Recruiting PhD students for Fall 2026! The Coupled Minds Lab at @tamu.bsky.social will use a multimodal approach combining fMRI hyperscanning, computational modeling, and natural language processing to study how conversations transform minds. Learn more: coupled-minds.github.io Due Date Dec 1

Come be my colleague! The Department of Psychology at Princeton and @princetonneuro.bsky.social‬ are jointly searching for an Assistant Prof in Cog Neuro. puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...

Strangers chatted once a week for 6 weeks and as they became closer, their self-reported emotions were *less* aligned after conversations. Fits with recent work (by @sebospeer.bsky.social @dianatamir.bsky.social et al) suggesting friends are free to explore and diverge

📢 The Princeton Social Neuroscience Lab is hiring! 📢 We're seeking a full-time Research Specialist/Lab Manager to study naturalistic conversation, social cognition, and spontaneous thought. More info here: psnlab.princeton.edu/join-us Please apply and share!

Not in my name. If you are a Jewish university affiliate and want to express that cuts to university research do not protect Jews and do not address anti-semitism, consider signing here: forms.gle/prnRbq69a6YN...

If, like me, you (a) oppose research funding cuts to US institutions and (b) are Jewish, please consider signing this open letter: forms.gle/prnRbq69a6YN...

🚨 SUMMER SCHOOL! Announcing the 2nd Birmingham-Leiden Summer School in Computational Social Cognition, Sep 2-5, 2025. Fantastic line-up of keynote: Matthew Rushworth, Diana Tamir @dianatamir.bsky.social, and David Amodio @davidamodio.bsky.social . 👇 Apply by 18 April (compsoccog.com) and RT!

Are you a junior faculty member interested in spending 2-4 weeks at Princeton Psych? Please apply for our Microsabbatical program! It’s a fully funded visit for professional development and creating long-term collaborations. psych.princeton.edu/diversity/mi...

New paper (kind of) just out in the British Journal of Social Psychology! In our social lives, we’re constantly trying to infer the opinions and beliefs of others. What should I discuss with a new acquaintance? What kind of food will my guests like? bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

How do we reach agreement? @dianatamir.bsky.social @shannon47burns.bsky.social @falklab.bsky.social @haransened.bsky.social , Laetitia Mwilambwe-Tshilobo, Lily Tsoi and I just published a preprint on the conversational dynamics supporting agreement. [1/8] 🧵

🧵1/ Ever wondered what makes for a good conversation? @shannon47burns @DianaTamir @falklab @L_MwilambweT, Lily Tsoi and I used fMRI hyperscanning to answer this question by tracking the dynamics of naturalistic conversations Now out in @NatureComms! doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Across two EMA studies conducted during COVID, we find that face-to-face interaction predicts higher short- and long-term wellbeing; face-to-face interaction outperforms virtual interactions in supporting well-being; and voice calling and texting are the best alternatives to face-to-face interaction

Thrilled to share that my first lead-author publication with Sam Grayson, Mia Kussman, @mildner.bsky.social, and @dianatamir.bsky.social is out in Computers in Human Behavior Reports! In-person and virtual social interactions improve well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic doi.org/10.1016/j.ch...

Why do we think? @mildner.bsky.social and I answer this question by analyzing the dynamics of thousands of spontaneous thought streams. We test two functions of spontaneous thought: optimizing memory and keeping the mind focused on ongoing goal pursuits. (1/5) psnlab.princeton.edu/sites/g/file...

New paper out in Emotion with Elyssa Barrick, @markthornton.bsky.social and Zidong Zhao! doi.org/10.1037/emo0... What makes someone good at predicting others' emotions? 🤔 (1/5)

People use their own minds as a reference point when generating inferences about others’ minds & such self-referential information can bias social inferences. This Review by Andrew Todd & @dianatamir.bsky.social discusses features that amplify and attenuate such egocentrism during mentalizing. 🧪

Come do a microsabbatical with us at the Princeton Psychology Department! psych.princeton.edu/diversity/mi...

New paper at Nature Communications from me & @dianatamir.bsky.social! "Neural representations of situations and mental states are composed of sums of representations of the actions they afford" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I’m pleased to announce our preprint 😃 – Toward a More Biologically Plausible Neural Network Model of Latent Cause Inference. URL: arxiv.org/abs/2312.08519 (1/N)

At NeurIPS this week, led by Caroline Lee in collab w/ Haxby lab: we present the Hyper-HMM, to simultaneously align participants' spatial brain patterns (like hyperalignment) and temporal dynamics (with event segmentation), and align brain events to stimulus features! www.dpmlab.org/papers/8510_...

Very excited to share that this paper with Alex Sanchez, Buju Dasgupta, and Mahzarin Banaji is now out in JPSP: doi.org/10.1037/pspa... and still available as a preprint here: osf.io/preprints/ps.... In the paper we ask if (when) positive Black and negative White exemplars shift implicit race bias.

Is better writing rewarded in peer review? Our newly published suggests the answer is “Yes”! doi.org/10.1016/j.je... #EconSky 🧵 (1/7)

Belated “new paper” thread about a fun project led by @atabk.bsky.social Cortico-hippocampal networks carry information about characters and their relationships in an extended narrative www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Just created my first syllabus that includes a policy on AI assistance. This resource was super helpful: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Excited to share our recent work on naturalistic social perception during movie viewing with Lucy Chang and @lisik.bsky.social. Representational similarity analysis revealed that STG and MTG serve as central hubs for naturalistic social processing. biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

📍 I'm migrating to Bluesky from the evil empire, so reposting about some recent work📍 psyarxiv.com/agprs Tons of clinical theories & therapies assume mental activities — ruminating, worrying, SIdeating, self-judging, etc. — serve a *function* — ie. are acquired & maintained by consequences 1/2

Now in press at AESP, from @dianatamir.bsky.social & me: "Predicting other people shapes the social mind" doi.org/10.1016/bs.a...

why do we love stories about bad guys? in a piece for Aeon/Psyche, @jowylie.bsky.social and i argue we are filling in our social maps with rich information about the circumstances and history that shape the minds and motives of these characters psyche.co/ideas/what-i...

In a new paper, we examined 11 interventions to address #climatechange beliefs and behavior (M = 59,440 in 63 countries). These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors. Read the full paper here: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Do you study thinking? Consider submitting an abstract for a special issue on "Understanding Involuntary Thought and Affect through Big Data and AI" at Technology, Mind, and Behavior tmb.apaopen.org/pub/scmf23rc...

Join the Princeton Psych dept this summer as part of our inaugural Visiting Internship for PhD Students (VIPS) program! If you have no summer funding, the approval of your advisor, and matching research interests, consider applying. Deets: psych.princeton.edu/diversity/vi...

One more week to apply for our joint faculty position in Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Computer Science Dept, in neuroAI and intelligent systems, broadly construed. Do you fit? Yes. But feel free to contact me with q's. puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...

Nature Mental Health Recent advances in the neuroscience of spontaneous and off-task thought: implications for mental health #neuroskyence www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Investigating Linguistic Alignment in Collaborative Dialogue: A Study of Syntactic and Lexical Patterns in Middle School Students: http://osf.io/nbw8x/

On prefrontal working memory and hippocampal episodic memory: Unifying memories stored in weights and activation slots https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.05.565662v1

Wow! People spend 30-50% of their time thinking about something other than what they are currently doing. Glad to know it's not just me & excited to dig into this review later. #Neuroskyence www.nature.com/articles/s44...

New preprint with @HayoungAhn, @jschleiderphd.bsky.social, and @leahsom! We find that language becomes both more psychologically distanced and more *abstract* when regulating emotions. Results nicely align with Construal Level Theory and extend understanding of lang-emotion relations! osf.io/a2zv3/

Some news: I’m honored to be one of this year’s recipients of the National Academies Eric and Wendy Schmidt Award for Excellence in Science Communication! I’m really grateful to the National Academies and Schmidt Futures for this award and recognition. 1/7. www.nationalacademies.org/news/2023/11...

Sense of Self in First-Time Pregnancy: http://osf.io/cq967/

Now available at Nature Communications! When do adolescents reach adult levels of executive function? We used FOUR independent datasets (N>10,000), behavioral data from 17 distinct EF tasks, and nonlinear modeling to address this and related questions. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Princeton Language and Intelligence Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for people who have recently received or are about to receive a Ph.D. or doctorate degree and work on large AI models! pli.princeton.edu/about-pli/em...

Impressive new VR & hpc + PFC recording study from Annabelle Singer's Lab: New information triggers prospective codes to adapt for flexible navigation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Mood fluctuations shift cost–benefit tradeoffs in economic decisions www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Apparently ~40% of crowdsource workers use LLMs when completing surveys Relatively simple fix for text responses: Add Javascript to Qs to prevent pasting Credit to Jiabi Wang for idea + Kaushal Addanki for code below github.com/rafmbatista/...

The Case for Longtermism: Concern for the far future as a catalyst for pro-climate action: http://osf.io/9ngmc/

For years we have tended to discount activation signals in the white matter as artifact. It's becoming clear now that this was a mistake - white matter shows stimulus-driven activation similar (though much smaller) to gray matter. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37824529/

Despite concerns of YouTube's algorithm leading to right-wing rabbit holes, Ibrahim et al. conduct an algorithmic audit and find that the algorithm pulls users away from political extremes and even skews left-leaning doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

Today a group of respected climate scientists released their 2023 report on the terrifying state of our #climate. It should be read by every policymaker, decisionmaker, and journalist on the planet. Here is a thread of some key takeaways. #greensky #energysky 1/n

New paper out! "Large language models show human-like content biases in transmission chain experiments" #CulturalEvolution #cssky 🧪 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...