Although men and boys are more directly and indirectly aggressive than women and girls in most contexts, a study of 24 countries finds one specific context in which this pattern is reversed: the sibling relationship. In PNAS Nexus: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Is extreme wealth a moral failure, or a badge of honor? A global study co-led by USC Dornsife reveals what really drives our judgments.

Glad this is finally out! Check out @igi.bsky.social ‘s thread! Thanks to @edouardmachery.bsky.social and team.

We know that a consensus of opinions is persuasive, but how reliable is this effect across people and types of consensus, and are there any kinds of claims where people care less about what other people think? This is what we tested in our new(ish) paper in @psychscience.bsky.social

🎉New paper out @Psychological Review on the neuroscience of intergroup contact🎉 Led by the fantastic @margaretrwelte.bsky.social ‬and Jas Cloutier! @apajournals.bsky.social @spspnews.bsky.social @sansmeeting.bsky.social #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #AcademicSky psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

Only a small % of people engage in toxic activity online, but they’re responsible for a disproportionate share of hostile or misleading content on nearly every platform Because super-users are so active, they dominate our collective impression of the internet www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

Most people don’t find excessive wealth immoral when considered separately from economic inequality; however, people in countries with high GDP and high levels of inequality find being too rich more morally wrong than being of average wealth. In PNAS Nexus: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Many thanks to HBES for this recognition and congratulations to Rising Stars @mohammadatari.bsky.social @danielredhead.bsky.social @juliastern.bsky.social 💫

Thanks.

I’m looking for a postdoctoral scholar to join me in the Self & Society Laboratory at UC Riverside! Sharing would be much appreciated! aprecruit.ucr.edu/JPF02104

New preprint! 🔔 We apply computational text analysis to over 2000 years of historical corpora in Classical Chinese. Beyond descriptives, we test the hypothesis that kin-based institutions shape important aspects of socio-cooperative psychology.

Psychological inoculation is a very popular intervention against online misinfo, but it hasn't been tested using real-world outcomes in realistic scenarios. In a new paper just published in PNAS Nexus, this is what we did: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar... Short version: It didn't really work.

Atari, Henrich & Schulz (2025): "We discuss the need for psychology to adopt a more holistic lens and propose a research agenda that integrates historical processes, cultural dynamics and ecological variations into psychological inquiry." #psyscisky #ehbea 🧪

This Perspective by Atari et al argues for psychology to become a historical and geographical science, a transformation they term the chronospatial revolution. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our new paper is now out in Nature Human Behaviour: The chronospatial revolution in psychology. With Joe Henrich & Jonathan Schulz. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

With everything that's going on, I haven't been sharing much about our research. But, today, I'm happy to share that @jennrichler.bsky.social wrote about our papers on "Double Standards in Judging Collective Action" for @natrevpsychol.nature.com! rdcu.be/enhkl

Our new paper, with my amazing PhD student, Aliah Zewail, is published in the European Review of Social Psychology. We review (and encourage) historical and geographical research on morality from a pluralistic perspective. Link: doi.org/10.1080/1046...

Borrowing data from @mohammadatari.bsky.social; we show that AI reflects very high-HDI nation's culture and values. These gaps are certainly more important that relative performance on coding assays and bar exams. Digitial divides of decades past embodied in training data and design.

I'm excited that I can finally share what I've been working on for the past 9 months: The United Nations 2025 Human Development Report: "A matter of choice: People and possibilities in the age of AI" 🧵 hdr.undp.org/content/huma...

@mohammadatari.bsky.social and @markthornton.bsky.social channel their dark sides to battle it out in a debate on AI in research: Dr. Atari makes the case for “less is more,” while Dr. Thornton champions the potential of neural networks in tackling complex analyses. #SANS2025

Mohammad Atari @mohammadatari.bsky.social opens - AI models have cultural and demographic biases. They can be agents of assistance, and should not replace humans when studying humans

AI in social & affective neuroscience: Caution or acceleration? 🤖 Mohammad Atari @mohammadatari.bsky.social 🆚 Mark Thornton @markthornton.bsky.social Can AI be our Co-Pilot - or should we slow down? LaSalle Ballroom, don’t miss it! #SANS2025

My new piece in @theguardian.com Techno-optimism is human pessimism. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Thanks to my mentors, collaborators, and students.

A study finds that moral values predict environmental action as well as or better than political party affiliation. US counties where residents prioritize purity and fairness report higher environmental concerns and lower carbon emissions. In PNAS Nexus: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

WEIRD Questions: Diversifying Conceptual Sampling - “Our species offers a varied distribution of cognitive, emotional & behavioral repertoires, but researchers have sampled topics & questions from a small part of this distribution, leaving out a variety of cognitive processes, emotions, & behaviors”

A really important study with comprehensive analyses! I love this plot:

It’s a privilege to work with this awesome team. Check out my students’ presentations at SPSP.

Some of us have been meeting up at SPSP for the last few years. This year marks our fifth gathering. Email one of us if you want to join! Location TBD. @mdehghani.bsky.social @drsanaz.bsky.social @simine.com @dorsaamir.bsky.social

been thinking a lot in my lab about what it means to use the state to go after your enemies (for no reason at all). the beginnings of that thinking are in our paper on what makes state punishment unique (now in press at EJSP) #psychscisky #cognition #socpsyc #philsky osf.io/preprints/ps...

(1/4) Our new JEP:G paper dives into how moral values and misinformation spread on social media: media.mola-lab.org/file/1737039...

“Women are asked more questions during a seminar and the questions asked of women presenters are more likely to be patronizing or hostile. These effects are not due to women presenting in different fields, different seminar series, or different topics…” www.nber.org/papers/w28494

"Rather than chasing newsworthy 'surprising' effects that turn out to be difficult to replicate, we should strive to uncover the general principles that underlie social phenomena, whether surprising or not." New article by Arie Kruglanski and @sophiamoskalenko.bsky.social Few quotes follow 🧵

Another reason why LLMs should absolutely never be used to do emotion detection. I don’t really think anything should be used to do emotion detection because emotion its so variable by culture, context, and individual. Plus the consequences of errors here could be so bad.

🤖 New paper with Simon Myers: People expect artificial moral advisors to be more utilitarian, and distrust utilitarian moral advisors 🤖 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @moralsmyers.bsky.social

🚨New Preprint🚨 *Moral Stereotyping in Large Language Models* We show that LLMs are inaccurate in estimating the moral values of diverse cultures: LLMs stereotype cultures in predictable ways. Led by my star Ph.D. student, Aliah Zewail osf.io/preprints/ps...

Since immigrants (and their children) are a frequent topic of discussion, I thought I'd remind folks that the U.S. National Academies studied the effects of immigration on the U.S. and published a free report. Here's one finding that stands out to me. 1/4 nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/2355...

Moral psychology postdoc opportunity at the University of Toronto! Please repost, and pass on to anyone you think might be interested.

One month to go before applications due for the 2025 EASP Summer School that we're organising and hosting in Canterbury at the University of Kent. I am so excited to bring students to this corner of the world I grew up in and love so much 🙏❤️ blogs.kent.ac.uk/easp2025/

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/...

Cool new paper showing that moral relativism signals tolerance, whereas moral objectivism signals intolerance. Awesome work @andresm.bsky.social and team! Link and further details 👇

Not an academic, but when it comes to measurement, I’d recommend “Historical and Conceptual Foundations of Measurement in the Human Sciences”

It’ll be a fun discussion on AI in psychology and neuroscience. And apparently my view is labeled “caution” 😁

We're hiring new #nlp faculty this year! Asst or Assoc Professors in NLP at UMass CICS -- careers.umass.edu/amherst/en-u...

Our new preprint on the historical psychology of prejudice is out! Led by Danica Dillion

We're ready for another great day of science! Starting off day 2 of #APSGlobal with a workshop from @mohammadatari.bsky.social: Measuring Culture Through Computational Text Analysis

BOOM! New review paper by Eleonore Neufeld et al. reviews a host of recent experimental studies on generics… …and argues that there's growing evidence against the whole idea of a special connection between generics and social/political beliefs philpapers.org/rec/NEUGGL

Guys check this out. This is spot on 🎯

🔔 New paper out in PNAS 🔔 “Large Language Models based on historical text could offer informative tools for behavioral science” W/ Michael Varnum, Nicolas Baumard, & Kurt Gray www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Finally out after a long collaboration between colleagues from different world regions Hope it contributes to our understanding under what conditions most of us produce knowledge online.ucpress.edu/collabra/art...