Why do people trust physicists and biologists more than economists or sociologists? In a new paper out in Public Understanding of Science, @hugoreasoning.bsky.social and I argue that it has to do with perceived precision and consensus. doi.org/10.1177/0963...

Sciences perceived as precise and consensual are more trusted - Jan Pfänder, Hugo Mercier, 2026

Research focused on the United States shows that people’s trust in science varies considerably between disciplines. Existing explanations of these trust gaps st...

doi.org

Reminder: two weeks are left to apply for the PhD and postdoc positions in my lab. See more info here www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/career/jo...

You roll a fair die, hoping to get a 6. If you are successful, did you *intentionally* roll a 6? In a new paper, I explain why people hesitate to call lucky outcomes intentional:🧵 direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

out today! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Chaz Firestone@chazfirestone.bsky.social · 2mo ago

You press ‘send’ on a high-stakes email but hesitate when lifting your finger. You make a chess move but linger on the piece before letting go. Familiar? In @pnas.org, Hanbei Zhou @ruizhegoh.bsky.social @ianbphillips.bsky.social & I show that response *duration* tracks confidence! shorturl.at/A9NVe

For four years, AI has reigned supreme – and lots of news organisations have jumped on the bandwagon/caught on/thought deeply about how they, too, could make use of it. What do they (want to) use it for? Increasingly for content creation. Full post here: open.substack.com/pub/felixsim...

Why do societies rely on rigid moral rules? Don't lie. Keep your promises. Don't steal. We all recognize there are good reasons to make exceptions. So why are moral rules so often categorical? Our new paper proposes an answer. 🧵

What function did ~100k-year-old engravings from Blombos Cave & Diepkloof serve? Decoration, identity marking, proto-writing? osf.io/preprints/ps... uses transmission chains + cognitive experiments to find out & help answering one of the hardest questions in cognitive archaeology. long thread! 1/

Natural history on canvas: Brueghel knew about bird-eating noctule bats Just published in @pnas.org, OA for all eyes Led by the one-and-only @romero-vidal.bsky.social, with the amazing @elena-tena.bsky.social and Sonia Sánchez-Navarro @ebdonana.bsky.social LINK: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

📢 Job Ad: I am looking for one doctoral researcher (75%) in my newly funded DFG project on misperceptions and factual information on immigration from 1.10. or soon after! 📌 Location: MZES, University of Mannheim 💢 Application Deadline: 21st of July

If you have (or will soon) complete your PhD & would like to join a thriving cultural evolution research group in NEW ZEALAND, drop me a line. UoA offers a handful of funded research fellowships. Applications must be made by a faculty member. Deadline August. Pls share with your students

📣 I'm hiring! Two positions (PhD student & Postdoc) in my ERC project Macroevolution of European Literature. Let's study the cultural evolution of literature using massive data 📚📈 📍Frankfurt | Apply by August 15 Details: www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/career/jo... Please repost to help spread the word!

I wrote a book! It's called WHY WE ASK WHY, and it's about the human drive to explain, combining psychology, philosophy, and stories. It will be released on October 6, but it's currently available for pre-order from Barnes & Noble at 25% off with code PREORDER25.

New paper with @sachaltay.bsky.social! A lot of people think AI can only make science worse. We argue agentic AI can actually be a great tool to do it better!

Sacha Altay@sachaltay.bsky.social · 2mo ago

AI agents are valuable epistemic tools. They let us look under the hood of scientific research, lowering the cost of verifying (and implementing) good methodological practices. With @edgardubourg.bsky.social, we propose a step-by-step method for using them. osf.io/preprints/ps...

www.nature.com/articles/s41... "Republicans experience higher exposure to Democrats than vice versa: the average Republican’s coworkers are 50% Democratic versus 32% Republican for the average Democrat."

Yet again www.nber.org/papers/w3535...

Okay so I read the whole working paper behind this claim. I’m going to accept the causal analysis as-is and explain why I still don’t think this makes sense. Starting with: the comparison is between counties with vs. without lots of iPhone network coverage, NOT owning vs. not owning an iPhone 🧵

NPR@npr.org · 2mo ago

Are smartphones causing people to have fewer children? A provocative new working paper explores the persistent drop in birth rates since the iPhone was introduced nearly two decades ago.

1. Attempted cancellations of prominent scholars as proxy wars on ideas one doesn't like: the case of Margaret Mead...and a mea culpa 🧪 #AcademicSky

✨ 🤖 New pre-print: Is realism dead and do people distrust everything, now that synthetic media is ubiquitous? It’s a bit more complicated.

Important @benmtappin.bsky.social on the need to carefully consider the relevant counterfactual when evaluating AI chatbots (also applies to social media!) benmtappin.substack.com/p/are-ai-cha...

New paper accepted as a proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society: "Inferring arithmetic skills from speed and accuracy”! We tested whether people were optimal in their inference of others' math skills. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Paying peer reviewers works. Expanded Fast & Fair experiment @biologyopen.bsky.social: • 5.5 vs 37.7 working days to decision with reviews • ~3 vs ~9 reviewer invitations per manuscript • no reduction in editor-assessed review quality • similar acceptance rates www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Non-amazon links for "Technopanic" For paperback to US/UK: shop.ingramspark.com/b/084 For paperback and ebook and all other destinations: kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/...

Why do humans punish? Our new paper, with @manvir.bsky.social, is out in Psychological Science! With experiments in a small-scale society (Mentawai) & the US, we test whether punitive cognition evolved to deter wrongdoing or restore fairness. link: tinyurl.com/msrmu7cc pdf: tinyurl.com/mvprz8fb

It exists!

Human history upended AGAIN www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...

Lost for 150,000 years: Rainforest discovery upends human history

For decades, scientists believed ancient humans avoided dense rainforests, treating them as nearly impossible environments for early survival. But a groundbreaking discovery in West Africa is rewritin...

sciencedaily.com

🚨Next week's talk at ARC Join us for a talk presented by Dr. Jan Pfänder @janpfa.bsky.social (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology). 📅 21 May 11:00 (Local Time Germany) @mpib-berlin.bsky.social or online See the link for details👇 www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/events/45727...

ARC Talk: Jan Pfänder, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag): Strengthening Trust in Climate Scientists in the US: A Megastudy Approach

mpib-berlin.mpg.de

🚨New paper alert!🚨 In our new paper with @oliviermorin.bsky.social, Rowan Hall, and Marie Halo published in the Journal of Language Evolution, we explored the relationship between word length and ambiguity on a large-cross linguistic dataset. 1/6

New paper with @tadegquillien.bsky.social and Azzurra Ruggeri: "Children seek out observations that can reveal a partner's generosity". Out in @humbehevosoc.bsky.social EHB: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 🧵

Children seek out observations that can reveal a partner’s generosity

Humans face the adaptive challenge of assessing how much other people value them. Evidence suggests that the human mind is well-equipped for this task…

sciencedirect.com

"contractualism stands on three theoretical pillars that have stood the test of time and enjoyed widespread influence across the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences: social-contract theory, evolutionary theory, and game theory"

Contractualist Moral Cognition: From the Normative to the Descriptive at Three Levels of Analysis

Visual summary of the paper. Taking inspiration from the contractualist tradition in moral philosophy is helpful to better understand morality at three interrelated levels of analysis: Its evolutiona...

wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com