Marc Hye-Knudsen

On the surface, fear and humor seem like polar opposite states of mind, yet throughout our lives they continually interact. In a new (open access!) paper out in Evolutionary Psychology, @MathiasClasen, B. Boutwell, @JensKC, and I offer an explanation 🧵⬇️ doi.org/10.1177/147470…

@LTF_01 Might you be willing to share your syllabus?

What is this class anyways? It's organizational science, but the gist is that organizations, like brains or organisms, are cognitive systems. We're afforded the opportunity to use tools from each to study others. It's my first time teaching this, I hope I can teach it again.

Today’s popular fictions can be extremely far from reality: The Lord of the Rings, Avatar, The Legend of Zelda, Avengers: Endgame. But has this always been the case?

🚨 Kids LOVE fear?!🚨 Our new study led by Mihaela Taranu from the Recreational Fear Lab uncovers something surprising: Children across all ages actively seek out scary experiences - for fun! 📄link.springer.com/article/10.100…

We often have to judge who is knowledgeable—precisely when we are not. Can humans really do that? Our new paper in Psychological Science shows that, surprisingly, we can. drive.google.com/file/d/1b15EQD…

@justsomeoneDK @gelliottmorris Our own @NathLarigaldie actually made one that's pretty great (and funny too) x.com/NathLariPhD/st…

@gelliottmorris That is a shame. I've used this interactive teacher when teaching scientific methods for many years. Can anyone recommend something similar, as intuitive and easily accessible for folks who don't know much about p-hacking etc.?

ABC News has now fully taken down the old 538 archives, including all interactive projects since 2014. Aside from erasing history this prevents access to publicly released data, including polls/models and all story data. Totally unacceptable and a real betrayal of the public

Link here 👇 bps.org.uk/psychologist/a…

In 2023, I wrote about the psychology of dad jokes for @psychmag (and made it onto the cover of the magazine!) Two years on, they’ve asked me to reflect back. I write about the experience of having my piece go semi-viral and my favourite relevant research that has come out since.

@Giligg @psychmag @SteveStuWill @SkeptInquirer @chriscfrench @sophiescott @michaelshermer @TheSkepticMag @robkhenderson @AberUni Really cool piece, Gil!

A skeptical look at the health benefits of humour and laughter, my article in the @psychmag bps.org.uk/psychologist/c… @SteveStuWill @SkeptInquirer @chriscfrench @sophiescott @michaelshermer @TheSkepticMag @robkhenderson @AberUni

@Evolving_Moloch Here's Robert W. Dunning on the Ojibwa: "During this time I was given an Indian name, Weskayjak, the culture hero who had supernatural power (in my case money and contact with government) combined with an unbelievable naïveté and ineptitude in human affairs”

@Evolving_Moloch In my study of humor among hunter-gatherers, this was one of the most common themes of humor reported by ethnographers: natives finding the ineptitude of the ethnographer funny, both their poor mastery of foraging practices and the local norms and language

Fun description of an anthropologist struggling to learn the foraging practices and social norms of an Aboriginal Australian society. A common theme in a lot of ethnographic accounts from around the world

@EdgarDubourg @MathiasClasen @ml_fisher It was a pleasure. The students were very insightful!

Feeling lucky and grateful for me and my students to have welcomed researchers whose work on fiction I deeply admire and find so inspiring (@MathiasClasen @ml_fisher @marchk). Thanks to them and to my students for an incredibly insightful semester!

Philosophy & folk-theories of science started on physics & controlled exp. What would happened if we had built it on historical & explicitly fragmentary sciences? In this paper we explore how theories are built & improved in the study of the evolution of cognition & communication

This fun piece I did for @psychmag on the psychology of dad jokes continues to be the most popular thing I’ve written

Cool to be featured as quote of the day in @nature’s Briefing nature.com/articles/d4158… Happy Halloween

Shoutout to my co-authors @mathiasclasen @JensKC @RecFearLab. The Guardian piece also features quotes from @MorbidPsych, whose great research we draw on!

Why do people enjoy scaring others for fun? Why do people often laugh after jump scares? Why do children find peek-a-boo so funny? In honour of Halloween, @guardian has covered our recent paper on the cognitive intersections of humor and fear: theguardian.com/science/2024/o…

AI is now good at comedy-roasting us. This is the existential risk we've failed to worry about: that superintelligent machines make fun of us

"ChatGPT 3.5-produced jokes were rated as equally funny or funnier than human-produced jokes regardless of the comedic task and the expertise of the human comedy writer." osf.io/preprints/psya…