What contributes to a meaningful life? A sense of belonging If you don't have it—you're in trouble: financially, socioeconomically, psychologically, culturally Belonging is when there has been a co-shaping of organism and environment so they fit well (they belong) together

When a living thing dies, its light is snuffed out - literally. Alex Wilkins explains how researchers have captured the faint glow emitted by living things to explore what happens when life ends Rowan Hooper ローワン フーパー, Penny Sarchet podfollow.com/the-world-the-…

What predicts #climate beliefs and action? We have a new paper analyzing 19 predictors of 4 different climate change beliefs and action across 55 countries (N = 4,635). Four predictors had consistent effects across all outcomes: 1) environmentalist identity, 2) trust in

Nature is Amazing ☘️ And there is a different situation

Across 300,000 papers published in top 100 economics journals, more than 90% of claims use language that is causal while less than 10% are actually using causal inference methods.

Another way of understanding the meaning crisis: People are experiencing cultural domicide We’re sheltered—but not rooted Common responses are nihilism (there is no home) or retreating to find home only inside ourselves But true meaning comes through belonging: Mutual shaping

If PhD programs are, truly, going to prepare students for non-academic jobs, they should, at minimum, stop sending signals—overtly or covertly—that non-academic jobs are inferior.

Really cool paper, which was unfortunately never published due to ethical concerns. Thompson and Hanley found that creating new Wikipedia articles changed the content of scientific papers. As a way of disseminating information, it is ludicrously cost effective.

New post: What if the best things in life… had no point at all? I wrote about bowling, mice on running wheels, the overjustification effect, and why The Dude abides while we optimize ourselves into misery. Sometimes joy needs no justification. 👇

The majority of both laypeople and professionals still believe in the outdated concept of 'repressed memories', the idea that traumatic experiences can be unconsciously blocked for many years, causing mental problems, unless being 'recovered' in psychotherapy. A Neofreudian

Very excited to publicly share news about a new tool, Papercheck, that Lisa DeBruine and me started to develop more than a year ago! In an introductory blog post, we explain our philosophy to automatically check scientific papers for best practices. daniellakens.blogspot.com/2025/06/introd…

🚨 New preprint! We think we've found something fascinating about prosociality. One of the big questions in social science is: When, and how, do humans become prosocial? To tell something new, we designed a unique experiment combining three characteristics: 1) We tested a

New PNAS paper (Great work Ivan Kroupin): The cultural construction of executive function. By comparing cognitive development in diverse communities, with & without schools, we find different cognitive developmental trajectories. Michael Muthukrishna pnas.org/doi/abs/10.107…

The commodification of travel is now common on Instagram or TikTok. It’s a way to signal social class, cultural sophistication, and a cosmopolitan identity. And many people that this has completely ruined several vacation spots and other locations around the world. 44% of people

If Congress approves the science grant cuts proposed by the White House, the number of early-career researchers it supports could fall by 78%: from 95,700 students and postdocs this year to 21,400 in 2026 science.org/content/articl…

Another wild week in biotechnology: 1. Now you can track cellular gene expression patterns, using ultrasound, from outside the body. (The technology is built on gas vesicles, which I’ve written about before.) If you had said this would be a thing 10 years ago, nobody would have

El director Alfonso López les pidió a sus músicos que tocaran ‘El Día de Mi Suerte’, de Willie Colón, como si se tratara de la Quinta Sinfonía de Beethoven. Este fue el resultado:

🚨New paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences 🚨 Why do some ideas spread widely, while others fail to catch on? @Jayvanbavel and I review the “psychology of virality,” or the psychological and structural factors that shape information spread online and offline. Thread 🧵(1/n)

Sexual desire is the driving force behind the pursuit of physical attractiveness in mate choice by both men and women. A wealth of evidence suggests that most people prefer highly attractive partners to less attractive ones. But why do people prioritize partner