Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · 27d

"To the degree that these tools are saving time and energy, I am not seeing researchers reinvest those savings into developing a deeper understanding of their subject matter, making connections to new ideas, or otherwise investing in advancing their current skillset."

Wonderful essay.

Rob Chavez @robchavez.bsky.social · 29d

My latest piece, on apprenticeship, artificial intelligence, and intrinsic motivation. Handcrafted from the heart.

Please, share and enjoy.

open.substack.com/pub/robchave...

A Vibe Coder's Millennium

I got my first home computer in late 2000 when I was in the middle of 10th grade.

open.substack.com

1 6

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Aug 19

Continue to be amazed by and draw research inspiration from vision science

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Aug 19

On the left is a rabbit. On the right is an elephant. But guess what: They’re the *same image*, rotated 90°!

In @currentbiology.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I show how these images—known as “visual anagrams”—can help solve a longstanding problem in cognitive science. bit.ly/45BVnCZ

5

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Jul 7

What a wonderful essay in the NYTimes by Emily Falk @falklab.bsky.social that blends together many #neuroeconomics results www.nytimes.com/2025/07/06/o...

Opinion | Here Is the Science of Why You Doomscroll

www.nytimes.com

2

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Apr 13

"Psychology is fragmented into the study of a myriad of constructs and measures, most of which are used very rarely. This hinders cumulative knowledge generation." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Defragmenting psychology - Nature Human Behaviour

Psychology is fragmented into the study of a myriad of constructs and measures, most of which are used very rarely. This hinders cumulative knowledge generation. We call on the field to defragment psy...

www.nature.com

3

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Feb 15

Looks like a very cool paper!

Jonathan Nicholas @jonathannicholas.bsky.social · Feb 14

Excited to share a new paper with Daphna Shohamy & @nathanieldaw.bsky.social! Using fmri reactivation, we measured *when* people build preferences from memory. We found that people tend to do so before a choice, but that they also wait until choice time when options are linked to multiple memories

Proactive and reactive construction of memory-based preferences - Nature Communications

Making new decisions requires retrieving memories, but when this occurs is unclear. The authors show that people typically access memories before a choice unless there are many related memories to con...

www.nature.com

3

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Jan 22

"Evaluating Behavioral Incentive Compatibility: Insights from Experiments" www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

Evaluating Behavioral Incentive Compatibility: Insights from Experiments

(Fall 2024) - Incentive compatibility is core to mechanism design. The success of auctions, matching algorithms, and voting systems all hinge on the ability to select incentives that make it in the in...

www.aeaweb.org

3

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Dec 16

Adding this to my reading pile: "The affective gradient hypothesis: an affect-centered account of motivated behavior"

The affective gradient hypothesis: an affect-centered account of motivated behavior

Everyone agrees that feelings and actions are intertwined, but cannot agree how. According to dominant models, actions are directed by estimates of va…

www.sciencedirect.com

1 5

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Dec 16

So true and so much more clever than my "misc 4" folder this year.

Margaret Echelbarger @bskybymidge.bsky.social · Dec 16

At the end of each term, any files remaining on my desktop go here to...likely be never opened again.

Screenshot of blue Mac Desktop folder named "Desktop Bankruptcy."

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Dec 9

Timely article in latest JEL issue: "The Economics of Social Media"
www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

The Economics of Social Media

(December 2024) - We provide a guide to the burgeoning literature on the economics of social media. We first define social media platforms and highlight their unique features. We then synthesize the m...

www.aeaweb.org

2

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Dec 8

Just finished reading "Categories We Live By: How We Classify Everyone and Everything"
Highly recommended! Both serious and entertaining examples of how categorization is challenging.
direct.mit.edu/books/monogr...

Categories We Live By: How We Classify Everyone and Everything

An in-depth analysis of how humanity's compulsion to categorize affects every aspect of our lived experience.The minute we are born—sometimes even before—w

direct.mit.edu

3

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Dec 4

bsky.app/starter-pack...

3

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Dec 3

Looks like an interesting read for #neuroeconomics folks

Nature Reviews Psychology @natrevpsychol.nature.com · Dec 2

The sensory valuation account of aesthetic experience

Perspective by Marcos Nadal (@mnadal.bsky.social) & Martin Skov (@mskov01.bsky.social)

Web: go.nature.com/3ZfccAG
PDF: rdcu.be/d13QD

Hedonic values for sensory objects are computed by nuclei located in the mesocorticolimbic reward system. These nuclei are distributed across several different anatomical structures, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the amygdala, the insula, the striatum (including the nucleus accumbens and the pallidum), and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, including the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). During hedonic evaluation (the assessment of objects in terms of how good or bad they are for the organism in its current, past and anticipated states), this system receives signals projected from sensory systems that represent perceptual information about the evaluated object, from systems that monitor homeostatic, autonomic and endocrine states, and from executive and semantic systems that represent knowledge, expectations, behavioural options and situational conditions and demands.

3

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Nov 29

More ongoing great threads about complexity in decision making

Shengwu Li @shengwuli.bsky.social · Nov 28

I like Ryan’s paper and (obviously) I think complexity matters for behavior.

But I think Florian’s updating too much from one experiment. I want to see replications and results from ‘nearby’ designs before saying the lottery anomalies have nothing to do with risk.

Florian Ederer @florianederer.bsky.social · Nov 27

Some of the most important lottery anomalies from the behavioral risk literature (e.g., probability weighting and loss aversion) actually have nothing to do with risk.

They also arise in perfectly deterministic settings.

Lead article in the latest AER issue:
www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

2

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Nov 26

Uma @umakarma.bsky.social did make a #neuroeconomics one that has a good number of marketing folks in it bsky.app/starter-pack...

1 3

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Nov 26

👏

Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · Nov 26

There's a lot of papers out there on optimal stopping but I think I've read enough.

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Nov 25

Looks like a very cool paper! "Predicting and Understanding Individual-Level Choice Under Risk" eml.berkeley.edu/~kariv/EKO_I...

eml.berkeley.edu

2 7

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Nov 24

Wish there was a way to have animated figures more organically in more academic papers

Nathan Yau @flowingdata.com · Nov 19

I could've framed this better, but I do enjoy the ghost-y trails flowingdata.com/2024/11/14/e...

1 2

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Nov 24

Looks like an excellent resource!

Neurosynth @neurosynth.bsky.social · Nov 23

Check it out! The future of Neurosynth.

We launched Neurosynth Compose: A free and open platform for neuroimaging meta-analysis. NS-Compose makes it easy to perform custom neuroimaging meta-analyses without leaving the browser.
It's live, check it out! compose.neurosynth.org

neurosynth compose

Neurosynth-Compose App

compose.neurosynth.org

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Nov 23

Lots of new followers! Hi! Here is a 2021 piece in JACR w/ @umakarma.bsky.social and Ming Hsu: "Toward an Integrative Conceptualization of Maladaptive Consumer Behavior" we combine concepts from marketing, psychiatry, and #neuroeconomics www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...

Toward an Integrative Conceptualization of Maladaptive Consumer Behavior | Journal of the Association for Consumer Research: Vol 6, No 3

Abstract Consumer research has explored several dimensions of maladaptive decision-making, including compulsive consumption and behavioral addiction. Here we propose extending this work by integrating...

www.journals.uchicago.edu

1 1

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Nov 19

Very excited about this paper w/ Moriah Stendel and @robchavez.bsky.social "Computational Mechanisms of Self-enhancement During Social Comparison and their Relationship to Internalizing Symptoms" osf.io/preprints/ps...

OSF

osf.io

3 6

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Nov 19

Great #neuroeconomics starter pack!

Uma Karmarkar @umakarma.bsky.social · Nov 19

How about a Neuroecon Starter Pack?

I didn't want to presume - I only added people who I *know* have attended a neuroecon conference or who've used this label on themselves (at least once). So additions are very very welcome!

go.bsky.app/1K9Suh

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Nov 15

"Supervised Machine Learning for Eliciting Individual Demand" published last year in AEJ Micro w/ Josh Tasoff and JJ Lee. For those interested in choice prediction, WTP elicitation, and machine learning applied to experimental data.
www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

Supervised Machine Learning for Eliciting Individual Demand

(November 2023) - The canonical direct-elicitation approach for measuring individuals' valuations for goods is the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak procedure, which generates willingness-to-pay (WTP) values th...

www.aeaweb.org

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Nov 15

New account here so I will mention some of my recent papers!

Here is one earlier this year in JCP, with @umakarma.bsky.social , Gideon Nave, & Hilke Plassmann: "Reconsidering the path for neural and physiological methods in consumer psychology" myscp.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Reconsidering the path for neural and physiological methods in consumer psychology

Recent decades have witnessed a burst of neuroscience research investigating mental and physiological processes central to consumer behavior, including sensory perception, memory, and decision making...

myscp.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

3 17

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Nov 12

Thanks for creating this! If possible, I'd be grateful to be added!

1

John Clithero @johnclithero.bsky.social · Nov 12

Just joined! Will be looking for #marketing #decisionmaking #jdm #consumerneuroscience #neuroeconomics

3