How do humans keep inventing tools and technologies that no single person could create alone? Our new preprint, led by @anilyaman.bsky.social & @ts-brain.bsky.social shows that semantic knowledge guides innovation and drives cultural evolution. 🧠📘 arxiv.org/abs/2510.12837

COSMOS🧑‍🚀 + TOKYO⛩️🏯 = ✨THE BEST WORKSHOP EVER!!!✨ Thanks @thecharleywu.bsky.social and @watarutoyokawa.bsky.social for organizing everything 💙

🚨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🧵

*Sharing for our department’s trainees* 🧠 Looking for insight on applying to PhD programs in psychology? ✨ Apply by Sep 25th to Stanford Psychology's 9th annual Paths to a Psychology PhD info-session/workshop to have all of your questions answered! 📝 Application: tinyurl.com/pathstophd2025

So pleased and proud to share this work. I started trying to think clearly about authority punishment in 2018. This new paper with Setayesh Radkani is the first fruit of that labour. Why so much struggle? See thread. 1/17

looking forward to seeing everyone at #CCN2025! here's a snapshot of the work from my lab that we'll be presenting on speech neuroscience 🧠 ✨

Excited to be sharing my latest work with @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social at #CogSci2025! Learning usually occurs when we encounter new data. But we also have the capacity to reflect on our past experiences. What can we learn from simulating past experience? 📃 cicl.stanford.edu/papers/yang2... 1/

Proud of the work from hmc-lab.com & collaborators @ #CogSci2025 this year, but sad I cant be there myself @hanqizhou.bsky.social @davidnagy.bsky.social @alexthewitty.bsky.social @stepalminteri.bsky.social @brendenlake.bsky.social @kefang.bsky.social @rdhawkins.bsky.social @meanwhileina.bsky.social

Excited to share that our paper is now out in Neuron @cp-neuron.bsky.social (dlvr.it/TM9zJ8). Our perception isn't a perfect mirror of the world. It's often biased by our expectations and beliefs. How do these biases unfold over time, and what shapes their trajectory? A summary thread. (1/13)

Excited to share our new work at #CogSci2025! We explore how people plan deceptive actions, and how detectives try to see through the ruse and infer what really happened based on the traces left behind. 🕵️‍♀️ Paper: osf.io/preprints/osf/vqgz5_v1 Code: github.com/cicl-stanford/recursive_deception 1/

Looking forward to #cogsci2025 next week - here's a list of presentations from my lab!

🎤 "Your #CogSci presentation was quite good this year." How flattered or offended will you be? The answer may depend on whether you speak British or American English 🇺🇸🇬🇧. Our new #CogSci2025 paper reveals systematic differences in how different cultures interpret the same words.

🚨New paper! We know models learn distinct in-context learning strategies, but *why*? Why generalize instead of memorize to lower loss? And why is generalization transient? Our work explains this & *predicts Transformer behavior throughout training* without its weights! 🧵 1/

So excited to see this paper with @ckaicher.bsky.social and @cantlonlab.bsky.social finally out!

🔆 I'm hiring! 🔆 There are two open positions: 1. Summer research position (best for master's or graduate student); focus on computational social cognition. 2. Postdoc (currently interviewing!); focus on computational social cognition and AI safety. sites.google.com/corp/site/sy...

I’m pleased to share our new review article, “Attending to Remember: Recent Advances in Methods and Theory”, written with Haopei Yang (HY), Alice Xue, and Anthony Wagner, now out in Current Directions in Psychological Science. 🚀🧠 A brief thread 🧵 doi.org/10.1177/09637214251339452

New paper out in @plosbiology.org w/ Charlie, @phil-johnson.bsky.social, Ella, and Hinze 🎉 We track moving stimuli via EEG, find evidence that motion is extrapolated across distinct stages of processing + show how this effect may emerge from a simple synaptic learning rule! tinyurl.com/2szh6w5c

Essential tools for writing better code: Version control - Chapter 2, Part 1 of Better Code, Better Science

I've decided to start my own Substack, called Neural Strategies: russpoldrack.substack.com/p/introducin... - I will soon start releasing content from a new open-source book I'm developing, tentatively titled "Better Code, Better Science". Subscribe to receive each new section as soon as I post it!

Reserve your free tickets to SFI's upcoming Community Lecture! lensic.org/events/blais... Blaise Agüera y Arcas’ presents 'Computing, Life, and Intelligence' at the Lensic on 🗓️ May 20, 7:30pm MT in-person or online.

🚨 New @psychinquiry Issue 36:1 just dropped! Target article: Understanding Belief-Behavior Correspondence by @jgranadossamayoa.bsky.social & @dalbarra.bsky.social. Why don’t beliefs always drive actions? 🔗 www.tandfonline.com/toc/hpli20/3...

I am hiring a new Lab Manager to help run the NYU Center for Conflict & Cooperation. We start reviewing apps on MAY 1st and it pays over $58,000. Please share with anyone who might be interested! Please apply here: apply.interfolio.com/166620 See more details below:

Now out in JPSP ‼️ "Inference from social evaluation" with Zach Davis, Kelsey Allen, @maxkw.bsky.social, and @julianje.bsky.social 📃 (paper): psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-... 📜 (preprint): osf.io/preprints/ps...

Now officially out in Psychological Review 🥳 "Causation, Meaning, and Communication" by Ari Beller and me. 📃 (paper): psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-... 📜 (preprint): osf.io/preprints/ps...

🚨 I’m hiring a full-time lab manager to help me build my lab start in July or August 2025! 🚨 If you know any stellar candidates who might be interested, please send this their way. 🗓 Application review begins April 15 ⏰ Final deadline is April 25 📎 Apply here ➡️ lnkd.in/evhfqzTP

We often assume that specialized roles improve performance in multi-agent systems, but when does specialization emerge based on a given task and environment? 🧵👇 ⭐️ New preprint w/ Ruaridh Mon-Williams, @neilbramley.bsky.social, Chris Lucas, @natvelali.bsky.social & @cocoscilab.bsky.social

Advances in neuroscience have yielded massive, rich datasets from various analysis techniques and modalities. 🧠📈 In a @natureneuro.bsky.social perspective, researchers underscore the importance of an integrative approach to render a more complete picture of the brain.

As part of @sciencehomecoming.bsky.social, I wrote an opinion piece for San Antonio Express News on the dangers of cuts to federal science funding for today and tomorrow's scientists: www.expressnews.com/opinion/comm... @cantlonlab.bsky.social @spiantado.bsky.social

Grateful for the chance to share my thoughts on responsible use of LLMs in psychology research @spspnews.bsky.social #spsp2025. Here's a summary of my presentation for those who missed it. Thanks to @ashwinia.bsky.social for organizing this panel! How should LLMs be used in psychology research? 🧵

Out today in Nature Machine Intelligence! From childhood on, people can create novel, playful, and creative goals. Models have yet to capture this ability. We propose a new way to represent goals and report a model that can generate human-like goals in a playful setting... 1/N

How to computationaly🔢 identify persuasion and misinformation? And how can humam and AI🤖 resisit persuasions? Please come to my poster today 2:30-3:45 at #SPSP2025 belief and misinformation preconference. Joint work with @rdhawkins.bsky.social and @thecharleywu.bsky.social and Michael Franke

Excited to share a new paper with Daphna Shohamy & @nathanieldaw.bsky.social! Using fmri reactivation, we measured *when* people build preferences from memory. We found that people tend to do so before a choice, but that they also wait until choice time when options are linked to multiple memories

🚨 Now accepting commentary proposals!! 🚨Thrilled to share that our paper --- "Resource-rational contractualism: A triple theory of moral cognition" --- was accepted for publication at Behavioral and Brain Sciences and is open for commentary!

Does the culture you grow up in shape the way you see the world? In a new Psych Review paper, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I tackle this centuries-old question using the Müller-Lyer illusion as a case study. Come think through one of history's mysteries with us🧵(1/13):

🎶 Can movie soundtrack #music evoke mental images in the listener's mind? 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I am looking for a potential master’s student for my Group Dynamics and Social Change Lab! If you are interested, please reach out to me and/or apply for the Lehigh Psychology Graduate Program by March 15! psychology.cas.lehigh.edu/graduate

We're hiring a lab manager to start this summer in the @logicemotionlab.bsky.social! Submit CV, cover letter, and reference contact info by Feb 17th for priority review. Description of the lab's research focus, mission, and values are on our website! research-princeton.icims.com/jobs/20420/r...

madness

This is only the beginning.

Join us next Monday, Feb. 3 in the Psychology of Resistance virtual meeting series for a session with Dr. Eric Shuman and climate activists to discuss: "What do we know and what do we still need to know about the effects of disruptive collective action?" Registration and session info in🧵

The twist? Collective narcissism can harm the group it seems to glorify. Focus on image boosting means that the country is seen a brand, rather than a people. Fellow citizens are treated instrumentally, as means to an end. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

🔊 New paper just accepted in JPSP 🥳 In "Inference from social evaluation", we explore how people use social evaluations, such as judgments of blame or praise, to figure out what happened. 📜 osf.io/preprints/ps... 📎 github.com/cicl-stanfor... 1/6

Here's the kicker: "when ants work in groups, their performances rise significantly. Groups of people do not show such improvement and, when their communication is restricted, even display deteriorated performances." It's great that this paper includes movie clips of humans and ants in action!

Our new paper on why people love sad art The key question: You probably wouldn’t enjoy it if someone started telling you about how she is addicted to drugs and her life is failing apart. So why do you love it when she creates a work of art about that very same thing? osf.io/preprints/ps...

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 🧵👇

This is a very cool integration of LLMs + Bayesian methods. LLMs serve as *likelihoods*: how likely would the human be to have issued this (English) command, given a particular (symbolic) plan? No generation, just scoring :) A Bayesian agent can then resolve ambiguity in really sensible ways

New work in PNAS Nexus with @mlandauwells.bsky.social and @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social We ask: if two groups hold opposing beliefs, when does debunking by an authority lead to belief convergence and when does polarization persist? Paper: tinyurl.com/mr2e4kvx MIT News: tinyurl.com/3bud9z4f 🧵1/N