Pascal Boyer

A highly recommended reading for everyone. Excellent @SteveStuWill

New article in JPSP on Apocalyptic Thinking! Takeaways in the title: End of world beliefs are common, diverse, and predict how people perceive and respond to global risks. Cindel J.M. White, @azimshariff, & Ara Norenzayan dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi00… Preprint: matthewibillet.com

@DavePietrasz's new preprint on the cognitive architecture for groups is really good: osf.io/preprints/psya…

The social media prism in its pure crystal form.

New episode (1210), with Dr. Cristina Bicchieri. We discuss what social norms are and how they change. YouTube: youtu.be/Z4sdNxSJkWI Podcast: bit.ly/4qU2Qqx

What is it about some stories and situations that make them more effective at evoking fear? One way to answer this is to reverse engineer the emotion of fear 😱 ➡️ A short blogpost on the HBES website about our recent article with Coltan Scrivner. hbes.com/engineering-fe…

New episode (1207), with Dr. Alberto Acerbi. We talk about his book, Tecnopanico, and how to approach digital media with reasonable caution. #Sociology #Science YouTube: youtu.be/D6NLQjxIjps Podcast: tinyurl.com/waw82jd4

When did animal societies start in evolutionary history? Learn about it in my interview with Dr. Tim Clutton-Brock. #Biology #Science Full interview: youtu.be/Xf71Jt3h1Xc

People hallucinating all these elaborate 3D strategic chess reasons, when it's really easy: Every president on Rushmore added at least one state Trump unilaterally charges $1 trillion on your credit card for Greenland, now the 51st State of Trumponia charges another $50 billion to add himself to Rushmore, 3x the sized of other heads, gilded in gold leaf, with a 50 foot tall wedding invitation golden script lettering

New episode (1201), with Dr. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. We talk about her new book, The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us. #Philosophy YouTube: youtu.be/0rzPBnFQPPc Podcast: bit.ly/3LIQwdk

What is democracy, and how do we measure it? Learn about it in my interview with Dr. Honorata Mazepus (@HMazepus). #politics #Science Full interview: youtu.be/ASPnHRXxMHE

1/3 New preprint:

Excellent essay by Peggy Sastre on Napoleon Chagnon's persecution by his anthropological colleagues for his empirical approach & politically incorrect findings about the Yanomamo. (I knew him well from 2 sabbaticals at UCSB, & Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's characterization is right on.) quillette.com/2025/12/28/amo…

"when anthropologists measure hunter-gatherers’ competence and warmth, they find that people prefer to spend time with campmates who are warm and friendly over campmates who are the best hunters, even when they’re heading out on a hunt together."

How Margaret Mead’s romanticised account of Samoan life became the founding myth of cultural determinism—and why it endures despite having been thoroughly debunked. By Patrick Whittle. quillette.com/2025/12/30/the…

Richard Lee, author of the ethnography The Dobe !Kung (Ju/'hoansi), a staple of Anthro 101 courses, w/ Ju/'hoansi women & their kids in 2013. Lee & colleagues' research on this south African hunter-gatherer population profoundly shaped our perceptions of human evolution.

Terrific social psych paper ( how often do you hear that from me?). Adversarial collab on how much measures of "implicit bias" predict racial discrim. tl;dr: N>2000 1. Pro-Black discrimination>pro-White discrimination 2. Implicit measures predicted discrim (std reg coeff=.16) a hair above their agreed-upon threshold for considering the effect trivial (.15), controlling for explicit prejudice. 3. Explicit prej powerfully predicted discrim. Authors include @jordanaxt, @ImHardcory, @PTetlock, @tomstello researchgate.net/publication/39… ht @robsica

Learn about human universals, biology, and culture in my interview with Dr. Kim Hill. #Anthropology #Science Full interview: youtu.be/1s7WgXQV5-c

Bombshell: Oliver Sacks (a humane man & a fine essayist) made up many of the details in his famous case studies, deluding neuroscientists, psychologists, & general readers for decades. The man who mistook his wife for a hat? The autistic twins who generated multi-digit prime numbers? The institutionalized, paralyzed man who tapped out allusions to Rilke? Made up to embellish the stories. Probably also: the aphasic patients who detected lies better than neurologically intact people, including Ronald Reagan's insincerity. newyorker.com/magazine/2025/…

Because their primary commitment is to a belletristic, literarist, romantic promotion of elite cultural sensibilities over the tough-minded analyses of philistine scientists and technologists, their rival elite (carrying on C. P. Snow's war of prestige between "the two cultures). A common denominator behind Sacks's fabrications was that ineffable, refined intuition can surmount cerebral analysis, which is limited and cramped. It's a theme that runs through some of their other blunders, such as ...