I'm over the moon to announce a new paper from me, @matti_wilks, and Paul Bloom, out today (open-access) in Cognition: "Developmental changes in the perceived moral standing of robots" 🤖 (1/7)

Excited to share our new paper with Johanna Ray Vollhardt (jrvollhardt.bsky.social) and Sherief Eldeeb: "Acknowledgment of Collective Victimization: Findings from Four Contexts of Historical Victimization".

Instructing participants to perform 3 acts of kindness toward others per week increased their well-being and connectedness. Paradoxically, instructing participants to perform 3 acts of self-kindness per week made them feel WORSE. Message: Focus on others to feel better!

Excited to share that I’ve joined the Intergenerational Decisions and Effective Action (IDEA) Lab in ASU’s College of Global Futures as a postdoctoral researcher! Stylianos Syropoulos and I will be advancing research on prosocial behavior & sustainable decision-making across generations!

Academics are paid nothing for peer review. Yet journals made a total of over $8.3 billion on article processing charges alone between 2019-2023. Make it make sense.

We're hiring! The SSNL invites applications for a full-time RA to start this summer. You can find info and a link to the application below. Please share widely! acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?ur…

I’m hiring a lab manager to start July 2025! Submit CV and cover letter as soon as possible as review will begin immediately. Link to the job ad is here: tinyurl.com/22ye3wsv Please share with any undergrads or mentees who might be interested!

New paper online! Despite a competitive world, we find children and adults view social resources like love and trust as renewable and non-zero-sum. Recognizing renewability reduces zero-sum belief, offering hope for a world where we can thrive together.😀journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/19…

The purpose of negative emotions is not to cause misery. It’s to prevent mistakes. Outrage is a signal to speak. Disappointment is a cue to persist. Anxiety is a prompt to prepare. Guilt is a reminder to repair. Pain reveals principles. Where we hurt is a clue to what we value.

🚨 New preprint with Tage Rai! 🚨 In 2 pre-registered experiments, we show that learning about members of Congress trading stocks reduces Congressional legitimacy and willingness to comply with the law: osf.io/preprints/psya…

Cynicism is not a mark of intelligence. It's a defense mechanism to avoid being exploited. 192k adults, 30 countries: People with poor reasoning skills are more likely to see human nature as selfish and untrustworthy. A sign of wisdom is refusing to expect the worst in others.

Not SNL's Weekend Update using the trolley dilemma to showcase nerdy love. I approve! #trolleydilemma #SNL #weekendupdate youtube.com/watch?v=mprkxT…

It’s so clear that Descartes was wrong, and that if the stuff that humans express that makes us believe that we have souls, so clearly exists in many other mammals

This was emotional to read. Bonobos are amazing creatures. Rest in Peace, Kanzi.

This story made my week, in a very cute way. There's probably so much we don't know about sea creatures. My money is on octopuses being light years ahead of us. 🐙 nytimes.com/2025/03/20/sci…

Two heroic stray dogs rescued an injured dog from the middle of the road by dragging him to safety. The family dog in Changzhou, China squeezed out from the crack in their front door and was hit by a car, becoming stranded in the middle of the road. Many cars passed by as the pup

A huge day for mapping in life science! —the mammalian brain, most extensive yet nature.com/articles/s4158… Allen Institute —a comprehensive map of the human cell going sub-cellular nature.com/articles/s4158… —complete ape genomes nature.com/articles/s4158…

It is easy to glance at the news and be captivated by whatever fresh travesty is happening in the world today. But the reality is that most of people’s moral lives play out in quieter, seemingly more mundane moments, such as those involving friends and family, at the grocery

Truly fantastic piece by my post-doc advisor, Desmond Ong, on AI alignment & empathy: open.substack.com/pub/desmondong…

Why do we derogate effective altruists, activists, & other radically prosocial individuals? In new work, we discuss how doing good that deviates from social norms gets stigmatized. New preprint w/ Daryl Cameron, Tatiana Lau & Desmond Ong: osf.io/preprints/psya…