Juan P. Arroyave
@juanpah.bsky.social
🇨🇴/🇬🇧 PhD candidate Nottingham Trent Uni | Interested in Moral Psychology, Threat and Uncertainty.
I’m very happy and honoured to have received the Best Poster Award 🥇 at the Conference on Behavioural and Social Sciences in Security #BASS26 in Cardiff 🏴 @crest-research.bsky.social Grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to present my work and to learn from talented people from around the world.
New essay: I argue that political differences often reside not primarily in different factual beliefs, values, or high-level ideologies, but in the competing systems of interpretation and misinterpretation through which we select, ignore, frame, narrate, and explain political reality.
How Tribes Construct Rival Realities
Henry Nowak, George Floyd, and the hidden interpretive machinery that drives political conflict.
conspicuouscognition.com
Last week I gave a talk at the Foundations of Utility and Risk Conference (FUR 2026) at the Universitat d'Alacant. I presented the results from our recently published paper on how uncertainty amplifies the effect of scarcity in delay of gratification. lnkd.in/erb6XneF Great weather and food BTW😅.
I had the opportunity to visit beautiful places in 🇯🇵 , learn about Japanese culture, and present my PhD project at @icsd2026.bsky.social. It was a great chance to receive feedback and reconnect with colleagues from around the world. Thanks to the organizers for such an incredible conference!
🚨 New paper published in Theory and Decision! 📄 “Uncertainty amplifies the impact of scarcity on delay of gratification: evidence from a serious game experiment” link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Uncertainty amplifies the impact of scarcity on delay of gratification: evidence from a serious game experiment - Theory and Decision
Individuals facing economic scarcity often struggle with delaying gratification, a pattern typically attributed to cognitive load, self-control, or risk preferences. However, the role of uncertainty r...
link.springer.com
Why do so many people support authoritarian leaders? This paper shows that one explanation is anomie: the perception that society is breaking down. psycnet.apa.org/record/2025-...
APA PsycNet
psycnet.apa.org
It was really nice to attend the @ehbea.bsky.social and share the first results from my PhD project. It’s always good to connect with and learn from such talented and friendly people. #ehbea2026
“More research is needed” but for how long? Chris Ferguson suggests that in the social sciences, some fields are exhausted and should not require further research, given that no matter how many studies are produced, the results remain inconclusive. grimoiremanor.substack.com/p/we-dont-al...
We Don't Always Need "More Research"
It might just be okay to pull the plug on some failing research endeavors
grimoiremanor.substack.com
I wrote this opinion column in @lasillavacia.bsky.social, offering a reflection on political polarization in Colombia from a moral psychology perspective www.lasillavacia.com/red-de-exper...
lasillavacia.com
Sometimes I feel like academic work is a poor fit for the moment. While the university is under threat, engagement with the public is not incentivized. Along with some friends, we started Society Workshop as a way to bring more social science to the public. www.societyworkshop.org
Society Workshop
societyworkshop.org
Do emotions play an essential role in moral judgments? Nice paper by W. McAuliffe on the discussion Rationalism vs. Sentimentalism: Does reason or "gut feeling" drive morality? #Moralpsychology www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Do emotions play an essential role in moral judgments?
The past few decades of moral psychology research have yielded empirical anomalies for rationalist theories of moral judgments. An increasing number of psychologists and philosophers argue that the...
tandfonline.com
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34730453/ Why Evolutionary Psychology (EP) should abandon the term "modularity." This thread summarizes a key paper by Pietraszewski & Wertz on the "Modularity Mistake". For 40 years, researchers have been arguing past each other due to a confusion of "levels of analysis".
Why Evolutionary Psychology Should Abandon Modularity - PubMed
A debate surrounding modularity-the notion that the mind may be exclusively composed of distinct systems or modules-has held philosophers and psychologists captive for nearly 40 years. Concern about this thesis-which has come to be known as the <i>massive modularity debate-</i>serves as the primary …
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... This insightful paper provides a sound evolutionary explanation of the threat management in humans. Threat detection is pivotal for reproductive fitness. Here, the authors emphasize two independent, yet related systems: self-protection and disease avoidance.
Human threat management systems: Self-protection and disease avoidance
Humans likely evolved precautionary systems designed to minimize the threats to reproductive fitness posed by highly interdependent ultrasociality. A …
sciencedirect.com
🚨Two postdoc positions @tse-fr.eu @iast.fr 🚨 We are recruiting two postdocs as part of the ANR-funded project ENFORCE. Join me, @giuliandr.bsky.social, & @zhgarfield.com, to study punitive systems across societies. Full time, 2 years, no teaching. Deadline: Jan 23 www.tse-fr.eu/groups/depar...
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences
tse-fr.eu
This week's Cooperation Colloquium: Alex Mesoudi @alexmesoudi.com Experimental evidence that reputation-based partner choice facilitates information sharing in humans Date: December 5 Time: 15:00 UTC+1 (Vienna) / 9 am ET (NYC) Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...
Do we judge a bad action the same way regardless of where or when it occurred? An interesting 2016 study conducted across 7 diverse societies pointed out moral parochialism... rsj.scienceconnect.io/api/oauth/au...
Journals | Royal Society
Discover new research from across the sciences.
rsj.scienceconnect.io
Our new research finds that people are willing to cheat if it benefits their group — even when they gain nothing themselves. "the risk of dishonesty in organizations is not limited to selfish acts...employees might bend rules to benefit their team or in-group members." www.nhh.no/en/nhh-bulle...
We lie for those who are like us
Three experiments with more than 5,000 participants show that people are willing to cheat if it benefits their group — even when they gain nothing themselves.
nhh.no
Could a deadly virus help explain the significant global trend toward conservative and right-wing leadership? The parasite stress model may offer insight into this dynamic…
Juan Pablo Arroyave's research focuses on how we make decisions regarding a transgression when we face a threat. His presentation is titled "Threat and mind-blind judgements".
Our paper in Nature (@mkwittmann.bsky.social et al.): the brain does not only process the *identity* of a person but primarily our *relationship* to them. Even on a neural level, who someone is *in relation to others* is key. www.nature.com/articles/s41... #PsychSciSky #socialpsyc #neuroskyence
Tuesday Evo Ath seminar "Understanding in-group bias, reducing publication bias: Investigating human parochialism through Registered Reports". Adam Kenny, London Interdisciplinary School @UCLanthropology DFL 3.30-5pm then🍷 www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology...
Evolutionary Anthropology seminars
ucl.ac.uk
Call for papers! Pablo Abitbol, Santiago Amaya and I will be co-editing a Special Issue on "Memory, Emotion and Forgiveness" in the Review of Philosophy and Psychology. If you are a philosopher and/or psychologist working at the intersection of memory, emotion and forgiveness [1/2]
About the case of Trump calling immigrants as a “threat”: This a common strategy among some leaders as a tool to foster unity by creating a shared sense of danger. This often involves portraying outgroups as existential threats to the ingroup's welfare… journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Global Crisis Frame Matters for Unity: Resource Threat Hampers While Safety Threat Promotes Intergroup Cooperation - Xiaoyan Miao, Li Liu, Jianning Dang, Chao Li, Zhen Liu, Xinying Jiang, Lingling Hua...
Realistic global crises trap humanity in common threats requiring intergroup unity to combat them. How do common threats shape intergroup cooperation? Previous ...
journals.sagepub.com
Roy Baumeister called ego depletion "one of the most replicable findings in social psychology." As someone who spent 20 years studying it—and ultimately had to admit it wasn't real—I have to respectfully disagree. Here's my perspective of what went so wrong.
The Collapse of Ego Depletion
Science's Biggest Self-Control Failure
open.substack.com
One of the main problems about cultural relativism. People often put at the same level opinions and scientific evidence/rational conclusions. This is why a lot of university students strongly supports empty beliefs as astrology and homeopathy.
Steve Stewart-Williams@stevestuwill.bsky.social · 2y agoPostmodern views are linked to authoritarianism. www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/manterrupt...
The V-Shaped Perception Gap: The stronger people’s political commitments, the less accurate their understanding of what the other side thinks. The politically disengaged have the most accurate picture of their fellow citizens’ views. www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/manterrupt...
"The human mind is in the service of evolutionary success, not truth. To think otherwise is to resurrect the pre-Darwinian error that humans are different from all other animals.” -John Gray, 2002 Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (p. 26).
🎉Postdoc Alert! I am recruiting a postdoc to start Summer 2025 in the Mind & Morality Lab at Brown. If you're interested, please send a CV, cover letter, and names of at least two references to julia_marshall1@brown.edu by 2/28. If you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out!
