I'm excited my commentary to @ashleyjthomas.bsky.social theory paper on infant representations of relationships is out! I, with Amanda Woodward, propose a novel relationship account of the infant resource distribution literature aligned with Thomas's core argument: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

New paper out with Yinyuan Zheng, Anam Barakzai, & Alex Shaw in Developmental Psychology on children's developing beliefs about loyalty in friendships. In 3 studies (N = 429) in 4- to 11-year-olds we find evidence for when kids think friends will be more upset at each other: doi.org/10.1037/dev0...

New review paper on the development of friendship psychology/ cognition (w/ @zoeliberman.bsky.social): By age 6, children appear to recognize friendship as a ranking-based relationship with outstanding social expectations and obligations. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Young children's friendship expectations align with evolutionary frameworks

Across the lifespan, friends are critical social partners. Prominent evolutionary theories—such as the Banker's Paradox (Tooby & Cosmides, 1996)—propo…

sciencedirect.com

New article led by Mitchell Landers and with Peter DeScioli, me, & Alex Shaw is now out in a special issue on friendship (@jaimiekrems.bsky.social)! Read it here: authors.elsevier.com/a/1m-Dc3tz49... 🧵

New article led by Mitchell Landers and with Peter DeScioli, me, & Alex Shaw is now out in a special issue on friendship (@jaimiekrems.bsky.social)! Read it here: authors.elsevier.com/a/1m-Dc3tz49... 🧵

#CDS2026 is quickly approaching! The UChicago Social Kids Lab (PIs: Katie Kinzler and Alex Shaw) has lots of work to share with you, so please come check it out! @cogdevsoc.bsky.social @amackiel.bsky.social @erindkim.bsky.social

🧵 New preprint with my advisor, Alex Shaw! We asked: What does “popularity” actually mean? Is it a distinct status category with specific features? We turned to elementary-schoolers, who have just begun to experience their own "popularity hierarchies," for some answers. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Our paper finding that infants infer helpers’ relationships, and not their dispositions, is now out in PNAS! Sharing in case anyone needs something to read on the way home from #CDS2026 ;) doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Lindsey Powell@lindseypowell.bsky.social · last yr.

New preprint! Led by Bill Pepe, with @brandonwoo.bsky.social and @ashleyjthomas.bsky.social. We asked if infants think helping and hindering stem from actors' dispositions (i.e. good/nice v bad/mean) or their social relationships, by testing expectations for future behavior: osf.io/preprints/ps...

I’m excited to present my research on how kids (Thursday) and adults (Saturday) reason about help requests as diagnostic cues of friendship strength at #SPSP2026 with the DIBS Lab (PI: Alex Shaw)

Katie Vasquez@ktvasq.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Excited for #SPSP2026 in my home city! The UChicago DIBS Lab (PI: Alex Shaw) has lots of presentations and we would love to see you there! Come learn more about friendship, morality, leadership, intellectual property, and "coolness". @spspnews.bsky.social @amackiel.bsky.social

⭐ Out now in Developmental Science ⭐ "Sounds of Hidden Agents: The development of causal reasoning about musical sounds" (by Minju Kim and me) causal reasoning, music/auditory cognition, event reconstruction, kids' integration of information... onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Pleased to announce my new open access paper out in Developmental Psychology: The Development of the “First Thing That Comes to Mind” with @xphilosopher.bsky.social and @ebonawitz.bsky.social psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2026-25569-001.html #CogSci #PsychSciSki #DevSci (1/10)

1. New paper first-authored by former post-doc Young-eun Lee (currently at MIT with @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social) now in press at JECP! More info in thread below, full text here: columbiasamclab.weebly.com/uploads/5/9/.... 🧪 #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc #CogPsyc @socphilpsych.bsky.social

“Conservatism once warned against the dangers of unilateral executive power. But today’s Republican White House happily wields that very power to crush its cultural rivals.” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Trump’s Attacks Threaten Much More Than Harvard

If the government succeeds in bullying the richest university into submission, what institutions will be safe?

theatlantic.com

"Shamanism" by @manvir.bsky.social is now out. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730339.... It's a deep, original, and fun book—highly recommended. My blurb:

Sometimes people say its fair for those with advantage to get more (best office to the CEO...); other times, the opposite seems more fair (... charity to the needy). In this new work, Arthur and Xavier try to explain why. See the preprint link and explainer thread below: osf.io/preprints/ps...

xavier roberts-gaal@xrg.bsky.social · last yr.

the functional form of moral judgment is (sometimes) the nash bargaining solution new preprint👇

Preprint of data from my first project as a postdoc with With @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social and Liz Spelke. Data and writing from 2019, figures are new :) osf.io/preprints/ps... First, we replicate @lindseypowell.bsky.social 's finding that infants reach for imitators using a very different setup.

Thank you to Alex Mackiel and Amanda Woodward, who also wondered about the social availability hyp. in their forthcoming commentary on my paper a bout relationships (my paper here, www.cambridge.org/core/service...) not yet their commentary).

It was a great time giving the moral development lecture to the Developmental Psychology class I'm a teaching assistant for this academic term.