimination. We show even a little confusion can be powerful, and advocate identity play philsci-archive.pitt.edu/26062/

You've probably seen all manner of hunting bows, but have you seen one of these? This is a millstone, used for pounding baobab pulp and seeds into flour. Almost every Hadza household has one.

1 To predict the behaviour of a primate, would you rather base your guess on a closely related species or one with a similar brain shape? We looked at brains & behaviours of 70 species, you’ll be surprised! 🧵Thread on our new preprint with @r3rt0.bsky.social , doi.org/10.1101/2025...

How do economic concepts relate to the promise of foundational research? In our new paper, we propose an account of scientific pursuitworthiness that spells out talk of 'costs' and 'benefits' in terms of theoretical virtues. link.springer.com/article/10.1... #philsci #philsky #HPS

2/2 This leaves far behind the famous saying that everything in evolution ends up becoming a crab. Crabs have evolved independently five times (through evolutionary convergence). (paper, 2021) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Such a readable and fascinating argument by @jessiemunton.bsky.social of @cambridgephilos.bsky.social To see a visual object is to see how it could be, not just how it is. #openaccess #philsky

"The psychology of death, at least as conceived by terror management theory, is dead. We killed it." www.speakandregret.michaelinzlicht.com/p/psychologi...

Some coverage of our new paper on the evolution of human eye appearance and why the famous cooperative eye hypothesis (which has served the field well) should be abandoned. Published in Biological Reviews: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

My colleague Quentin Atkinson wrote this piece - How Not To Run a University. It is an insanely good read about how managerialism is destroying universities. Make time for it. Talk about it. Share it. quentinatkinson.substack.com/s/how-not-to...

All ~40 Cambridge Elements in Philosophy of Biology are available to download for free this week. Find them at www.cambridge.org/core/publica...

New preprint! Led by Bill Pepe, with @brandonwoo.bsky.social and @ashleyjthomas.bsky.social. We asked if infants think helping and hindering stem from actors' dispositions (i.e. good/nice v bad/mean) or their social relationships, by testing expectations for future behavior: osf.io/preprints/ps...

🚨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....

one of my favorite science stories got debunked...

"Rethinking Ostensive Communication in an Evolutionary, Comparative, and Developmental Perspective" now published in Psychological Review psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Possibly the best thing I've read about ChatGPT yet. h/t @melaniemitchell.bsky.social amandaguinzburg.substack.com/p/diabolus-e...

I wrote a chapter on a functionalist account of social identity. IMO, thinking about identity in an instrumental way helps explain a lot of behavior that seems otherwise baffling. osf.io/preprints/ps...

We often have to judge who is knowledgeable—precisely when we are not. Can humans really do that? Our new paper in Psychological Science shows that, surprisingly, we can. drive.google.com/file/d/1b15E...

:: (not really) Trigger warning:: Stay in your lane, or pay a career penalty www.nature.com/articles/s41...

If you haven't been looking recently at the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (oecs.mit.edu), here's your reminder that we are a free, open access resource for learning about the science of mind. Today we are launching our new Thematic Collections to organize our growing set of articles!

All redundancy is awful, the fear, the sense of failure, the challenge of finding other work. It's such a common disaster in the UK most families know it. But looking at my academic friends facing it now, it's particularly bad. They have twisted their whole lives around the pursuit of these roles >

Preprint of data from my first project as a postdoc with With @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social and Liz Spelke. Data and writing from 2019, figures are new :) osf.io/preprints/ps... First, we replicate @lindseypowell.bsky.social 's finding that infants reach for imitators using a very different setup.

"The philosophers want proper philosophers, [...] the psychologists want proper psychologists, but the one thing everybody agrees on is that we must support unorthodox career paths." An achingly intimate post about the Janus-faced whims of academia, and the toll it takes on our spirits.

🧵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-...

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @curionia.bsky.social @sombylab.bsky.social

Shout-out Ted Chiang. thebullshitmachines.com/lesson-11-tr...

There hasn’t been nearly enough appreciation for this amazing paper by Clark Barrett and @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social Anthropologists have observed people in certain cultures blaming agents for behavior without regard to mental states (intent, knowledge, etc.). Why does this happen?

It's #DarwinDay, the year 2025. And (sad to say) this insight from the 1870s is more relevant than ever.

Where do moralizing religions come from? Useless cognitive by-products?Cultural group selection for complex societies? Our Psych Review paper argues: neither. Let’s rethink their cognitive & evolutionary origins🧵 w/ @manvir.bsky.social @nbaumard @jbaptistandre.bsky.social doi.org/10.1037/rev0...

Are humans the only species that communicates when a collaborator is missing information? In @pnas.org, Luke Townrow and I show that our closest relatives, bonobos, can track when a partner is knowledgeable or ignorant, and tailor communication accordingly www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Join the Disi Community - Is your research related to intelligence and diversity of minds? Then take the chance to expand your horizons and form new interdisciplinary scientific friendships - Apply for Summer School 2025 ✨👇🏼✨

Very proud of Laura and collabs for this one! There's nothing as stimulating in dev science than being confronted with selective patterns of "failures", and this paper is no exception. The question of HOW infants set up a representation of helping as a second-order goal is far from being answered.

Canine perspective taking: Anticipating the behavior of an unseen human. www.cell.com/iscience/ful... New paper w/ L.Huber, P.van der Wolf, M.Menkveld & S.Riemer providing evidence that dogs prefer to steal from a plate unseen by a human when the human's presence has to be inferred from sound cues.

Does the culture you grow up in shape the way you see the world? In a new Psych Review paper, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I tackle this centuries-old question using the Müller-Lyer illusion as a case study. Come think through one of history's mysteries with us🧵(1/13):

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/...