We are pleased to announce Kathleen Corriveau as our keynote speaker. She will present “The Development of Cross-Cultural Religious Belief.” Her talk will explore how children acquire religious beliefs through testimony across cultures. 📅 1–3 July 2026 #IACESR2026 #CognitiveScienceOfReligion

Why do rituals persist? They are often treated either as attempts to influence uncertain outcomes or as practices that regulate group life. But these functions are usually blended together. In our new paper, we argue that reinforcement learning helps explain this blending.

I'm a data scientist @ourworldindata.org and I need help from a botanist or someone local to Kyoto, Japan! 🌸 We present one of the world’s longest climate records: 1,200 years of peak cherry blossom dates in Kyoto. The researcher who maintained it, Prof. Yasuyuki Aono, sadly passed away last year.

As the conference gets closer, here’s how to get to Brno for IACESR 2026 ✈️ Fly direct (limited routes) or travel via nearby hubs: Vienna (~2h) • Prague (~2.5–3h) • Bratislava (~1.5–2h) 📅 1–3 July 2026 More info: iacesr.com/conferences/ #IACESR2026 #TravelInfo

Congratulation! So pleased to have been a small part of this great project! A Japanese newspaper (The Nikkei) had an article about these Nature papers (I contributed a comment as a co-author). www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZ...

An unforgettable night — #DreamTheater at the legendary Budokan!

Correlates of interpersonal physiological synchrony and sources of empirical heterogeneity Review by Ilanit Gordon & Ronny P. Bartsch Web: go.nature.com/4qCff1l PDF: rdcu.be/e4pSE #psychscisky #socialpsych

This is my favorite type of paper! It bridges cultural psychology and an adaptive approach to culture. The ecological origins of collectivism and individualism (Colnaghi et al., 2026, Psychol.Rev.) psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Thrilled to share our latest paper, out now in Science Advances! We explored the development of cooperative behaviors — fairness, trustworthiness, forgiveness, & honesty —  across five societies, culturally contextualizing them & seeing how they correlate. (1/5) www.science.org/doi/full/10....

選挙をあきらめない #衆院選2026

If you tell an AI to convince someone of a true vs. false claim, does truth win? In our *new* working paper, we find... ‘LLMs can effectively convince people to believe conspiracies’ But telling the AI not to lie might help. Details in thread

We’re organizing IACESR 2026 in Brno (July 1–3) — CFP closes Feb 6. If you work on cognitive or evolutionary approaches to religion, we’d be very happy to welcome you in Brno :)

Ai, Japanese chimpanzee who counted and painted, dies at 49. www.bbc.com/news/article...

IACESR call for paper closes Feb 6th. Come join us to talk about the cognitive and evolutionary science of religion in Brno in July! iacesr.com/conferences/

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

Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of DNA. Stop saying that they discovered DNA! This was done by another guy you probably haven't heard of! And therein lies a story. academic.oup.com/genetics/art...

"Dunbar's Number" is a zombie that lives forever in the science press it seems. Estimates of Dunbar's Number with 95% intervals, for a range of model specifications (from doi.org/10.1098/rsbl... ):

Teaching a fun science & critical thinking course this semester. Trying out THAMES as a handy mnemonic for what to look for in evaluating science papers & such (obvs not all are as relevant for every paper)...

predators: evolution, culture, and the neuroscience of alien hunters Come for the alien, stay for the science open.substack.com/pub/brainpiz... #predators #humans #guild #comparative #neuroskyence #psychscisky Of interest @iandunt.bsky.social ?

There's a lot more in the paper itself, here's the link!

🚨 Excited to share a new paper 📃, years in the making, with Zach Wood. We propose that human evolution is characterized as an Evolutionary Transition in Inheritance and Individuality (ETII). Explainer and OA paper below:

Our new study in Japan—supported by Miraikan and Waseda University’s Watanabe Lab—published in "Psychology of Religion and Spirituality" shows that children’s religious beliefs are predicted independently by their own empathy and their parents’ beliefs. doi.org/10.1037/rel0...

I had a blast at #AASP2025 and presenting. Thanks to everyone on the committee!

Our recently published paper in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review on #reasoning styles and #belief in God is now featured by @psychonomicsociety.bsky.social! Thanks, Jonathan Caballero, for the interesting article. 📄 Read the paper here: doi.org/10.3758/s134...

New paper in PSPB! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... Well, actually, not "new". We first put this paper online way back Dec 2022... in any case, we think it's really cool! We find that conspiracy believers tend to be overconfident & really don't seem to realize that most disagree with them

The Japanese version of Claire White’s "An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion" is out! Happy to be part of the translation. I hope this book helps advance research in this field in Japan. The elegant cover—black with soft cherry blossom pink—is also worth noting.

“Scientists reject the idea that race is biologically real. The claim that race is a “biological reality” cuts against modern scientific knowledge” theconversation.com/race-isnt-a-...

New research by Wendy Higgins, @vsavalei.bsky.social, Vince Polito, and me shows that the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test scores have poor structural properties. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

🚨New Paper Klaxon 🚨 Belief in Belief: Even Atheists in Secular Countries Show Intuitive Preferences Favoring Religious Belief. Now out at PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Here's a quick 🧵 on what we did and found!👇 1/ 11 🧪 #atheism #religion #culture #evolution

For those who missed the @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social conference in Durham last September, the recorded talks are now freely available to watch here: underline.io/events/456/l...

Reiterating "that RMET scores are unsubstantiated, and thus uninterpretable" & again recommending "that researchers stop using the RMET as a measure of social cognitive ability and re-evaluate existing research findings based on RMET scores" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... autism-relevant

Wow! I received highly positive feedback on my manuscript during the review process for Psychology for Religion and Spirituality. I'll give my best effort to complete the revisions.

JOHN SYKES (THIN LIZZY, WHITESNAKE, Etc.) Dead At 65 metalinjection.net/this-is-just...

We tested 10 behavioral interventions to mitigate #climatechange in 63 countries (N = 59,440) The interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to non-climate skeptics, and differed across outcomes. Our paper is in Science Advances : www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...