TEN DAYS left to submit your work to the Origins of the Social Mind Preconference at #SPSP2026! 👶🐒🌍

This year, our morning timeslot is compatible with a variety of fantastic afternoon preconferences (e.g., Social Cognition, Gender, Economic Inequality). See you there!

spsp.org/events/annua...

My RAs had a blast showing off their research findings at the #URSI2025 Sympsium at @vassar.bsky.social!

Results coming soon to a conference near you (if you live in Chicago or Montreal…)

a block quote from Susan Gelman herself in her new review paper??? I'll retire now.

& related to these points: keep your eyes peeled 👀 for some emerging work from my lab on early homophobia & kids' (lack of) essentialist beliefs about homosexuality! 🏳️‍🌈

Let’s gooooo — first week of summer research!

So proud of this hardworking, scrappy, talented team! (Have I mentioned they ran 100+ child participants in two months?) Glad they got to experience the rush of a buzzing poster session! @vassar.bsky.social

Wrapping up my first time teaching Intro Psych. When I TA’d for Lisa Shin & the late Sam Sommers (z”l), they used a slide like this to help diverse students see themselves among psychological scientists. I was excited to do the same, but had imagined sharing it w Sam directly as this semester ended.

Check out our symposium on *parents' lay theories of cognitive development* at #SRCD2025!

Ft. work by @reutshachnai.bsky.social, @julia-a-leonard.bsky.social, @dominicgibson.bsky.social, and yours truly, discussed by @andrewshtulman.bsky.social !

I had a fantastic time at the Essentialism in the Human Mind conference! My mind is full of new ideas and my heart is full w the energy from across disciplines and generations.

+ this little human loved exploring Amherst. Here she is doing science (but not “being a scientist” 🙅‍♀️) in our hotel room.

My lovely dept at Vassar is seeking a one-year VAP who can teach Clinical courses. More info at the link below. Come join us!
employment.vassar.edu/postings/4331

Also, w/ age, kids’ responses diverged across the 5 trials as their ideas became more trait-specific (i.e., kids increasingly distinguished between hair color as genetic and spoken language as not). Crucially, this differentiation was more pronounced in the ADC than the TC kids!

We found that the odds of an essentialist response were 3x greater in the TC than ADC kids! ADC & TC kids' parents did not differ in essentialism, suggesting that kids reached their distinct conclusions on their own, thru tracking the respective influences of nature & nurture.

Children completed 5 trials of an Adoption Task, focusing 5 personal traits: Hair color, spoken language, interests, intelligence, and personality (quiet vs loud parents as featured here). Their parents also completed a genetic-essentialism scale.