Francisco Cruz
@cruzf.bsky.social
SocPsych Ph.D. Student - Princeton Uni, Uni of Lisbon Lay beliefs about (psych) science Twitter/X: @cruz_fcorreia
Excited to share a new preprint of my latest paper: "The Social Psychology of the Living and the Dead" In this work, we set a research agenda for exploring the social psychology of the dead as a potential lens through which we can learn about the social psychology of the living 1/
Can reading one article change your belief in free will? New studies say maybe—but the effect doesn’t last. Our beliefs might be more resilient than they seem New work by @olivergenschow.bsky.social @protzko.bsky.social @sebraem.bsky.social 💡
a man pointing to a sign that says believe
ALT: a man pointing to a sign that says believe
media.tenor.com
New paper! 🚨 Does studying psychology change how people think about psychology (even at an intuitive level)? 🤔 We tracked students across their degree and found shifts in their beliefs about the bases of psychological phenomena and their scientific explainability. 1/5
Even if you tell people cognitive biases are good & lead to good outcomes, we still think they have the bias less than others. Only when we see the bias as very desirable we might think we are = to others on it. From @cruzf.bsky.social & André Mata link.springer.com/content/pdf/... #psych #phdsky
Visible light 🔆 or electromagnetic waves 📡: Which helps people understand better? In a new post for Character & Context (@spspnews.bsky.social), I dive into my work with @tanialombrozo.bsky.social on how jargon shapes scientific understanding. Check it out here! spsp.org/news/charact...
Using Jargon Can Make Bad Logic Seem Satisfying | SPSP
Although technical language can make something harder to understand, it can have a convenient advantage.
spsp.org
🇵🇹 Recentemente, estive à conversa com o @tiagoramalho.bsky.social a respeito da investigação que tenho conduzido. 💡 Falámos sobre temas que me entusiasmam: Sobreconfiança e aprendizagem de ciência, como isto é impactado pela inteligência artificial, etc. Para os interessados👇
Público@publico.pt · 12mo agoEstudo liderado por investigador português mostra que o jargão pode ser útil para preencher as lacunas numa explicação científica, mas não ajuda a que o público compreenda a informação.
So grateful for the chance to attend the EASP Summer School organized by @jimaceverett.bsky.social. Huge thanks to @jimaceverett.bsky.social and @mgreinecke.bsky.social for your mentorship in the Moral Psych of AI workstream, and to all of the other amazing students I had the chance to learn from!
🚨Check out our new paper with @boissinesther.bsky.social, Alexandra Delmas & @wimdeneys.bsky.social in Acta Psych! 📹 We show that video debiasing training can boost reasoning accuracy - not just deliberation, but intuition too! 🔓 Open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Quick summary👇
Research by @cruzf.bsky.social & @tanialombrozo.bsky.social suggests laypeople may find explanations containing jargon more satisfying despite understanding them less well because they assume the jargon fills gaps in explanations that are otherwise incomplete: buff.ly/FWgSBaZ
🚨 I’m incredibly excited to share this one: Latest paper out in Nature Human Behaviour! Publishing in Nature has always been a goal of mine, and I’m so happy I got there with work developed at Princeton, where I learned so much and grew as a researcher. 1/9
🚨 New Research Published! 🚨 "Motivated Bias Blind Spot: People confess to more or less bias depending on its desirability" link.springer.com/article/10.1... 1/5
Motivated bias blind spot: people confess to more or less bias depending on its desirability - Mind & Society
Though people readily claim that others fall prey to several biases, they are less likely to recognize those same biases in themselves – a tendency termed bias blind spot (Pronin et al. in Personality...
link.springer.com
1/ 🧠 New research out now! Why do people think some psychological phenomena (like falling in love) are harder to explain scientifically than others (like reading a map)? Turns out it depends on the type of explanation people think about!
🚨 New paper out! 🚨 "The spirit is noble, but the flesh is corrupt: lay beliefs about the bases of (im)moral behavior" www.researchgate.net/publication/... 1/4
The spirit is noble, but the flesh is corrupt: lay beliefs about the bases of (im)moral behavior | Request PDF
Request PDF | On Apr 23, 2025, Francisco Cruz and others published The spirit is noble, but the flesh is corrupt: lay beliefs about the bases of (im)moral behavior | Find, read and cite all the resear...
researchgate.net
Absolutely thrilled to announce that I've been selected as a recipient of the APA's 2024 Anne Anastasi Graduate Student Research Award! To me, interdisciplinarity is key to good research -- and being recognized as doing research that embodies that is a dream come true! 1/3
New paper out! 🎓 📝 In previous work, we found that people process faces in paintings like natural faces, even for art styles high on distortion (e.g., Cubism) - using behavioral tasks. Does this hold for neuronal activity? 1/4
From Perugino to Picasso revisited: Electrophysiological responses to faces in paintings from differ...
Behavioral research (Ventura, et al., 2023) suggested that pictorial representations of faces varying along a realism-distortion spectrum elicit holis…
sciencedirect.com
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...
Prejudice Against Social Science "Group membership in the more prestigious hard sciences is related to a stronger tendency to downplay the intellectual contribution of social science disciplines compared to other hard science disciplines." #MetaSci #PhilSci #AcademicSky 🧪
Serge GUIMOND @seguimon1.bsky.social · 3y agojournals.plos.org/plosone/arti... Intergrp bias in science? Researchers in high status scientific field, esp when Having little contact with other fields, display a strong in group bias #PsychSciSky #socialpsych #polisky #sociology
New paper out! This time in a different capacity - that of a forecaster! It was an interesting experience to try and harness intuitions and pieces of evidence I was aware of when trying to predict the evolution of discrimination Interesting - and surprising imo - results below
Nick Byrd, Ph.D.@byrdnick.com · 3y agoHow has gender bias in hiring changed from 1976 to 2020? (1) "bias in favor of male over female[s] was eliminated and, if anything, slightly reversed ...starting in 2009 for mixed-gender and male-[typed] jobs in our sample [of] 244 effect sizes from 85...audits and 361,645 ...job applications". ...
When you discover new effects using preregistration, high power, & replicate faithfully with open materials, you get a replication rate of 86% & effect sizes 97% as big! Our new published paper with so many wonderful researchers: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Really interesting take on my work by @xphilosopher.bsky.social It's fascinating to see psychology and philosophy converge to inform one another If any of you want to discuss this topic further, just reach out to me! I'd be glad to share data and/or materials, a copy of the paper, etc.
Experimental Philosophy@xphilosopher.bsky.social · 3y agoWhat are people’s ordinary intuitions about the mind-body problem? @cruzf.bsky.social and André Mata have an exciting new series of studies showing that people tend to have *conflicting intuitions*. They are drawn to dualism but also drawn to physicalism
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...
Meredith Martin@mmvty.bsky.social · 3y agopli.princeton.edu/about-pli/em... post-docs at PLI
Really interesting take! 👉 Opens the door to research focused on when people go for one intuition or its opposite Also, aligns with my own (TBPublished) research: People are intuitive dualists, but attribute more material basis for psych phenomena when recruiting their more deliberate beliefs!
Experimental Philosophy@xphilosopher.bsky.social · 3y agoWhy do we find opposing intuitions about philosophical questions? I argue that recent results suggest a new picture: - It’s mostly NOT about different people having different intuitions - It’s about individual people having CONFLICTING INTUITIONS philpapers.org/archive/JOSC...
Mug: Obtained 👌 Onboarding: Complete ✅️ Looking forward tk the months to come, as a Visiting Student at Princeton University
Late to the party, only got to read this piece today. Great journalism though: It focuses not only on the allegations, but also on the parallel development of the field (extra points for mentioning the replication crisis)! Way communicate about science to a general audience
The Harvard Professor and the Bloggers
When Francesca Gino, a rising academic star, was accused of falsifying data — about how to stop dishonesty — it didn’t just torch her career. It inflamed a crisis in behavioral science.
nytimes.com
Starting tomorrow, I will be attending Princeton University as a visiting student! I will have the opportunity to conduct research in one of the world's leading Psychology departments, surrounded by researchers and professors I look up to - still feels surreal!