Unfettered access to chatbots can harm educational outcomes Using AI while solving problems improves performance by 48% (GPT base). When access to AI was taken away, students actually performed worse than those who never had access (17% reduction in grades) www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Why do human societies adopt rigid moral rules? People often have legitimate reasons for failing to cooperate, yet those reasons are often opaque, allowing opportunists to disguise selfishness as justified hardship. Rigidity preserves cooperation when trust is fragile www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

People express greater moral concern for ingroups compared with plants and animals, human outgroups, and villains These findings debunk theorizing that liberal prioritize distant strangers and non-human entities over close others. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

When people express they "love their job", the dominant motive driving this display of intrinsic motivation is prosocial, not selfish. People express their intrinsic motivation to inspire, uplift, or connect with others at work—rather than achieve personal gains. journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5...

What increases social status? Being a trusted group member is #1. Other factors are intelligence, university prestige, leadership, knowledge, creativity, honesty, public speaking, income, humor and kindness. Stealing, stupidity, STDs, and uncleanliness are the biggest ways to reduce status.

Why dating apps backfire: Seeing more partner options sets off a rejection mind-set: People become increasingly likely to reject potential partners to the extent that they are presented with more options. This is especially true of women. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Envy is poison to the workplace. The university employees most likely to be targeted with exclusion & sabotage are the highest performers, and the driving emotion is envy. High performers who were identified with their work group got targeted far less open.substack.com/pub/toddkash...

Welcome to the era of AI slop on social media! 41% of long posts on LinkedIn were flagged for AI, 31% on Medium, and 29% on X/Twitter. I think people will be looking more and more for authentic, original voices on social media.

But the current system wastes the time of job candidates and letter writers, allows for too much gatekeeping, and selects for the wrong things. We should evaluate candidates based on their credentials, interview the top candidates, then request letters. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

While Democrats report worse mental health than Republicans, Republicans in neighborhoods with more Democratics report more anxiety, depression & loneliness. These effects are similar to the effects of being a racial minority or contextual poverty on mental health. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The most common way Americans get their news is from social media (54%). But this is just the top of the iceberg--we are approached nearly 6 Billion social media users around the world and younger people are using it for more hours a day than prior generations. This is why it's critical to study.

People shift political expression to fit the norms in the room People randomly assigned to liberal- or conservative- chat groups shifted their stance in the direction of the group revealing that social context is sufficient to alter political expression. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We should pay peer reviewers Paying reviewers led to faster decisions—an average of 5.5 working days vs 38 days for unpaid reviews And review quality improved (judged by handling editors) Reviewers who delivered a good peer review in 4 days were paid $290 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A recent study found that 76% of respondents trusted scientists, a proportion above teachers (73%) and well above that for journalists (54%) and government leaders (49%). But “Trust in science is politicized” particulalry with lower trust among Republicans www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A clear majority of Americans now support age bans on social media for kids under age 16. These is a wide consensus of support across the political spectrum, every age groups, and parents/non-parents. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

Negative thoughts and emotions can prevent a team from identifying constructive solutions A new measure of collective rumination in assesses dysfunctional teams. Teams who score high are lower on team performance and teamwork engagement. iaap-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

People who are hostile online are also hostile offline -> these people are higher in status-seeking needs This was observed in 30 countries (N=15,202). It suggests that online hostility is a form of status seeking. Keep this in mind when someone is trolling you online www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Beneath the bravado of national narcissists is a fragile need for validation. This differentiates them from people with a healthy national identity They both feel attached to their own nation. But national narcissists are hypersensitive to any sort of critique and perceived disrespect.

In Caravaggio’s famous painting of Narcissus, a handsome youth eventually dies of his passion for himself. Collective narcissists* are preoccupied with their groups image. For example, national narcissists see their country as exceptional and entitled to special treatment.

I will be speaking at @PopTech 30 where the them is CIVIL. The event will explore how neuroscience, psychology, culture, and conflict shape the way we think, connect, and decide together on October 6–8, 2026 in Studio Theatre, Washington, DC You can register at civil.poptech.org

There is a growing divide on the political left and within the Democractic party between liberals and leftists. Rather than identifying as more extreme Liberals, Leftistist see themselves as a distinct group, defined by an anticapitalist ideology and radical societal change osf.io/preprints/ps...

A new study provides causal evidence from 9 countries where they experimentally manipulated intergroup polarization: When polarization decreases people discriminate less, while support for democratic principles increases & willingness to engage in compromise grows phys.org/news/2026-06...

3 drivers of polarization in low to medium income countries: 1 ) echo chambers reinforce false beliefs about opposing groups. 2) biased traditional, digital and social media 3) divisive political elites using hostile rhetoric and incivility amplify social divides. www.nature.com/articles/s41...,

I'm fascinated by cases where social technology--like social media, chatbots & dating apps--backfires. Why are tools that promise freedom of participation, unlimited empathy & an plenty of relationship options making people so miserable? This paper explains why: ideas.repec.org/p/sad/wpaper...

Chatbots have political preferences: www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

Fatalism is psychologically powerful and extremely damaging, because when people conclude that no response will meaningfully alter outcomes disengagement becomes the rational response. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

The cuts to science in the US are decimating the talent pipeline and leading to a brain drain. A survey of biomedical scientists found that only half now say they are likely to remain in academia, down 22 percentage points from how they felt 6 months earlier.

Bob Dylan: The best thing about aging is freedom from the lie that anything was ever under your control. Realizing that I can not control everything has really changed how I view my own life. It makes things much lighter. It also releases you from the expectations of others.

I spent this week contemplating depolarization & cultivating connection at the Mind & Life Institute I spoke about our research on how technology often does more to divide than connect us. I was inspired by the passionate people trying to foster compassion and create better spaces for disagreement.

We interviewed Harvard Business School Professor Max Bazerman about his new book, an "Academic scandal: A story of fraud and betrayal". He describes how scientific fraud happens why it is corrosive to public trust, and why academics and institutions too often remain silent when it occurs.