Reminder from psychologist Jay Van Bavel, PhD, “What you are seeing online does not reflect what most people believe.” — jayvanbavellab.substack.com/p/how-social-m…

Scientists have finally figured out when the best music was made! It was after you were born but before you turned 35, with a peak when you were in your late teens... [Link below.]

Team Scientist podcast roundup: Carey Morewedge on samuel salzar & Aline Holzwarth’s Behavioral Design Podcast bit.ly/3CqIq47 David G. Rand @dgrand.bsky.social on David McRaney’s You Are Not So Smart Podcast bit.ly/3O6Bls8 David Yeager on @LoopyGoose’s Parenting Teenagers Untangled

I just finished "How Minds Change" by David McRaney . A really fascinating deep dive into effective persuasion techniques taking it all the way back to the evolution of human minds. Essential reading for those in advocacy or campaigning!📖 davidmcraney.com/howmindschange…

Question sandwiches, WAIT questions, The Five Whys and more: How asking the right kinds of questions can lead to innovations, discoveries, and breakthroughs: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/302…

What we can learn about perception, priors, and truth itself from the party dress that sparked a global debate over the nature of reality (with Willa Paskin) — youarenotsosmart.com/2024/12/23/yan…

If an article makes your side look bad, then "resistance to true news [is] stronger than susceptibility to fake news" no matter your ideology. And the more objective you believe you are, the stronger the effect: psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2025-…

Does the culture you grow up in shape the way you see the world? In a new Psych Review paper, Chaz Firestone & 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):

New episode: Why you are more likely to doubt true news that you would rather not believe than you are to believe fake news you wish was true (no matter your ideology): youarenotsosmart.com/2025/02/20/yan…

New episode: The science behind how our propensity for magical thinking can lead us to deceive each other by first deceiving ourselves – youarenotsosmart.com/2025/03/03/yan…

Hey everyone wondering if you can ever get through to people stuck in cult-like thinking and change their minds (spoiler - you can). How Minds Change is, right now, a Kindle Daily Deal for $1.99 on Amazon. Limited time, ends at midnight, here's a link: a.co/d/gMmjgU0

. You Are Not So Smart's @DavidMcRaney introduces a special critical thinking issue of Skeptical Inquirer—featuring Stephanie Simoes, Thinking Is Power, Quackwatch, and more. Explore the intro and full issue: ow.ly/L9GF50VLvE5 #CriticalThinking #ScienceEd

Why (and how) civil resistance works, and why the number of people needed to reach a protest movement's goals is much lower than you might assume: New episode with Erica Chenoweth - youarenotsosmart.com/2025/05/14/yan…

Seems a good time to re-share this episode of YANSS about why civil resistance is incredibly powerful and how that works (scientifically), but also what it takes to make it work after the soldiers and police arrive: youarenotsosmart.com/2025/05/14/yan…

About to attend a conference of scientists who study disagreement at the Center for Enlightened Disagreement at Northwestern. Article about the center: kellogg.northwestern.edu/news/blog/2024…

New Book Progress Update: I just drank chocolate Carnation Instant Breakfast out of a Mason jar for lunch before writing about the role of hermeneutics in the pursuit of intellectual humility when avoiding the fallacy of reification concerning abstractions like "genius" 👋