Why do we derogate effective altruists, activists, & other radically prosocial individuals? In new work, we discuss how doing good that deviates from social norms gets stigmatized. New preprint w/ @dcameron.bsky.social @tlau.bsky.social @desmond-ong.bsky.social: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Need some RAND game theorists to weigh in on how this effectively protests while also being impossible to show on fox news as a war zone.

This video of Chicagoans intervening to save a man from being abducted off the streets by ICE is making the rounds on Instagram.

Community action works.

Source: www.instagram.com/reel/DPZL2AL...

Strongly recommend Eitan Hersh's book on the problems with political hobbyism and what a better path looks like www.amazon.com/Politics-Pow...

I didn’t expect my first interview with the @nytimes.com to be from my 4-day old child’s pediatrician’s appointment!

“Singular acts of violence, when they serve a particular narrative, are being spun into a tale of persecution,” Pasek said. “And that is where things feel dangerous to me.”

I visited the apartment building ICE raided on Tuesday today. Story to come, but you can walk right in. Half of the apartments have no doors on them. Children's stuff abandoned in some flats. *Citizen* residents told me they were arrested and held for hours in zipties. This is America

Pretty incredible own goal by liberal institutions and many Democratic electeds to crush the exact type of protests in 2024 that would’ve been the most effective way to slow or stop ICE incursions into American cities in 2025

Anyway here are some top comments on Ezra’s YouTube channel. I think they’re great examples of substantive discussion

"Movements that abandon core supporters in pursuit of mythical moderate voters often end up with neither. Energy drains away, activists stay home, and the authentic moral voice gets replaced by calculated positioning that convinces no one." data4democracy.substack.com/p/you-cant-e...

We propose that the everyday psychology of rules and 3rd party punishment is at the core of authoritarianism

Our view posits no new constructs, is ideology-agnostic, & considers relevant only interactions w the state

See our new working paper "Authoritarianism in Action" osf.io/preprints/ps...

Depolarization is not "a scalable solution for reducing societal-level conflict.... achieving lasting depolarization will likely require....moving beyond individual-level treatments to address the elite behaviors and structural incentives that fuel partisan conflict" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

I mean, we are living in two different realities now, and this really hasn't always been the case.

Arguments were more effective when they highlighted specific groups or causes (e.g., children) that would benefit and/or emphasized that large benefits can be achieved at a low cost to the donor. They were less effective when they tried to address counterarguments or appealed to experts. (8/10)

Can reasoned arguments shift moral behavior? In a new preprint, @eschwitz.bsky.social, Jason Nemirow, @fierycushman.bsky.social and I explore this question in the context of charitable donation. (1/10)

Across 44 countries, individuals with stronger free will belief were more punitive toward everyday moral transgressions.

www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6...

We often hear from reviewers: "what about demand effects?" So we developed a method to eliminate them. Something weird happened during testing: We couldn’t detect demand effects in the first place! (1/8)

you're having a sliding doors moment--you can either become a great artist or a great philanthropist. what path will make you feel like you've found your true self? @jowylie.bsky.social & @mattlindauer.bsky.social and i find that arts provide a unique one static1.squarespace.com/static/679ee...

“awful people don’t deserve to be killed, but they don’t deserve to be praised, either” is apparently a thought too complex for the pundit mind

Nice coverage of our recent work on harm-based moral arguments about women's bodily autonomy! @nadirafaber.bsky.social, @shellkryan.bsky.social, @abiclick29.bsky.social www.forbes.com/sites/traver...

My new op-ed in the @nytimes.

I argue that Iranians are caught in a state of “moral paralysis,” a psychological trap set by the Islamic Republic itself. It pits two of our most sacred values against each other: liberation vs. self-determination. (1/2) www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/o...

"psychological biases to overestimate the influence of self-interest on others’ behaviors and to attribute malicious intentions to those who harm us may create inherent challenges for punishment to effectively promote cooperation"

It's publication day for our first paper out of the www.csinequality.org lab completed entirely at NU. To write it, we asked: what research in the social psychology of inequality do we like and why do we like it? The answer is this paper:

Thanks Greg!

Thanks Dr. Kraus!