Jean Decety 🇺🇸 🇪🇺

The Downfall of Stereotype Threat❗️ 🙏@minzlicht and @jayvanbavel powerofusnewsletter.com/p/the-downfall…

@minzlicht @jayvanbavel This is a very important issue, and I wish we could access your paper!

About 18 months ago I wrote about the fall of stereotype threat. It's making the rounds again. Dominic Packer and @jayvanbavel republished it in their newsletter, and Mary Murphy, one of the field's leading stereotype threat researchers, wrote a lengthy public rebuttal. The debate is alive. I have thoughts about her response. For now, I'm republishing the original essay with one small but important addition. open.substack.com/pub/michaelinz…

Brain imaging reveals how wildlife photos open donor wallets, via @EurekAlert! @PNASNexus eurekalert.org/news-releases/…

How about the 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘫𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘧𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘺 ("Linda is a bank teller and feminist", etc.), not discussed in my piece? It ain't a real fallacy either. As Gerd Gigerenzer has shown, words like ‘probable’ are ambiguous, and can also mean plausible, sensible, supported by evidence. In their famous experiments, Kahneman & Tversky want people to interpret ‘probable’ as mathematical probability, and then cry "fallacy" when they don't. But this violates Grice's "maxim of relevance". Intuively, why would researchers bother to give all that information about Linda if it's all irrelevant to solving the problem? If the task is framed using natural frequencies instead of abstract probabilities, the supposed "conjunction fallacy" evaporates.

A realistic perspective on Sapiens. We are not inherently cooperative but have the capacity for cooperation, just as we have the capacity for exploitation and selfishness. What matters at the individual level is the way we choose to behave towards others. shorturl.at/KnMYH

@robsica @hanno_sauer I've never said that empathy is a moral emotion.

@hanno_sauer @Decety Also, maybe of interest: why, on an evolutionary contractualist view, empathy is not a moral emotion: researchgate.net/publication/35…

What are some good recent papers and/or takes on the pros & cons, virtues & vices of empathy?

"Neurodiversity advocates ignore the harsh realities of severe autism... They’ve done a good job of hijacking the message & monopolising the discourse... controlling the narrative so tightly that people like my sons will have no choice in the world." aeon.co/essays/why-the…

Hey, remember that music you loved when you were about 13 or 14? I bet you still loooove that music. Source: nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opi…

Do you need to believe in God to be moral and have good values? Views on this question vary widely around the world, according to our 2025 survey of 25 countries. pewresearch.org/short-reads/20…

@avidseries See also this Science paper showing that the Genotype-Tissue Expression project documents that 1/3 of our 23,000 genes are expressed differently according to sex in 44 different tissues, including 11 brain regions: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32913072/

In a ​new paper​, researchers argue that: “a primary cause of the rise in mental disorders [in youth] is a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play, roam, and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults.”

@KirkegaardEmil This is a very important issue. I cannot find the source. Is it a publication?

Obviously a case of social copying. Will hopefully be treated this way in studies in a few decades.

@LoreReichter @hanno_sauer What's your email address?

@Decety @hanno_sauer Hi @Decety, can you send me the article?

Even generous welfare states are not immune to a "Breaking Bad" effect. A study conducted in Denmark and the Netherlands shows that a cancer diagnosis can push people to crime. economist.com/graphic-detail…

Across 42 societies, women report stronger motivation for threat avoidance, long-term pair bonding and caregiving, while men report stronger motivation for status and mate-seeking. shorturl.at/ZCerk

@mary_hail20316 @KevWaldman @UMich A course on "social influence and ideological conformity", which integrates the evolutionary ultimate explanations and the psychological & neural mechanisms.

@Decety @KevWaldman @UMich A course on how to be a fuckwit? He will definitely pass.

I am a gay clinical researcher. A study I conducted @UMich resulted in 86% of gay male participants reporting forced (*performative*) alignment with trans ideology (**out of fear of reputational damage**) even though the gay males reported *almost no* desire for trans-ideology alignment. ** Activists hacked my acct and deleted this post, but here it is again: psychform.com/lgbtq-umbrella…

𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 🦺 ❣️ With age, children increasingly prioritize younger individuals. Mothers prioritize younger and female lives. Evolutionary frameworks offer potential explanation for why such social norms seem pervasive❗ sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Heritability of intrinsic human life span is about 50% when confounding factors are addressed | Science science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…