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Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Sep 2

We outline some work done by our team and by others on the topic. We cover things like, why ecospirituality might be so prevalent around the world; how it might shape sustainable behavior through activating moral cognitions; and how being particularly connected with nature might benefit well-being.

Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Sep 2

Interested in the psychology of people's spiritual connections with nature, and how it shapes well-being and sustainable behavior?

Check out my open-access Current Directions article with Adam Baimel (@abaimel.bsky.social), Mark Schaller, and Ara Norenzayan: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Ecospirituality - Matthew I. Billet, Adam Baimel, Mark Schaller, Ara Norenzayan, 2025

Many people in many cultures have a spiritual connection with nature. Research is beginning to reveal the implications of this “ecospiritual” orientation for tw...

journals.sagepub.com

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Reposted by Matthew I. Billet

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · Sep 2

Below is my new post about our Three Stages of Religious Decline paper (www.nature.com/articles/s41...).

We argue that a similar process of decline affects countries on every populated continent, including countries in which Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism is the largest religion.

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How religion declines around the world

A country’s religious affiliation tends to decline in three transitional stages that unfold across generations, a new paper using Center data proposes.

www.pewresearch.org

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Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · May 20

An incredible resource on Social Psychology today spanning 50 beefy chapters written by some of the greatest scholars today. The best part is, the new Handbook of Social Psychology is completely free and available online to download. Here's the link.

openpublishing.princeton.edu/projects/the...

The Handbook of Social Psychology (6th Edition) in PDF | The Handbook of Social Psychology | Open Publishing

You can download individual chapters and/or the complete book in PDF below. The Handbook is designed to be read online as a continuous-scroll e-book. PDFs may contain inelegant p...

openpublishing.princeton.edu

Reposted by Matthew I. Billet

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · Apr 8

Kombucha girl maybe meme.
On the left, frowny face: working on an important manuscript
On the right, intrigued: spending two hours to create a figure that came to my mind quite randomly

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Reposted by Matthew I. Billet

Tim Waring @twaring.bsky.social · Mar 10

Fully-funded PhD position on the cultural evolution of environmental management!

Link evolution, ecology and behavioral science in the ACE Lab timwaring.info Details: forms.gle/gZWK9BpwYfoG...
@culturalevolsoc.bsky.social @alexmesoudi.com @hyperadapthyrax.bsky.social @michael.muthukrishna.com

ACE Lab: Applied Cultural Evolution Laboratory

culture, evolution, cooperation, and sustainability

timwaring.info

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Reposted by Matthew I. Billet

Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · Feb 25

After a long wait, the working paper for the Many-Economists Project: The Sources of Researcher Variation in Economics. We had 146 teams perform the same research three times, each time with less freedom. What source of freedom leads to different choices and results? papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

The Sources of Researcher Variation in Economics

We use a rigorous three-stage many-analysts design to assess how different researcher decisions—specifically data cleaning, research design, and the interpretat

papers.ssrn.com

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Reposted by Matthew I. Billet

Andy Tix @andytix.bsky.social · Feb 24

How can we sustain both our planet and ourselves? Drawing on a new review of research by @matthewibillet.bsky.social, @abaimel.bsky.social, and colleagues - as well as faith and climate scientist leaders like @katharinehayhoe.com, my article for @psychologytoday.com explores what we can do.

The New Science of Ecospirituality

How can we sustain both our planet and ourselves? The new science of ecospirituality has some ideas and some suggestions to try.

www.psychologytoday.com

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Reposted by Matthew I. Billet

Léo Fitouchi @lfitouchi.bsky.social · Feb 11

Where do moralizing religions come from? Useless cognitive by-products?Cultural group selection for complex societies?

Our Psych Review paper argues: neither. Let’s rethink their cognitive & evolutionary origins🧵
w/ @manvir.bsky.social @nbaumard @jbaptistandre.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1037/rev0...

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Reposted by Matthew I. Billet

Benoît de Courson @bdecourson.bsky.social · Feb 7

Does poverty lead to risk taking or risk avoidance? Turns out, to both. Our new paper (with D. Nettle & W. Frankenhuis) in @royalsocietypublishing.org explains why, and conducts preregistered tests of our ‘desperation threshold’ model.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

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Reposted by Matthew I. Billet

Matt Goldberg @mattgoldberg100.bsky.social · Feb 6

Critical comms about climate change is increasingly happening on social media. But it is challenging to study climate comms on popular social media platforms, so researchers often rely on survey research. How much do survey responses tell us how things will play out on social media? Thread 🧵

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Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Jan 30

Does anyone have recommendations for more recent textbooks on environmental psych / conservation psych? I love this one by Gardner and Stern, but it's quite outdated now. #APA34 #environmentalpsych #conservationpsych #sustainability

Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Jan 28

Check out our new article on ecospirituality!
Takeaways: Ecospirituality is associated with environmental concern and well-being, and changes in ecospirituality are associated with changes in these variables too! (plus a large pre-registered outdoor experiment that kinda failed!)

Collabra: Psychology @collabrapsychology.bsky.social · Jan 28

New in Social Psychology: Seeing Nature Through a Spiritual Lens: An Experimental Test of the Effects of a Novel Photo-taking Task on Environmental Concern and Well-being, from @matthewibillet.bsky.social et al.
doi.org/10.1525/coll...

Seeing Nature Through a Spiritual Lens: An Experimental Test of the Effects of a Novel Photo-taking Task on Environmental Concern and Well-being

Previous research has shown that people who report a greater spiritual connection with nature (“ecospirituality”) express a more highly moralized concern for its preservation. Other results also sugge...

doi.org

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Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Jan 27

Super interesting - another great article from Gordon Hodson

David Chester @davidchester.bsky.social · Jan 27

Since 2004, different forms of prejudicial attitudes have become increasingly inter-correlated with one another and increasingly linked to conservatism. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com

Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Dec 17

how this ideational response to external threats (compared to others, like seeing the threat as part of an apocalyptic prophecy) mediates the kinds of responses a cultural group will have to those threats. 2/2

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Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Dec 17

Very interesting results in this new meta-analysis of why people turn to conspiratorial thinking. Conspiratorial thinking is a response to external threats, not really a trait of specific kinds of people. I want to know... 1/2

Mikey Biddlestone @mikeybiddlestone.bsky.social · Dec 17

🚨Our meta-analysis of the motives associated with conspiracy beliefs has been accepted at Psychological Bulletin!🚨“Reasons to believe: A systematic review and meta-analytic synthesis of the motives associated with conspiracy beliefs” osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵👇 1/16

Abstract for our accepted pre-print of Reasons to believe: A systematic review and meta-analytic synthesis of the motives associated with conspiracy beliefs

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Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Dec 12

...We haven't treated childhood experiences as a separate psychological construct - maybe it could help build empathy and good faith across the political divide, especially given that liberals and conservatives both care about leaving a better world for future generations. 13/13

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Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Dec 12

One interesting finding of this analysis is that childhood experiences in nature come out as an empirically distinct factor from other positive experiences in nature (instrumental benefits factor)... 12/n

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Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Dec 12

...I suspect other processes are directly polarizing environmental attitudes. Other research suggests partisan news media is likely a major factor here. Pure speculation - I think partisan news media less so affects environmental motives than specific attitudes about climate change and policy. 11/n

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Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Dec 12

These results seem to suggest that liberals and conservatives differ to a small degree in their environmental motives and that these differences account for some of the broader political differences observed in the literature, but... 10/n

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Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Dec 12

To some extent they did. When including our environmental motives in a regression predicting preservation and utilization attitudes, it reduced the relationship between political affiliation and attitudes by about half (β=−0.96 to −0.64 for preservation and β = 0.65 to 0.32 for utilization). 9/n

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Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Dec 12

We wanted to know if differences in these environmental motives might explain some of the broader political differences in environmental attitudes found in the literature. Primarily in preservation and utilization attitudes (see Milfont & Duckitt, 2010). 8/n

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Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Dec 12

...Responsibility to nature, instrumental benefits from nature, childhood experiences in nature, and religious stewardship over nature. Liberals and conservatives ranked these motives in a similar manner, but differed in their mean endorsement of some of them. 7/n

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Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Dec 12

In Study 2 we made a battery of self-report items that capture the wide variety of themes liberals and conservatives wrote about in Study 1. Then we subjected these items to factor analysis. We recovered 4 latent factors... 6/n

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Matthew I. Billet @matthewibillet.bsky.social · Dec 12

Multiple topics represented some themes—some of these topics differed between groups, but not consistently. Anyways, this approach was messy empirically and conceptually (there were multiple themes tapping into "positive experiences in nature" - should we really treat them as separate motives?) 5/n

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