Mohammad Atari

🎉New paper out @Psychological Review on the neuroscience of intergroup contact🎉

Led by the fantastic @margaretrwelte.bsky.social ‬and Jas Cloutier!

@apajournals.bsky.social @spspnews.bsky.social @sansmeeting.bsky.social #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #AcademicSky

psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

Are a few people ruining the internet for the rest of us? Why does the online world seem so toxic compared with normal life? Our research shows that a small number of divisive accounts could be responsible – and offers a way out

Only a small % of people engage in toxic activity online, but they’re responsible for a disproportionate share of hostile or misleading content on nearly every platform

Because super-users are so active, they dominate our collective impression of the internet www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

The perceived immorality of too much wealth in 20 nations. Scores are standardized, and whiskers represent the 95% confidence interval.

Most people don’t find excessive wealth immoral when considered separately from economic inequality; however, people in countries with high GDP and high levels of inequality find being too rich more morally wrong than being of average wealth. In PNAS Nexus: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Congratulations, Emma! 🎉

Many thanks to HBES for this recognition and congratulations to Rising Stars @mohammadatari.bsky.social @danielredhead.bsky.social @juliastern.bsky.social 💫

Thanks.

I’m looking for a postdoctoral scholar to join me in the Self & Society Laboratory at UC Riverside! Sharing would be much appreciated! aprecruit.ucr.edu/JPF02104

New preprint! 🔔

We apply computational text analysis to over 2000 years of historical corpora in Classical Chinese. Beyond descriptives, we test the hypothesis that kin-based institutions shape important aspects of socio-cooperative psychology.

Psychological inoculation is a very popular intervention against online misinfo, but it hasn't been tested using real-world outcomes in realistic scenarios.

In a new paper just published in PNAS Nexus, this is what we did: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Short version: It didn't really work.

Atari, Henrich & Schulz (2025): "We discuss the need for psychology to adopt a more holistic lens and propose a research agenda that integrates historical processes, cultural dynamics and ecological variations into psychological inquiry."

#psyscisky #ehbea 🧪

Thanks, Lisa!

This Perspective by Atari et al argues for psychology to become a historical and geographical science, a transformation they term the chronospatial revolution.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Our new paper is now out in Nature Human Behaviour:

The chronospatial revolution in psychology.

With Joe Henrich & Jonathan Schulz.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ideological alignment determines whether protest action is considered acceptable Nature Reviews Psychology - Ideological alignment determines whether protest action is considered acceptable

With everything that's going on, I haven't been sharing much about our research. But, today, I'm happy to share that @jennrichler.bsky.social wrote about our papers on "Double Standards in Judging Collective Action" for @natrevpsychol.nature.com! rdcu.be/enhkl

Our new paper, with my amazing PhD student, Aliah Zewail, is published in the European Review of Social Psychology.

We review (and encourage) historical and geographical research on morality from a pluralistic perspective.

Link:

doi.org/10.1080/1046...

Borrowing data from @mohammadatari.bsky.social; we show that AI reflects very high-HDI nation's culture and values. These gaps are certainly more important that relative performance on coding assays and bar exams.

Digitial divides of decades past embodied in training data and design.

I'm excited that I can finally share what I've been working on for the past 9 months:

The United Nations 2025 Human Development Report: "A matter of choice: People and possibilities in the age of AI" 🧵

hdr.undp.org/content/huma...

@mohammadatari.bsky.social and @markthornton.bsky.social channel their dark sides to battle it out in a debate on AI in research:
Dr. Atari makes the case for “less is more,” while Dr. Thornton champions the potential of neural networks in tackling complex analyses. #SANS2025

Mohammad Atari @mohammadatari.bsky.social opens - AI models have cultural and demographic biases. They can be agents of assistance, and should not replace humans when studying humans

AI in social & affective neuroscience: Caution or acceleration? 🤖

Mohammad Atari @mohammadatari.bsky.social 🆚 Mark Thornton @markthornton.bsky.social

Can AI be our Co-Pilot - or should we slow down?
LaSalle Ballroom, don’t miss it!
#SANS2025

AI is ‘beating’ humans at empathy and creativity. But these games are rigged | MJ Crockett Research pitting people against AI systems gives AI an edge by asking us to perform in machine-like ways

My new piece in @theguardian.com

Techno-optimism is human pessimism.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Thank you, Max!

Thank you, Pooya! 😊

absolutely. can you drop me the link, @johnflournoy.science ? (not sure if i meet the criteria, but we’ll figure it out.)

Thanks to my mentors, collaborators, and students.

A woman with pro-environmental signs. Stock photo.

A study finds that moral values predict environmental action as well as or better than political party affiliation. US counties where residents prioritize purity and fairness report higher environmental concerns and lower carbon emissions. In PNAS Nexus: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

WEIRD Questions: Diversifying Conceptual Sampling - “Our species offers a varied distribution of cognitive, emotional & behavioral repertoires, but researchers have sampled topics & questions from a small part of this distribution, leaving out a variety of cognitive processes, emotions, & behaviors”

A really important study with comprehensive analyses! I love this plot:

It’s a privilege to work with this awesome team. Check out my students’ presentations at SPSP.

Some of us have been meeting up at SPSP for the last few years. This year marks our fifth gathering. Email one of us if you want to join! Location TBD.

@mdehghani.bsky.social @drsanaz.bsky.social @simine.com @dorsaamir.bsky.social