Arising out of discussions in @csi-research.bsky.social we conducted a Registered Report replicating Triplett’s (1898) experiment with over 400 children, showing children completed the task faster when paired with a coactor, compared to competing the task alone rdcu.be/eQwAE 1/3

Tired: moral dumbfounding Wired: *moral* dumbfounding

Interested in clinical psychology? Check out this recent article showcasing Prof. Elizabeth Thompson’s Clinical Psychology Conversation Series, which helps Brown students explore careers in clinical and applied psychology. 👉 Read the full story here: tinyurl.com/wurw4jzs

PhD applications for Cognitive and Psychological Sciences at Brown (@browncopsy.bsky.social) are due on December 1st. We have a great community, so please apply, share with your students, etc. Read more on our fancy new website here: copsy.brown.edu/graduate-study

🧠 Thrilled to share our NeuroView with Ellie Pavlick! "From Prediction to Understanding: Will AI Foundation Models Transform Brain Science?" AI foundation models are coming to neuroscience—if scaling laws hold, predictive power will be unprecedented. But is that enough? Thread 🧵👇

Last call for applications! Join us in advancing AI and the science of mind at Brown. Apply by Nov 8, 2025 👉 apply.interfolio.com/173939

Glad to see my first-year project is out! In two experiments, we manipulated multiple stimulus features in a perception task, yet their effects on confidence and accuracy fell into just two distinct behavioral patterns, offering a way to predict the effects of novel stimulus manipulations. 1/n

One of the papers I've been most excited about since starting the lab! We adopt a network neuroscience approach to understand how arousal reconfigures large-scale functional network organization to support memory of complex narratives!

Slow change blindness from serial dependence www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Brown’s Department of Cognitive & Psychological Sciences is hiring a tenure-track Assistant Professor, working in the area of AI and the Mind (start July 1, 2026). Apply by Nov 8, 2025 👉 apply.interfolio.com/173939 #AI #CognitiveScience #AcademicJobs #BrownUniversity

New work led by the brilliant @yizhang96.bsky.social: In lab experiments and naturalistic groups, people generalize perceptions of acceptance and rejection across social network ties.

Excited to announce our amazing lineup of speakers for the 2026 JDM preconference at SPSP! Conference date: Feb 26th Location: Chicago Deadline to apply: Oct 23rd. Application link: spsp.wufoo.com/forms/2026-p... cc: @sdellavi.bsky.social, @hirshmansam.bsky.social, @vinisingh.bsky.social

Can reasoned arguments shift moral behavior? In a new preprint, @eschwitz.bsky.social, Jason Nemirow, @fierycushman.bsky.social and I explore this question in the context of charitable donation. (1/10)

What happens if you *ask* instead of *tell*? Turns out, teasing people with a question before sharing a fact can shape whether people engage with critical health information. Read our new paper in Management Science to learn more: pubsonline.informs.org/doi/full/10....

We often hear from reviewers: "what about demand effects?" So we developed a method to eliminate them. Something weird happened during testing: We couldn’t detect demand effects in the first place! (1/8)

My lab is hiring a lab manager! Application deadline = 11/1, start date sometime between June & September 2026 (to be arranged with finalist). Please spread the word & apply here: opportunities.columbia.edu/jobs/a3f80f7.... #AcademicSky #PhdSky #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc #psychjobs

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...

A wonderful article on work (both old and new) pushing the frontier of memory research.

👋 Hello, Bluesky! We’re Brown CoPsy—the Department of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences at Brown University. We study how minds work, how people think and develop, and how brains and behavior connect. 🧠💬 Follow us for research, news & more!

Laypeople often learn about science from expert explanations & those explanations often contain JARGON. Does jargon make explanations better or worse? In a paper out today in Nature Human Behaviour, @cruzf.bsky.social and I find that jargon can support illusions of understanding...

🥳🥳 New paper in @nathumbehav.nature.com: “When development constricts our moral circle." Contrary to popular belief, younger kids may start out with broader moral circles than older ones. Check it out here 👉 rdcu.be/eoaSe w/ @mattiwilks.bsky.social @karrineldner.bsky.social & Lucius Caviola

Honored to win the 2025 APS Janet Taylor Spence Award! You can read more about my research and journey here www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

Sometimes people say its fair for those with advantage to get more (best office to the CEO...); other times, the opposite seems more fair (... charity to the needy). In this new work, Arthur and Xavier try to explain why. See the preprint link and explainer thread below: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Since 1954, "The Handbook of Social Psychology" has been the field’s most authoritative reference work, and today is the launch of the 6th edition with 50 new chapters by 100 leading scholars. Best news? The HSP is now an open-access public resource—free to read, download, and share. the-hsp.com

Come join us! I have startup funds to hire a postdoc for Fall 2025 at Rutgers to study intergroup relations. The job ad is at jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/249... & evaluations begin in 1 wk (5/16) w rolling evaluation. See 🧵below for a write-up on what I'm looking for in a postdoc. Please share widely!

One of my most cherished undergrad courses, a long time ago. I hope Boaz still shows clips from Chaplin and other silent films as students find their seats (which, as he explained, contain more lessons about the mind than most research articles). college.uchicago.edu/news/academi...

Are we “strangers to ourselves”? Classic theories say people have limited insight into how they decide. Our new paper at @natcomms.nature.com challenges this view. With @rcarl.bsky.social sky.social, @hedykober.bsky.social y.social, and @mjcrockett.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵

Congrats to my first PhD student Dr Flora Zhang!!!!! Make sure to check out her amazing work on intuitive theories of acquisition (and why they matter) @leonardlearnlab.bsky.social

Will be recruiting a lab manager, PhD student, and postdoc for my new lab, so please reach out if you're interested! Also, on the hunt for a good lab name—suggestions welcome! Deeply grateful to all my mentors, friends, and collaborators who helped me get here.

@amit-goldenberg.bsky.social 👀👟 arxiv.org/abs/2503.04190

The Red Queen believed "6 impossible things before breakfast." But what about *inconceivable* things? For your breakfast read, check out the new preprint: "Shades of Zero: Distinguishing Impossibility from Inconceivability" (by @jennhu.bsky.social , Sosa, & me) arxiv: arxiv.org/pdf/2502.20469

🎉Postdoc Alert! I am recruiting a postdoc to start Summer 2025 in the Mind & Morality Lab at Brown. If you're interested, please send a CV, cover letter, and names of at least two references to [email protected] by 2/28. If you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out!

what counts as breaking a rule? you might think this q is easy, but people actually integrate signals from morality, legality, punishability, and normativity to figure it out, new preprint w/ @jowylie.bsky.social & dries bostyn osf.io/preprints/ps... #psychscisky #cognition #socpsyc #philsky

"The Illusion-Illusion: Vision Language Models See Illusions Where There are None" osf.io/preprints/ps... (this is a more systematic examination of the thing I was looking at a few days ago)

The Visual Learning Lab at UC San Diego is looking for a postdoctoral research fellow to join our lab! Read more about our lab at www.vislearnlab.org

My paper on hierarchical plans is out in Cognition!🎉 tldr: We ask participants to generate hierarchical plans in a programming game. People prefer to reuse beyond what standard accounts predict, which we formalize as induction of a grammar over actions. authors.elsevier.com/a/1kBQr2Hx2x...

A secondary but neat finding in our new work: We find neural evidence for rewards biasing social perception. We’ve previously found that rewards lead people to see others in a more positive light. We’ve argued this reflects a kind of affect-as-information… www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Social rejection sucks, but they also provide a learning signal. Here we show that the two aspects of social rejection can be dissociated using computational modeling and neuroimaging. Delighted to have been able to be part of this work, definitely one of the most fun collaborations I've had!

New paper out in @ScienceMagazine! In 8 studies (multiple platforms, methods, time periods) we find: misinformation evokes more outrage than trustworthy news, when it does it's shared more + ppl are less likely to read before sharing. w/ @killianmcl1 @Klonick @mollycrockett 🧵👇

🚨Out in PNAS Nexus🚨 Content moderators can often get exposed to falsehoods In field studies with professional moderators, we show that exposure to false claims increases belief in those claims - BUT getting them to consider accuracy when exposed prevents this! academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

I'm recruiting PhD students to join my new lab at Brown! Please apply if you're interested in judgment and decision-making, social+cognitive psych, or using games/experiments/computational models to understand human behavior. Apps due Dec 1! More info: davidlevari.com

Now forthcoming in Experimental Economics! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... This paper, with @yeli.bsky.social and Cade Massey, is a follow-up to my 2005 Management Science paper with Cade.

Know a student applying to Psych PhD programs? Are they interested in vision and cognition and application? We're recruiting for next fall at the University of Toronto! Core topics: vision in the world [driving, readability, individual differences, spatial vision, clinical tests] www.applylab.org

One month!

The @applylab.bsky.social is recruiting PhD students for next year through UofT's Psychology PhD program. So, if you know a student interested in vision science x application, put them in touch (email is best!). Dept virtual open house on 4 November: register here forms.office.com/r/tzNxtwG9B0

Alternative title: Fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, shame on me (unrelated to previous shame) link.springer.com/article/10.3...

🚨New in JEP:G🚨 Why do ppl preferentially reciprocate follows by co-partisans online? In a Twitter field exp & online survey exp we find: -Both content *and* social prefs drive co-party tie-making -Distinct roles for in-party pref & out-party dispref dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0...

35 years of studies argue that kids assume word meanings are mutually exclusive. In @psychscience.bsky.social, @gaborbrody.bsky.social, Athulya Aravind, and I argue kids aren't making an assumption. We show 2y.o. only think words are mutually exclusive when they're told so. 1/ osf.io/awtch

Annual Review of Psychology: Cognitive Control by David Badre www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... #neuroscience

Admirable directness in branding here.