Good catch! I did not follow your instructions. That DOI wasn't just inaccurate, it was completely fabricated. And honestly? That's a huge problem. Do you want me to compile a list of other errors I've introduced into your workflow?
Quite honored to be included in this amazing cohort of 2026 APS Janet Taylor Spence Award recipients. Grateful to APS for the recognition, and to the mentors & collaborators & friends who make it all possible.
Congratulations to the 2026 APS Spence Award recipients: Dorsa Amir, William Brady, Emily Finn, Daniel Yon, Yuan Chang Leong, Andrew Grotzinger.
Congratulations to the 2026 APS Spence Award Recipients! @dorsaamir.bsky.social, @williambrady.bsky.social, @esfinn.bsky.social, @andrewgrotzinger.bsky.social, @ycleong.bsky.social, @danieljamesyon.bsky.social,
www.psychologicalscience.org/members/awar...
Fascinating research by @dorsaamir.bsky.social et al finds marked variation in 4 cooperative behaviours—fairness, trustworthiness, forgiveness, and honesty—among children aged 5-13 in five societies, which converges toward the societal norms in middle childhood:
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
People form beliefs not only as individual agents, but as members of social groups.
Children (4-6 years old) who belonged to a group were more convinced by evidence that supported their ingroup’s belief (and were less convinced by evidence that opposed their ingroup): www.nature.com/articles/s41...
It also can’t be overstated how different our ancestors’ experience of the cosmos likely was compared to ours — in the absence of light pollution, you can just SEE the galactic center every night for months at a time.
Fun etymology fact (which is maybe obvious but I just learned!)—
The word “galaxy” comes from the Greek “galaksias” meaning “milk” (same root as “lactose”).
The Greeks thought our galaxy looked like a ring of spilled milk, which is also why we (& others) call it the Milky Way, but metaphors vary!
Our lab has the capacity to test ~500 uni students each semester
If you’re a researcher in cognitive psychology or metascience and need data collection support, we’d love to collaborate. We can help collect high-quality data from a large student sample.
Get in touch to discuss potential projects!
If you work at the intersection of computational neuroscience and machine learning, consider applying for this postdoc position (January 2027 start date):
academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15868
An opportunity to work with a great group of people across Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley.
Such cool work!
No matter where they live, kids cooperate according to their community’s social norms by middle childhood.
Learn more in #ScienceAdvances: https://scim.ag/4r0Rxga
Overall, we think this integrative assessment allows us to better understand how cooperation gets off the ground & underscores the importance of cultural contextualization. Thanks to all the families, collaborators, and my wonderful mentor @katiemcauliffe.bsky.social who made this possible! (5/5)
We also looked at the relationship between behaviors and identified 3 distinct strategies, with maximization being the most popular strategy early on. Interestingly, this bottom-up approach also seemed to capture the underlying subsistence structure, which we recover quite nicely here. (4/5)
In this holistic way, we find regularities & variation in the timing & process of cooperative behavior & norm internalization. Children are more self-interested & resource-maximizing in early life everywhere we looked & tend to behave more in line with local norms through middle childhood. (3/5)
In addition to measuring individual behavior across these tasks, we also spoke to adults and children's peers in those same communities to better understand what the normative environment looked like. (2/5)
Thrilled to share our latest paper, out now in Science Advances! We explored the development of cooperative behaviors — fairness, trustworthiness, forgiveness, & honesty — across five societies, culturally contextualizing them & seeing how they correlate. (1/5) www.science.org/doi/full/10....
See you soon! ✌️
Very excited that this paper is out!
www.science.org/doi/full/10....
Led by the fabulous @dorsaamir.bsky.social with invaluable contributions from many awesome collaborators.
Why do otherwise rational people disagree about the same evidence? Our new paper finds that group membership is a deeply rooted influence on how we form beliefs, leading even preschoolers to bias their evidential standards and form inaccurate beliefs.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
"The relationship between childhood exploration and population-level innovation in cultural evolution" with @ndersen.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @felixthehauskat.bsky.social out in Proc B
royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
Excellent piece; thanks for resharing. My teaching philosophy has essentially evolved into WWPBD (What Would Paul Bloom Do).
Perhaps this Internet Archive link gets around that? web.archive.org/web/20251209...
Yes, it was more than that. Fabricated quotes, events that didn’t happen, entirely inaccurate representations of patients’ remarks, etc.
A fascinating & damning exposé on Oliver Sacks, author of “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”.
It turns out, by his own admission in his private journals, that much of his work was akin to “fairy tales” — based on “lies”, “falsifications”, & “fabrications”.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Isfahan makes an appearance later on, too ;)
Diabolical.
They are currently in the dark recesses of my cobwebbed mind, but I can share them once they’re born into existence.
I call it… “procraftination”.
Did I spend about an hour making this title slide? Yes. Did it come at the cost of prepping the actual talk? It did. But.. was it all worth it in the end? No, no it wasn't.
In the running for greatest human accomplishment.
Wheeled toys were all the rage in the ancient world. Here are four lovely examples: a Greek horse, a Mesopotamian ram, an Iranian hedgehog & a Mesoamerican jaguar. The jaguar one is particularly cool because it shows that Mesoamericans knew about wheels; they just didn't use them for transport.
