Prof Nichola Raihani
@nicholaraihani.bsky.social
Professor & Author Auckland & UCL Books: THE SOCIAL INSTINCT (2021) || THE THINKING ANIMAL (2027, ✍🏼) Website: www.nicholaraihani.com Likes cycling.
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
We're so happy to have launched this terrific film with our President Janet Ellis today! #AllWeHaveisEachOther is not only a great introduction to humanism, it's an important reminder that human beings must work together to overcome division that separates us.
When are chimpanzees more rational than humans - and why? Read here: nicholaraihani.substack.com/p/when-are-c...
When are chimpanzees more rational than us—and why?
When economists build models of how humans are expected to behave, they have to make some simplifying assumptions.
nicholaraihani.substack.com
This was a really interesting read by @danwphilosophy.bsky.social , touching on many of the issues we've been grappling with in our research of late. www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/how-tribes...
How Tribes Construct Rival Realities
Henry Nowak, George Floyd, and the hidden interpretive machinery that drives political conflict.
conspicuouscognition.com
Great recognition for the R development team at UoAuckland stats dept. Ross Ihaka & Robert Gentlemen changed the world.... phys.org/news/2026-06...
New Zealand scientists working on 'R' win major global award
Scientists working on the revolutionary 'R' programming language invented at the University of Auckland have won a top award intended to be a Nobel Prize for statisticians.
phys.org
Hello! Pleased to share the UK (& commonwealth) hardback cover for The Thinking Animal. We went back and forth a bit with this one, and I wasn't sure at first, but it has really grown on me. What do you think?
Can bees stop doing stuff please? On the disquiet of writing, rethinking assumptions, and the question of intelligence. open.substack.com/pub/nicholar...
Can bees stop doing stuff, please?
On the disquiet of writing and the question of intelligence
open.substack.com
Lord grant me the confidence of a student who, when told their AI use constitutes an academic integrity breach, sends a GPT-generated email response.
Why did evolution give us menopause? And why is it only humans and a handful of whales that seem to experience it? A short piece on evolution, reproductive conflict, and the mystery of grandmothers. nicholaraihani.substack.com/p/why-did-ev...
Why did evolution give us the menopause?
And why didn't it give it to most other mammals?
nicholaraihani.substack.com
Sneak peek at the US cover for THE THINKING ANIMAL, coming Jan '27. Looking forward to sharing more - soon! @stmartinspress.bsky.social @zcosini.bsky.social
JFC are these publishers not making enough money by rinsing authors, institutions, and readers already? Why do they have to plaster banner ads over the reference list….
So I just described cleaner fish punishment to my 3rd year undergraduates as ‘when the fish gets banged, it behaves more cooperatively in the future’
Nice coincidence that a big study of cooperation decline in microfinance in Sierra Leone has appeared in Nature just after our meta-analysis. Hints that partner choice, reciprocity and punishment were involved, but sadly no explicit focus on non-proximate explanations www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Punctuated decline of human cooperation - Nature
Cooperation in group lending declines over time due to shifting behavioural motivations, briefly rebounds after loan restarts, then declines faster again, revealing systematic deviations from rational...
nature.com
Alex Mesoudi@alexmesoudi.com · 4mo agoFinal version of this paper is now published. Find out what the microfinance literature can tell us about the evolution of human cooperation
Your brain does not have old (reptilian) and new (mammalian) parts. Related: you do not have an inner chimp.
Duncan Stibbard Hawkes@dstibbardhawkes.bsky.social · 4mo agoWe do not know when language evolved
Question for the Bsky hive mind: what’s the most batshit pop Evolutionary Psychology study you’ve ever come across? Particularly interested in examples in the area of female parental investment, but I’ll take others too …
The ‘key phrase’ style for book referencing.
One of the world’s leading authorities on autism - very important read: www.tes.com/magazine/tea...
Uta Frith: why I no longer think autism is a spectrum
The autism spectrum has widened to the point of collapse, affecting how teachers should support autistic pupils in the classroom, researcher Uta Frith tells Helen Amass
tes.com
Excited to share our latest work in @nature.com showing shared neural substrates for parenting and prosocial helping behavior. Full text available here: rdcu.be/e6PnY
Academics vying for a spot in Epstein‘s world. There are so many. I feel the need to make a thread, so I don’t keep confusing them. 1/
This study finds that people vary in their motives for punishment. Punishment motives are predicted by personality, social preferences, political and religious views, and self-reported strategies. @scottclaessens.bsky.social @nicholaraihani.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Individual differences in motives for costly punishment - Communications Psychology
Using behavioural economic games, this study finds that people vary in their motives for punishment. Punishment motives are predicted by personality, social preferences, political and religious views,...
nature.com
Slashing all Marsden grants to social science and humanities another Judith Collins legacy www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...
Government's Marsden Fund cuts: All humanities, social sciences research funding slashed
Cutting all research funding for the fields is a massive step backwards, critics say.
rnz.co.nz
#OpenAccess from @bppjournal.bsky.social - Negative anecdotes reduce policy support: evidence from three experimental studies on communicating policy (in)effectiveness - https://cup.org/4jDoXyD - A.Rodger, G.A.Sanna, @vanessachg.bsky.social, @nicholaraihani.bsky.social & D.Lagnado #FirstView
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...
I appear to have spoken to a reporter who took seriously the gravity of NZ's science crisis does anybody have a newsroom pro subscription so that I can learn what other choice phrases I used on the record? newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/29/w...
Winner of top science prize blames ‘batshit’ Budget for brain drain
Dr Samuel Mehr says the Government values science, but their ‘idiotic’ approach to funding it will cost them their best and brightest.
newsroom.co.nz
Jane Goodall, Eminent Primatologist Who Chronicled the Lives of Chimps, Dies at 91. Gift link: nyti.ms/48FOuUn
nyti.ms
In general I think it's hard to combat scientific misinformation when some of the best research is locked behind an academic paywall, while lots of nonsense gets published free for everyone to read in predatory journals.
I wonder how things would be if the mining bosses and government officials had to raise *their* kids in these lead-poisoned environments.
Prof Nichola Raihani@nicholaraihani.bsky.social · 11mo agoThis is a complete dereliction of responsibility from all involved. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
This is a complete dereliction of responsibility from all involved. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
Environment watchdog buried report on lead in children’s blood to placate mining companies, emails show
Documents tabled in NSW parliament show state agency took four years to publish report and told miners it would be put online ‘quietly’ but EPA says it was released to community earlier
theguardian.com