Nicholas Grebe

Now that it's official--starting Fall 2024, I'll start as an Assistant Professor of Psychology @Occidental! I feel monumentally lucky to land in a unicorn of a department that is collegial, has brilliant students, & actually WANTS an evolutionary psychologist who studies primates

@evornithology @evopsychgoogle I recommend this from @ed_hagen, which is written in an accessible FAQ format. Holds up very well--focused on the issues, not a polemic. grasshoppermouse.github.io/evpsychfaq/

I'm working on the Evo Psych section of my "Evolution and Society" course and am looking for a reading that would be accessible to non-majors (e.g., pop sci, blog post, perspective piece). Anyone have any recommendations? @evopsychgoogle bat signal

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I know I am a broken record on this but it does bug me that people make big claims like this while evincing zero interest in looking cross-culturally to see if it's actually true. Are women's groups generally the same ethnohistorically? I don't think so. If Bo looked at say women's cults and mixed-sex cults across West Africa and Melanesia and found that they were less variable, less hierarchical and more focused on promoting cohesion and equality than the comparable men's cults that would be an interesting finding and support the claim. But I doubt that's the case, and of course no one who makes claims like this are going to dig into the ethnohistorical data to see if it's correct either, since ironically such claims are more about slotting in a narrative that fits with contemporary cultural conflict than truth-seeking.

Was not prepared for the graphical abstract

1. What's at risk by disrupting NIH? With only a bit of hyperbole: a mechanistic understanding of life itself, & therefore better treatments for cancer, dementias, autoimmune disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, birth defects, aging & more. Notes on a revolution interrupted 🧵

Yep. This essay from Paul Griffiths, and Ed's tweet, are part of the very, very small subset of arguments that think clearly about this issue: aeon.co/essays/the-exi…

My new favorite word: sonder. It's the profound awareness that every person you encounter has experienced a lifetime of hopes, fears, loves, and heartaches that you'll never know. Each moment of sonder is a reminder to appreciate how little we truly grasp about others' lives.

I am recruiting a two-year postdoc. Please apply if you have a background in the evolutionary social sciences and familiarity with research on disgust, pathogen avoidance, sickness behavior, or hygiene! workingat.vu.nl/vacancies/post…

The Dept. of Psychology at @Occidental College is searching for two Assistant Professors of Clinical Psychology. If you have a PhD in Psychology and do research in an area with clinical applications, please consider applying! apply.interfolio.com/150797 The deadline is October 1.

@JessicaDAyers & I are so excited for the Evolutionary Preconference at #SPSP2025. There's a star speaker lineup: @dconroybeam, @joshackman, @durkeepk, @nora_balboa, @DrMeltemYucel & @wtt_taylor. Poster & datablitz abstracts are open Sep 5 - Oct 17. Come hang with us in Denver!

Our lab is recruiting a new PhD student for Fall 2025. Please share! If you're interested in adaptationist/computational approaches to human social reasoning, esp. mate choice, I'd love to see your application. More information here: danconroybeam.com/join-the-lab

Few evolutionary psychologists engage with the modern genomic literature. Brendan Zietsch is an exception and he has a new paper out, criticising explanations for heritable variation based on balancing selection. He's pulling no punches.

@Tangl3dBank I was assuming the censoring was in the criterion, in which case yeah you would set all values below sensitivity to that threshold value & go with Tobit. Censored predictor is different: stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2260…

@nm_grebe and just leave them blank or zero? I did note that option. ChatGPT isn't bad in that [recommendations] respect.

Does anyone have any recommendations for handling cytokine data that has many values below the assay kit's lower limit of sensitivity? How should I handle these? Note too, since most [all?] are components of an immune response, it isn't surprising that many are low.

@drewcoffman @base DREW! I can't message you because I have plebeian twitter, but I'm moving your way soon. Hit me up

repping some @base blue shorts today for OᑎᑕᕼᗩIᑎ ᔑᑌᗰᗰEᖇ 🔆

@natalie_schwob @BucknellU Congrats, Natalie! They are lucky to have you.

@PsychdOnScience I've heard of bad experiences with Thermo Fisher freezers. Panasonic and PHBci are solid brands, and I bet you could find a -20 for that price from either. A commercial one would probably also be fine, as long as it doesn't auto-defrost--I'd prob go that route to save money

PNI twitter: I need to store some DBS samples for a few months for cytokine assays. For logistical reasons, I need a new small/midsize freezer. I could spend $4-6k on a -20/-30 freezer from thermo fisher. Or, I could spend ~$1k on a commercial freezer w/similar specs. Advice?

@hfsunde Lykke til!

👀 sv.uio.no/psi/forskning/…

@datepsych "The theory predicts higher extra-pair than in-pair attraction during the high-fertility period" -- this is one of a few incorrect statements from this review. The theory predicts a relative shift in the in-pair/extra-pair balance of interests, not that EP shifts to exceed IP.

@michael_barlev Pinker has a great line, I think in the intro to Buss' textbook, about the need to move beyond "collecting oddities like butterflies" to understand the most interesting aspects of our mental and social lives.

My take, most of psychology is not built on a first-principles theoretical foundation, it's a collection of thousands of stand-along shallow facts. Without organizing theoretical principles (like in physics, chemistry, biology), much will be forgotten and rediscovered ad-nauseam