This paper shows that immigration enforcement can _increase_ crime. Undocumented immigrants already have the lowest crime rate, but tough-on-immigration policy makes immigrants less likely to report crime. So immigration enforcement worsens the problem it was ostensibly meant to solve

I got a mysterious e-mail from CogSci saying that they are aware of an "ongoing issue with proceedings content" and are working with UC Merced to fix it. I'm not at the conference and have no idea what this is about - can any of you fill me in?

My lab is hosting 2 amazing Barnard undergrads this summer who just presented posters of their work! Kate McElvaney is asking how kids & adults from different religions think about redemption; Ari Estrin is studying evaluations of religious & secular transgressors. So lucky to work w both of them!

I have once again misspelled my own name in the author list of a paper only for it to be caught by the lovely person copy-editing the article. Also, fun fact: every time I spell Heiphetz correctly, I am spelling it out in my head letter by letter.

#AcademicSky #PrejudiceResearch New study finds experimental perspective taking on prejudice reduction has some limits (and works less well on highly prejudiced people) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... (I'm not keen on authors referring to prejudiced people as "principled" though).

1/4 Why do we gravitate toward some people over others? I'm excited to share new work with Peter Mende-Siedlecki, @andyluttrell.bsky.social, and @leorhackel.bsky.social! We use perceptions of others' personality traits more in related contexts, but rewards elicit general positivity 🧵👇

Thank you to @trystanloustau.bsky.social for sharing her work on morality and politics in my lab meeting this morning! Her relevant work was recently accepted at JEP: General & you can read it here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... (+learn about her other research here: trystanloustau.com).

💥 New paper: Children Need Structural Explanations for Social Inequalities, and Educators Who Can Provide Them I enjoyed the opportunity to yap about two of my favorite things: Structural explanation and liberal arts education! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Children Need Structural Explanations for Social Inequalities, and Educators Who Can Provide Them - Rebecca Peretz-Lange, 2026

Children are highly aware of social inequalities by the preschool years, and they spontaneously generate explanations to make sense of them. In particular, chil...

journals.sagepub.com

Belief in magic emerges most strongly among those who are both scientifically oriented and residually religious. Secular rationalism does not erase belief in supernatural mechanisms. It affirms the individual’s agency to decide what they are academic.oup.com/sf/advance-a...

The magic of secularization

Abstract. Institutional secularization does not necessitate a secular public. In fact, as church memberships decline, more individualized sources of supern

academic.oup.com

New paper out today in Social and Personality Psychology Compass! What happens when our moral values come into conflict? Our new paper explores "metamorality": the second-order principles we use to navigate conflicting moral choices. W/ Jesse Graham

Many things. The most often is probably post-decision rationalization* - makes it easy to just pick stuff, no agonizing involved *for non-psych followers: once people make a decision they convince themselves that was the best decision & end up happy with whatever they chose

Neuroskeptic@neuroskeptic.bsky.social · 2w ago

Here's a question for academic psychologists - have you ever applied something you read in a psychology journal in your everyday life?

Thank you so much to Philip Gorski for visiting with my lab today! Lots of food for thought from his presentation on a recent shift from rhetoric around White Christian nationalism to frameworks around "civilization," and the moral implications of these narratives.

Excited to share our new study. Upshot: The more rightward White adults place Jesus on the ideological spectrum, the more solidarity they feel with other Whites. BUT it's the opposite for Black adults: the more conservative the Jesus, the less racial solidarity they feel. 1/6 doi.org/10.1093/socr...

1. New paper first-authored by @dymoral.bsky.social in press at Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psych! We ask how social identity shapes moral cognition. Full text here: columbiasamclab.weebly.com/uploads/5/9/... + summary below: #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc @socphilpsych.bsky.social 🧪

New Preprint! We gave neural networks infant-like curiosity and let them free to explore. They grew brain-like architecture, followed human synaptic development, and even started to display compositional thought. So we think curiosity doesn't just come from a complex mind... it helps us build one 👇

Curiosity shapes brain-like architectures and functions

How does complex cognition emerge from simpler underlying processes? We show that two components are sufficient: infant-like curiosity and brain-like biophysical constraints jointly drive the emergenc...

biorxiv.org

Alice Walker John Irving Anne Lamott Lois Lowry Ann Patchett #booksky

Noah Berlatsky@nberlat.bsky.social · 4w ago

five living writers that you've read five books by each Rita Dove Tasha Suri Courtney Milan Grant Morrison Tom Perrotta

My first-ever solo-authored paper is out today (open access!) in @journalrep.bsky.social! What drives Americans to switch their presidential vote based on race over the last 3 elections? I show that it's not general racial warmth, it's changing beliefs about discrimination. (🧵 1/3)

All formatted, all reference-d. It turns out references count toward the word limit and people like to give their articles long titles sometimes! But it is all done and submitted and it is time for me to take a nap.

Larisa Heiphetz Solomon@drlarisa.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I think I may have just ... finished a draft ... of a book? Still need to format and make the references and such. But I think ... all the words ... might be there? What even is this.

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. 🧵

1. A story from my flight to the conference in Brno where I just gave a keynote. This is a story about a fabulous human and a somewhat less fabulous one.

Beloved The New Jim Crow I have many other history/sociology books in mind but I think the 3rd should offer some hope (and could be a novel or other literary work) and nothing like that is readily occurring to me. If any of you have a candidate in mind I'd love to hear!

Brian Thill@brianthill.bsky.social · last mo.

It’s #BQT #BookQuestionTime again: If you were to choose three favorite books (in any genre) that best help us understand what “the United States of America” means, which would you choose? As always, please feel free to include cover images!

What a special treat to give this keynote at IACESR! Thank you so much for inviting me, for the amazing intellectual engagement, and for the chance to visit Brno for the first time.

IACESR Society@iacesr.bsky.social · last mo.

Day 3 was kicked off with an excellent keynote by @drlarisa.bsky.social on God Concepts Across Development. The talk explored how our concepts of God change from childhood to adulthood and how these concepts, in turn, shape our own thinking and behaviour.

🚨 Officially out at Child Development! A few years ago in Science, Ashley Thomas (ashleyjthomas.bsky.social) and colleagues argued that saliva could be a cue infants use to infer the strength of social relationships. academic.oup.com/chidev/advan...

An associative learning account of how saliva becomes a cue for comfort

Abstract. A recent study by Thomas et al. (2022) showed that 8.5- to 10-month-olds use saliva sharing as an indicator of relationship closeness: infants ex

academic.oup.com

New review, forthcoming in the Annual Review of Developmental Psychology: "From Seconds to Seasons and Days to Decades: Timescales in Development." Let me walk you through some key points. 👇 BC its a review, these are based on many others' work. osf.io/preprints/ps... 1/

Practicing talks is the bane of my existence, though actually giving the talks is one of the most fun parts of my job. Did you all ever get to a point where you gave new talks without practicing them, and if so, how far into your career were you?

Proud to have an article that means a lot to me spotlighted by APA. 🫶

APA Journals@apajournals.bsky.social · last mo.

Research published in Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice found a dearth of studies on behavioral health interventions for juvenile legal system-involved youth, averaging 1.52 per year. Read the Article Spotlight by @kaitlinsheerin.bsky.social: https://bit.ly/4unxLwc @scpdiv12.bsky.social

I love that PNAS attached a picture of a manel. Please check out our new paper—and consider this scientific evidence that sometimes someone has to point out the manel in the room.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences@pnas.org · last mo.

The absence of minority group members often goes unnoticed, according to a new study. Across field studies and experiments, participants were less likely to detect minority absences than majority absences. In Forbes: https://ow.ly/3yvG50ZflrE In PNAS: https://ow.ly/stno50ZflbC

I submitted not one but TWO funding applications today and now I am going to go take a bath and sleep forever.

New paper with @drbarner.bsky.social out now in Developmental Psychology! Despite the importance of age in our social world, little is known about how children reason about it. Do children understand age as something distinct from size from an early age? 1/10 psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...

Did you all know that the amazing @cjmott.bsky.social is starting a faculty position this summer? He is moving to Florida State University as an Assistant Professor in the College of Law. Lucky them and yay Christian!