We tend to assume that rules are mostly about maintaining order, reducing prediction errors, and generally helping people cooperate. But not all rules do that--and, as Connie Chiu and I found in our most recent paper, people will buy rules in economic games of little use osf.io/preprints/ps...

Goal selection through the lens of subjective functions: arxiv.org/abs/2512.15948 I welcome any feedback on these preliminary ideas.

A common problem w/ studies testing non-WEIRD groups is they compare multiple groups using the same WEIRD measure. How can we compare groups w/ apples-apples measures w/o distorting cross-cultural differences? We explore this in this new paper! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

fun pre-print for your start of week reading: "People Make Graded Judgments About The Inconceivable" (by Hu, Sosa, and me) doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Children’s judgments of possibility align with their judgments of actuality 
‼️From Mo Pabla, Andrew Shtulman & Ori Friedman

🚨Super excited that Dartmouth's Society of Fellows is hiring a postdoc with the Program in Cognitive Science 🚨 Specialization in computational and empirical approaches to artificial and natural intelligence, including perception, representation, and complex planning: apply.interfolio.com/176946

🚨Job Alert plz RT! Johns Hopkins Psych & Brain Sciences is looking for a new colleague using behavioral or computational approaches to study cognition! We are excited about many areas of (esp higher) cognition in human adults, children, or nonhuman animals Open-rank apply.interfolio.com/178146

Excited to share our new paper in Cognitive Development! We replicate that children punish for both retributive and consequentialist reasons — and, surprisingly, intergroup context doesn’t change these effects. tinyurl.com/ycyhcn5a Check in out! ✨

Very happy that this is out www.nature.com/articles/s44.... Together with @stefankiebel.bsky.social we show that decision biases in context-dependent decision making, previously attributed to different forms of value normalization, are very well explained by habit-like action repetition.

🚨Friends, we’re happy to share that our book is available for pre-order! 🎉 We aimed to cover all the foundations of the topic in an accessible manner for a large audience. It could help set up a bachelor-level curriculum on the topic. Pre-orders are very key for the fate of books: shorturl.at/Dxbif

📣 New BBS preprint out now! 📣 "Models casting egalitarian societies as crucibles of equality perpetuate the factually uninformed notion that foragers are somehow more noble. Critiques portray egalitarianism as romantic fantasy. Neither characterization is wholly justified." doi.org/10.1017/S014...

How early do children grasp mathematical patterns? In a new Cognition paper, Ciccione et al. show that 5–6-year-olds can intuitively extend lines, curves and oscillating patterns, revealing rich proto-mathematical intuitions before schooling.

A thread on our recent paper (w/Raihan Alam @raihanalam) in PNAS on why punishment often fails and what it means for crime, cooperation, democracy, and the rule of law. I’m super excited for it, it’s the lab’s most extensive experimental work to date. Check it out! 1/ www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Experimental participants to us

🧠 New paper alert! Can people infer others’ values not from what they choose, but simply from what comes to mind? Across four studies, we show they can—drawing on an intuitive theory of how options are generated. doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106238 👇

New article w/ M Pabla & @orifriedman.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... When children claim an unexpected event is impossible they also claim it's never happened, even for immoral events, suggesting their judgments reflect beliefs about what could happen & not merely what should.

We're excited to announce that Cognitive Science at Dartmouth is recruiting PhD students to work collaboratively with me, Steven Frankland, and Fred Callaway. Come study the principles and mechanisms that enable us to understand, plan, and act in the world! Info: sites.dartmouth.edu/cogscigrad/

Only one day left to apply for the Moral Psychology Preconference at SPSP! We have an outstanding line-up of invited speakers, will have blitz contributed talks, a best poster award, and more. Don’t miss it!

Only two days left to apply!

Last call for data-blitz and poster submission for the Computational Psychology preconference @spspnews.bsky.social! See thread below for details and hope to see you in Chicago!

Hello all! 👋 🚨 New Preprint Alert! 🚨 Code World Models for General Game-Playing. ♟️🎲 ♣️♥️♠️♦️ I am pleased to announce our new paper, which provides an extremely sample-efficient way to create an agent that can perform well in multi-agent, partially-observed, symbolic environments! 🧵 1/N

Consciousness science as a marketplace of rationalizations my commentary on @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's thought-provoking BBS paper, and more generally about the field. osf.io/preprints/ps...

‼️ Recent work by Setayesh Radkani, Joshua Tenenbaum & Rebecca Saxe: What people learn from punishment: A cognitive model

I'm recruiting grad students!! 🎓 The CoDec Lab @ NYU (codec-lab.github.io) is looking for PhD students (Fall 2026) interested in computational approaches to social cognition & problem solving 🧠 Applications through Psych (tinyurl.com/nyucp) are due Dec 1. Reach out with Qs & please repost! 🙏

📣Recent work by Emily G. Liquin, Marjorie Rhodes & Todd M. Gureckis: Seeking new information with old questions: Children and adults reuse and recombine concepts from prior questions

The computational psych preconference is back @spspnews.bsky.social for a full day! This year's lineup: 👉theory-driven modeling: Hyowon Gweon 👉data-driven discovery: @clemensstachl.bsky.social 👉application: me 👉 panel: @steveread.bsky.social Sandra Matz, @markthornton.bsky.social Wil Cunningham

Mikayla Kelley has an important new paper on why human beings even have a concept of intentional action The key question: What does this concept do in our lives? Her answer: Since we can't possibly evaluate all actions, it helps us choose which ones to evaluate philpapers.org/rec/KELTNF-3

My website is official 🙌 Excited to share that I am interested in reviewing applications for Harvard’s Clinical Science PhD program this fall as I look for the first student to join my lab! I appreciate it if you can share with your network :) psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/mark-...

This was such a fun project! Dozens of philosophers wrote philosophical arguments trying to get people to donate more to charity, and we ask: Do any of these work? Which ones work best? Why?

🚨New paper out w/ @gershbrain.bsky.social & @fierycushman.bsky.social from my time @Harvard! Humans are capable of sophisticated theory of mind, but when do we use it? We formalize & document a new cognitive shortcut: belief neglect — inferring others' preferences, as if their beliefs are correct🧵

This project took a very unexpected path that was super helpful in updating the way my lab thinks about experimental design -- so we're sharing it with the world!

💙New paper!💙 How is knowledge transmitted across generations in a foraging society? With @danielredhead.bsky.social we found: In BaYaka foragers, long-term skills pass in smaller, sparser networks, while short-term food info circulates broadly & reciprocally academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

🌟From Nicolò Cesana-Arlotti, Sofia Jáuregui, Peter Mazalik, Shaun Nichols & Justin Halberda: Logical concepts of (im)possibility guide young children's decision-making

📣 🚨 Yale Psychology has 3 searches this year! Links below: Quantitative link: apply.interfolio.com/171903 Social link: apply.interfolio.com/171989 Clinical link: apply.interfolio.com/171970

Studying philosophy does make people better thinkers, according to new research on more than 600,000 college grads theconversation.com/studying-phi...

I’ll have more to say about this paper in a bit, but very excited about it. Helps to explain why punishment doesn’t work to improve cooperation, why people still punish anyway, and what it implies about the evolution of cooperation and criminal justice policy www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We're hiring!!! Princeton Psych has an Assistant Prof search in cog neuro (joint with @princetonneuro.bsky.social). Apply apply apply! puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...

New paper out in Topics in Cognitive Science! "Open-Ended Technological Evolution: The Co-Evolution of Invention and Cognitive Technologies" 🧵 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

When development constricts our moral circle ‼️From Julia Marshall, Matti Wilks, Lucius Caviola & Karri Neldner

🚨Out in PNAS🚨 with @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social & @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social Punishment, even when intended to teach norms and change minds for the good, may backfire. Our computational cognitive model explains why! Paper: tinyurl.com/yc7fs4x7 News: tinyurl.com/3h3446wu 🧵

After many years of anticipation (mainly by me), @drlarisa.bsky.social and I have a paper on the way people understand two mental state terms used in the criminal law -- "knowingly" and "recklessly" -- forthcoming in JEP:Applied. 1/

📣 Heads-up that our amazing dept (Berkeley Psych) is anticipating hiring *two* TT Asst Profs this Fall, under the themes of (1) Social & Personality Psychology, and (2) Biological Basis of Behavior. Official job ads coming soon... Send qs for (1) to Iris Mauss/Serena Chen, (2) to Linda Wilbrecht

Thrilled that our paper on the mechanisms underlying social learning strategies is out! First big paper from my @erc.europa.eu & @kawresearch.bsky.social funded group. More to come! I'm currently looking to recruit two post docs, get in touch if you find this line of research interesting.

Counterfactual models predict that normality should influence causal judgments in a different way depending on causal structure. A fascinating paper by Ozdemir and Walker finds some hints of this pattern in 5- to 7-year old children. static1.squarespace.com/static/5615d...

Our new paper is out in PNAS: "Evolving general cooperation with a Bayesian theory of mind"! Humans are the ultimate cooperators. We coordinate on a scale and scope no other species (nor AI) can match. What makes this possible? 🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A popular and very old argument for the value of philosophy claims that studying philosophy cultivates important intellectual abilities and dispositions. But empirical evidence for that claim has been hard to come by. Until now! 1/4

Arthur has written a wonderful, clear, super helpful introduction to contractualism as a foundation for moral psychology. Perfect for getting up to speed, teaching, a desk reference, or a sunny day at the beach. wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🚨We're hiring! The Mind & Morality Lab is seeking a Lab Manager to start this September. Excited about research on social cognitive development? Apply here: forms.gle/4rKXD2x1vmkD.... Learn more about us: sites.brown.edu/mindmorality.... ⏳ We’re reviewing applications on a rolling basis—apply early!

Paper in @pnas.org in which @d-melnikoff.bsky.social and I provide evidence for model-based effects on automatic evaluation. This was a super fun “adversarial” collaboration with 0 adversariality. It may have been nice to be right, but getting it right is nearly as nice: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...