Samani and Baumard map out trends in Romantic love in Persian literature from 10th century to 20th century CE. They find an increasing emphasis on romantic love over time, particularly during the Safavid era. This may reveal a link w economic development www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Fan and Baumard reveal new evidence of rising individualism over history, which suggests that wealth rather than Protestantism contributed to individualism www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

And last but not least, Obshonka and colleagues find that Roman rule explains puzzling variation in modern well-being differences across Germany Ancient Roman investment in infrastructure may explain why Southwestern Germans are so happy and healthy today www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

McClain and Kenny dig into the history of collectivism in Japan, conducting a pre-registered analysis of self-reported collectivism and tightness in the Japanese social survey and linking responses to historical subsistence patterns across Japan www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@joannaschug.bsky.social leads a paper on gendered racial stereotypes. They show that the civil rights movement coincided with a rise in language about black men, but not black women www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@mohammadatari.bsky.social and I begin with an editorial reflecting on the origins, current trends, and future of historical psych The future requires strong causal identification and theorizing about how institutions can cement or change historical trends www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

On election day, I wanna announce that I am recruiting social psych PhD students for my lab at UIC. My lab focuses on racial identities (esp Asian, Latino, MENA Americans) and intra-minority conflict/ coalition. So please tell your students to pick me! All details on my website: www.pbandjlab.com

Our "Historical Psychology" special issue is now out in CRESP! www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu... Co-edited with @mohammadatari.bsky.social and featuring historical perspectives on love, racial identity, emotion expression, well-being, collectivism, religion, and more! Brief 🧵

I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be joining the faculty at @umassamherst.bsky.social next year as an assistant professor in Psychological & Brain Sciences! 🥳

When there is a random way to do something, there is a less random way that is better but requires more thought. In this case, regression models that make no sense don't belong in a multiverse analysis. An inferential regression without a causal justification is like an opinion without reasons.

Amazing paper!

We are hiring in Social Psychology! Tenure-track position, focus on the Psychology of Peace and Violence, UMass Amherst. Review of applications will begin on October 24th. Let us know if you have any questions! Link: careers.umass.edu/en-us/job/52...

New paper in Synthèse. Open access.

A truly fascinating review paper, covering a lot of cool research and creating new directions for future work. I just put it on the syllabus for my grad-level culture seminar. Highly recommend!

🔔The third Historical Psychology preconference at SPSP! We particularly encourage early-career researchers to present their work. Topics include cultural change, cultural evolution, history+AI, temporal text analysis, historical+geographical psych, ethnohistorical record, history as context, etc.

“The idea that humans evolved to be protective & sensitive to harm directed towards women appears increasingly popular in evolutionary psych [but] ethnographic evidence conflict with this perspective, [which seems] rooted in contemporary WEIRD values rather than an evolved psychological mechanism”

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

I am hoping to recruit a Ph.D. student to join the SPARC (Social Psychology of Activism, Resistance, & Change) Lab at @UVAPsyc in Fall 2026! You can find more info about my research on my website (ericshuman.com), and the program here (psychology.as.virginia.edu/social-psych...).

Hi all! Having recently moved to @uh.edu, I’ll be reviewing graduate applications to join the newly minted Worldviews in Motion lab for Fall 2026! Please share with anyone who might be interested 😊 For lab info, check out our (though it’s mostly me atm) website: www.abdoelnakouri.com

Join us tomorrow, Tuesday October 7th at 12PM EDT for a talk with former fellow Michael Tomasello! "Agency and the Organization of Human Experience." More info and abstract here: ow.ly/usIc50X4wS7 Zoom Link: pitt.zoom.us/j/96906545761

AI always calling your ideas “fantastic” can feel inauthentic, but what are sycophancy’s deeper harms? We find that in the common use case of seeking AI advice on interpersonal situations—specifically conflicts—sycophancy makes people feel more right & less willing to apologize.

Apropos of recent open science conversations - this paper is an awesome primer for grad students and faculty who want to learn more: online.ucpress.edu/collabra/art...

New chapter preprint: Is Empathic AI possible? osf.io/preprints/ps...

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: