A new video via Vahid Online shows Islamic Republic security forces shooting at protestors in Tehran during a protest on January 8.

The Islamic regime has killed 12k people in 5 days. Iranians are hurting; we’ve been hurting for 150 years. If you have an Iranian colleague, check on them. No unsolicited advice—just kindness and space. They may kill our brothers and sisters, but never the dream of freedom.

My earliest memory: pedaling my bike at age 5 to warn my parents about the Basijis. At 6, I heard my mother’s screams as she was arrested for nail polish. I tell my kids the story of Zahhak—the tyrant who fed on youth until he was overthrown. The Zahhak of our time is falling 🕊️ #IranRevolution2026

How do resource fears (realistic threat) vs. value clashes (symbolic threat) drive war & peace? We built a virtual society of 25 autonomous agents using the Park et al. (2023) framework to find out, using a "minimal groups" paradigm (Group A vs. B). But first, we looked under the hood. 🧠

Come work with us at USC! We're hiring an NSF-funded Postdoc for the Everyday Respect Project. 🤖 You'll work directly with me, Ben Graham, and Shri Narayanan, using cutting-edge AI to analyze police body-worn camera footage to improve police-community relations.

Postdoctoral Scholar - Research Associate at USC

Learn more about applying for Postdoctoral Scholar - Research Associate at USC

usccareers.usc.edu

New paper with @nathanieldaw.bsky.social in Nature Communications: an RL model that builds a successor map compositionally. The new model plans as well as the best models, and it links components of the map used for planning to neural codes in the medial entorhinal cortex. rdcu.be/eAofi

Reconciling flexibility and efficiency: medial entorhinal cortex represents a compositional cognitive map

Nature Communications - How the brain creates compositional cognitive maps that support both flexible and efficient planning remains poorly understood. Here, authors propose a...

rdcu.be

Our new study in Psych Science @psychscience.bsky.social reveals many interesting-- and concerning -- things about the language on kids' shows, including a grammatical bias in favor of men and boys as agents or "doers" 👇

Andrea Vial@avial.bsky.social · last yr.

🔥Excited to share our new paper in PsychScience! Shout out to best-ever collaborators Aida Davani, @ruyuan-zuo.bsky.social, @shreyahavaldar.bsky.social, Eleanor Chestnut, @mdehghani.bsky.social & @andreicimpian.bsky.social 🧵1/8… doi.org/10.1177/0956...

🔥Excited to share our new paper in PsychScience! Shout out to best-ever collaborators Aida Davani, @ruyuan-zuo.bsky.social, @shreyahavaldar.bsky.social, Eleanor Chestnut, @mdehghani.bsky.social & @andreicimpian.bsky.social 🧵1/8… doi.org/10.1177/0956...

Syntactic and Semantic Gender Biases in the Language on Children’s Television: Evidence From a Corpus of 98 Shows From 1960 to 2018 - Andrea C. Vial, Aida Mostafazadeh Davani, Ruyuan Zuo, Shreya Haval...

Biased media content shapes children’s social concepts and identities. We examined gender bias in a large corpus of scripts from 98 children’s television progra...

doi.org

My new op-ed in the @nytimes. I argue that Iranians are caught in a state of “moral paralysis,” a psychological trap set by the Islamic Republic itself. It pits two of our most sacred values against each other: liberation vs. self-determination. (1/2) www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/o...

Opinion | The Moral Paralysis Facing Iranians Right Now

nytimes.com

Check up on your Iranian colleagues and students; this is a full-on war!

Watch this montage of clips from Israel's Channel 14, filled with racist and genocidal bile, shocking stuff, ask yourself why you don't see these clips on US or UK mainstream news, and then read Prem's deep dive for Zeteo into Channel 14: zeteo.com/p/inside-the...

We’re looking for a researcher to work on methods and building tools for AI evaluation. We are seeking candidates with expertise at the intersection of agentic systems and personalization, demonstrated by a strong publication record in relevant venues.

This is what Leibowitz was warning about when he referred to Judeo Nazis www.hrw.org/news/2025/05...

Gaza: Latest Israeli Plan Inches Closer to Extermination

The Israeli government’s plan to demolish what remains of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and concentrate the Palestinian population into a tiny area would amount to an abhorrent escalation of its ongo...

hrw.org

“There is no God but God, Muhammad is his messenger,” the paramedic is heard saying. He asks God for forgiveness and says he knows he is going to die. “Forgive me, mother. This is the path I chose — to help people,” he said. “Allahu akbar,” God is great, he says. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/w...

Video Shows Aid Workers Killed in Gaza Under Gunfire Barrage, With Ambulance Lights On

nytimes.com

BREAKING: Yuval Abraham, co-director of Oscar-winning documentary "No Other Land," says Israeli settlers beat his co-director Hamdan Ballal, injuring his head and stomach — and then Israeli soldiers invaded the ambulance he was in and seized him. Ballal's whereabouts are now unknown.

So Cal Stand Up for Science: Fri Mar 7 noon @the Wilshire Federal Building

At @spspnews.bsky.social, many asked for guidelines on using LLMs in the social sciences. Our new paper in AMPPS addresses exactly that! We provide a primer for evaluating LLMs in social science research, focusing on methodological rigor, replicability, and validity: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Our new paper in PNAS Nexus. County morals > politics for carbon footprints? 🤯 We find that county-level values predict actual green behavior (emissions!), not just attitudes. Stronger than political leaning.

PNAS Nexus@pnasnexus.org · last yr.

A study finds that moral values predict environmental action as well as or better than political party affiliation. US counties where residents prioritize purity and fairness report higher environmental concerns and lower carbon emissions. In PNAS Nexus: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Very cool work on the intersection of interpretability and multi-lingual LLMs, led by @elnaz-rahmati.bsky.social

Elnaz Rahmati@elnaz-rahmati.bsky.social · last yr.

Read our latest work CoCo-CoLa on measuring and improving language adherence in multilingual LLMs with efficient fine-tuning. 📖 arxiv.org/abs/2502.12476 Thanks to my co-authors @alirezaziabari.bsky.social and @mdehghani.bsky.social for their collaboration! #LLMs #NLP #Multilinguality

Our new paper explores how to align LLMs with System 1 (intuitive) and System 2 (analytical) thinking styles. This work challenges the idea that step-by-step reasoning (CoT) is always best and highlights the need for adapting reasoning strategies based on the task arxiv.org/abs/2502.12470

Our new paper explores how to align LLMs with System 1 (intuitive) and System 2 (analytical) thinking styles. This work challenges the idea that step-by-step reasoning (CoT) is always best and highlights the need for adapting reasoning strategies based on the task arxiv.org/abs/2502.12470

New research led by @zhpinkman.bsky.social investigating the impact of LLMs on the reduction of linguistic diversity and its societal implications. "We're getting the language into its final shape - the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else." George Orwell, 1984

@zhpinkman.bsky.social · last yr.

How do LLMs shape writing? Our research shows they make language more uniform, reducing diversity and altering how personal traits appear in text. These shifts have big implications for identity, culture, and fairness. #LLMs #NLProc arxiv.org/abs/2502.11266

Some of us have been meeting up at SPSP for the last few years. This year marks our fifth gathering. Email one of us if you want to join! Location TBD. @mdehghani.bsky.social @drsanaz.bsky.social @simine.com @dorsaamir.bsky.social

Trajan's (@starlord37.bsky.social) story & countless others like it in the face of these cuts and wild shifts in government fellowships intended for our brightest & most promising students will have long-term, deeply damaging effects on the U.S.'s competitiveness in science, math, CS and more.

Trajan Hammonds@starlord37.bsky.social · last yr.

Last night I found out that the NSF math postdoctoral fellowship I applied for is being deleted because it does not comply with Trump’s executive orders on DEI in the federal government. I’m going to answer some FAQs and share some thoughts about this ordeal in this thread 1/n

Does the culture you grow up in shape the way you see the world? In a new Psych Review paper, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I tackle this centuries-old question using the Müller-Lyer illusion as a case study. Come think through one of history's mysteries with us🧵(1/13):

Hi, Vox reporter here: If you've had a study section, NIH travel, or other NIH-related meeting cancelled (or not), raise your hand! Reply or DM me, and repost for visibility if you're able. #academicsky @drugmonkey.bsky.social

I’m thankful for the ceasefire deal and hopeful it will be implemented. The hostages should be returned, the killing and suffering ended. The nature of the deal shows the truth to what many of us said all along. The war on Gaza was a horrific crime and a strategic disaster for Israel.

(1/4) Our new JEP:G paper dives into how moral values and misinformation spread on social media: media.mola-lab.org/file/1737039...

A dear friend of mine needs our help. Elena lost her car and all of her training equipment in the devastating LA fires. Her family is in Ukraine, and she has almost no social support. Please consider donating to her GoFundMe campaign to help her get back on her feet. gofund.me/5a877476

Donate to Help Elena Recover After The Palisades Fire Loss, organized by Elena Van Dyke

My name is Elena, and I’m a personal trainer in Los Angeles. I work re… Elena Van Dyke needs your support for Help Elena Recover After The Palisades Fire Loss

gofund.me

Thrilled to announce keynote speakers for #moralmedia25 - Drs. Helena Bilandzic (U Augsburg), @mdehghani.bsky.social (U Southern California), @aeden.bsky.social (Michigan State U), & @fhopp.bsky.social (Leibniz Institute for Psychology). Submissions are due Feb 2!