Why do human societies adopt rigid moral rules? People often have legitimate reasons for failing to cooperate, yet those reasons are often opaque, allowing opportunists to disguise selfishness as justified hardship. Rigidity preserves cooperation when trust is fragile www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Why do human societies adopt rigid moral rules? Our new paper, led by @jliep.bsky.social, proposes a new model in PNAS @pnas.org! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Why human societies adopt rigid moral rules: The efficiency–robustness trade-off | PNAS

Humans are capable of remarkably flexible moral judgment. Yet societies rely on rigid rules—obligations and prohibitions that apply categorically, ...

pnas.org

Julien Lie-Panis@jliep.bsky.social · 4w ago

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. 🧵

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. 🧵

Children learn what is right or wrong selectively from a legitimate authority’s punishment 
‼️Work by Young-eun Lee, Setayesh Radkani & Rebecca Saxe

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

Research by @lfitouchi.bsky.social & @manvir.bsky.social suggests the tension between (evolutionary) deterrence, and (intuitive) retribution punishment motives is resolved by a model reflecting restoration of mutual benefit between cooperative partners→compensation+deterrence buff.ly/3T6fdvd

"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

Here's my attempt to convince @lfitouchi.bsky.social, @jbaptistandre.bsky.social, Nicolas Baumard, et al. that the self-control and cooperation-centered account neglects the core of conflicting sexual/reproductive strategies and modern religiosity: open.substack.com/pub/chartyar...

What are the core real-life differences between religious and nonreligious people?

And what do those differences mean for recent evolutionary theories of morality and religion?

open.substack.com

Participants from a small- & a large-scale society "demanded that victims be rewarded in the currency of their loss & that more severe punishment be imposed when victims suffered more, holding aggressor benefit constant." osf.io/preprints/ps... @lfitouchi.bsky.social @manvir.bsky.social #EvPsych

Thrilled to share that our new paper is now out in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social: "Who knows what? Bayesian Competence Inference guides Knowledge Attribution and Information Search," with @oliviermorin.bsky.social , @hugoreasoning.bsky.social & @tadegquillien.bsky.social! Link: tinyurl.com/ykyhxcc6

Looking forward to work with @fierycushman.bsky.social and @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social on the moral psychology of authority!

Toulouse School of Economics (TSE)@tse-fr.eu · 6mo ago

We are thrilled to announce that @lfitouchi.bsky.social has been awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship to work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University ! 👏 Huge congratulations for this incredible achievement!

New @aeon.co essay just out! On how institutions let us scale trust and cooperation - and when things start to unravel. Big thanks to editor Sam Dresser. For the more technical version, see thread & paper below👇

Aeon Magazine@aeon.co · 6mo ago

Institutions are the social technologies that power our world, allowing us to rely on complete strangers every day of our lives. But how do we ensure that this trust isn’t misplaced? In this Essay, the game theorist Julien Lie-Panis explores what makes institutions function @jliep.bsky.social

Applications for our upcoming Summer School have been extended until January 15! 🤝 Apply now: www.tse-fr.eu/toulouse-sum... @olkcampbell.bsky.social @maximederex.bsky.social @lfitouchi.bsky.social @cmolho.bsky.social @ccavaille.bsky.social

Toulouse Summer School in Quantitative Social Sciences Application

Application to the Toulouse Summer School in Quantitative Social Sciences taking place from May 25th to June 19th, 2026 in Toulouse, France Application deadline: January 15th, 2026 Applicants will be ...

tse-fr.eu

This week, we talk to @danielnettle.bsky.social about big picture issues in the evolutionary social sciences, craving sugar, income inequality, running, and more! youtu.be/-NPuZSolsEs podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e... www.podbean.com/eas/pb-9hsnf...

Evolutionary Social Sciences with Dan Nettle

YouTube video by Evolutionary Psychology (The Podcast)

youtu.be

In a new Review for @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social -- and my first first-authored paper! -- @manvir.bsky.social and I argue that experience shapes the emergence and evolution of seemingly extraordinary beliefs. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How experience shapes extraordinary beliefs

The ubiquity of extraordinary beliefs across human societies, such as conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and supernatural beliefs, is a long-standing…

sciencedirect.com

For the curious, I have put the author accepted manuscript of our new BBS Target Article on researchgate. You can view it here: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

(PDF) Egalitarianism is not Equality: Moving from outcome to process in the study of human political organisation

PDF | Many traditional subsistence groups have been described as ‘egalitarian societies’. Definitions of ‘egalitarianism’, especially beyond... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on Resea...

researchgate.net

Duncan Stibbard Hawkes@dstibbardhawkes.bsky.social · 9mo ago

📣 New BBS preprint out now! 📣 "Models casting egalitarian societies as crucibles of equality perpetuate the factually uninformed notion that foragers are somehow more noble. Critiques portray egalitarianism as romantic fantasy. Neither characterization is wholly justified." doi.org/10.1017/S014...

📣 New BBS preprint out now! 📣 "Models casting egalitarian societies as crucibles of equality perpetuate the factually uninformed notion that foragers are somehow more noble. Critiques portray egalitarianism as romantic fantasy. Neither characterization is wholly justified." doi.org/10.1017/S014...

It's hiring season at @iast.fr! - 2y research postdoc contract - Full autonomy, you are your own PI - Awesome multidisciplinary environment - All social and behavioral sciences welcome - Seed funding for projects and workshops - Gorgeous city in the south of France www.iast.fr/research-fel...

>The Multi-Capital Leadership theory explains why #leadership emerges and why it varies among human societies and throughout individual life histories. w/@chrisvonrueden.bsky.social & @edhagen.net #LeadSciSky #HBES 🧪 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

The Multi-Capital Leadership Theory - Human Nature

Human leadership and followership take many forms, shaped by the social, economic, political, and cultural contexts of our groups and societies. Underlying this complexity, we argue, are key elements of human social psychology regarding social comparison and the resolution of coordination and collective action problems. The Multi-Capital Leadership (MCL) theory posits that leader emergence and effectiveness depend on perceptions of individuals’ abilities to provide benefits or impose costs in solving challenges of group living, through the deployment of different forms of capital: material, social, somatic (e.g., physical formidability, height, immune functionality), and neural (e.g., knowledge, intelligence, personality, supernatural abilities). We integrate this framework with a review of leadership across human societies, including in non-state and non-industrial contexts, and with novel comparative analyses of ethnographic data. This synthesis highlights how context-specific demands for coordination and collective action, and the accuracy of social comparison, shape the structure and dynamics of leadership and followership across cultures.

link.springer.com

thank you to all speakers for all the food for thought!

Fondation Fyssen@fondationfyssen.bsky.social · 10mo ago

A week full of ideas at the offices of the Fyssen Foundation! Many thanks to Jonathan Lanman, member of the Scientific Council, for initiating this exciting seminar! Speakers: Pascal Boyer, Robert McCauley, Harvey Witehouse, Ann Taves, Oliver Curry, Leo Fitouchi, Zachary Garfield, Julia Ebner

New commentary out w/ @manvir.bsky.social in Religion, Brain, and Behavior! We argue that social learning fails to explain three patterns in religious belief and practice: SBNR beliefs, strategic endorsement of beliefs, and religious experience. Check it out: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Strategy and experience required: Social learning cannot explain the varieties of supernatural belief

Published in Religion, Brain & Behavior (Ahead of Print, 2025)

tandfonline.com

🧠 What?! A meeting just on disgust?! Yes!! 📍 @iast.fr, France | 🗓 Dec 4–5, 2025 💥 Keynotes by Paul Rozin @upenn.edu, @cr-amo.bsky.social, Philip Powell @sheffielduni.bsky.social & Cindy Kam 🌍 From Psychology to Politics, Biology & beyond 🎓 Abstract submissions until Aug 31: forms.gle/QBmkUB3aLDjY...

📣 We are excited (or should we say disgusted?) to announce the conference 'Disgust across borders' at IAST! @iast.fr 🗓️ Join us on Dec 4 & 5 for two days full of disgust research across species and disciplines. Registration and abstract submission are open (until Aug 31): forms.gle/QBmkUB3aLDjY...

I had the most incredible opportunity to attend the Toulouse Summer School in Quantitative Social Sciences at @tse-fr.eu and learn from @lfitouchi.bsky.social , @cmolho.bsky.social & @jorgeapenas.bsky.social on the "Evolution of Human Sociality" Toulouse was warm and welcoming, so was TSE !!

🚨NEW PAPER from the @eegcam.bsky.social!🚨I have never been as proud of something as of the work that finally we can share today: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... - we show how a climatically driven Pan African meta population model explains our species genetic and morphological diversity 🧬💀

Pan-African metapopulation model explains Homo sapiens genetic and morphological evolution

Emerging evidence has challenged the traditional view of a single-region origin for Homo sapiens, suggesting instead that our species arose and diversified across multiple geographically distinct popu...

biorxiv.org

"progress in the social sciences is stymied by the widespread misconception that evolution and learning are opposing explanations for behavior... the 'evolution vs. learning' dichotomy is fallacious... explanatory partners rather than explanatory competitors" psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

Very happy to be giving a talk at my favorite colloquium series! Tune in if you're interested in prosociality, willful ignorance, or cross-cultural research.

Simon Columbus@simoncolumbus.bsky.social · last yr.

This weeks's Cooperation Colloquium: Catherine Molho @cmolho.bsky.social Guilt drives prosocial behavior across countries Date: May 23 Time: 15:00 UTC+2 (Vienna) / 9 am ET (NYC) Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

- Wikipedia is a global, free to access encyclopaedia of knowledge - Universities are full of experts on all sorts of niche topics - Those experts are under no career incentives to share their knowledge on Wikipedia I feel that something has gone terribly wrong somewhere

You can now submit a commentary on our paper here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal.... We're very much looking forward to reading your commentaries and discussing our hypothesis with you!

Matthias Michel@matthiasmichel.bsky.social · last yr.

Very happy to announce that our paper “Sensory Horizons and the Functions of Conscious Vision” is now out as a target article in BBS!! @smfleming.bsky.social and I present a new theory of the evolution and functions of visual consciousness. Article here: doi.org/10.1017/S014.... A (long) thread 🧵

Hi friends! I'm now on Bluesky. Looking forward to reading your news & updates. If you're interested in my work, consider following this account. I write about science, philosophy, & culture in peer-reviewed academic journals and popular press magazines. www.laithalshawaf.com/popular-scie...

Popular Science

POPULAR SCIENCE WRITING ​ Detecting Bullshit Should You Trust the Myers-Briggs Personality Test?  [ English ] [ Portuguese ] [ Turkish ] [ Spanish ] Detecting Bull**it (Online Version)   [...

laithalshawaf.com