nathan liang

Coast Guard Buys Two Private Jets for Noem, Costing $172 Million Public documents show the Department of Homeland Security has contracted to purchase a pair of top-of-the-line Gulfstream jets for the secretary and other top officials.

The Department of Homeland Security has purchased two Gulfstream private jets for Kristi Noem, the secretary, and other top department officials at a cost of $172 million, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

I wrote a short commentary on Anil Seth's wonderful forthcoming paper in BBS. It is largely inspired by the work of Andy Clark, although some ideas I owe to Ned Block and Dan Dennett (probably not the same ideas!). I highly recommend Anil's paper to anyone interested in consciousness [1/2]

Are you a scientist, journalist, or civil society researcher studying New York State's distraction-free school policy, the one that bans internet-enabled devices in schools from bell to bell?

If so, I want to hear from you, as I refine a project to archive & classify published school policies.

<em>British Journal of Social Psychology</em> | Wiley Online Library Public acts of virtue can promote prosocial norms yet are often met with moral scepticism – a phenomenon known as virtue discounting. What psychological processes might underlie people's propensity t....

Public displays of virtue like donating or speaking up can set norms, but they’re often met with skepticism (“virtue discounting”). Our new paper asks: do people expect their own public virtue to be judged differently than others’ similar actions?
bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Thanks to our amazing moderators working on this 24/7, we are now 50% done with the PsyArXiv backlog! 🎉

For all our PsyArXiv users, thank you for your patience. If you would like to help us, here are some tips to help your next preprint sail through moderation:

#PsychSciSky

This paper holds a special place in my heart. I was working on an earlier draft (almost 3 years ago!) when my wife went into labor with my son. We still call him Bouba, although lately he has been more of a Kiki ;)

👋 Good evening, folks! We want to celebrate your latest achievements across our social media channels. Do you have a new project, article, or professional update you're excited about? DM us here or email a link to press@spsp.org, and we'd love to share your news!

🚨We're hiring! The Mind & Morality Lab is seeking a Lab Manager to start this September. Excited about research on social cognitive development? Apply here: forms.gle/4rKXD2x1vmkD.... Learn more about us: sites.brown.edu/mindmorality....
⏳ We’re reviewing applications on a rolling basis—apply early!

newsletter: June 2025 meet this month's guest editor, Z. Ferguson

excited to share our june newsletter, with guest editor @z-fergu.bsky.social‬ ! check it out here:

open.substack.com/pub/marginal...

How long SHOULD we take to make a decision? At some point the costs of deliberation outweigh the benefits - but that’s NOT how we decide. Instead we try to get as much info as possible. And the more we care about information, the faster we learn, which pays off. Javier Masis. #SSM2025 #APS2025

Reasoning Goals and Representational Decisions in Computational Cognitive Neuroscience: Lessons From the Drift Diffusion Model The appropriate form of the drift diffusion model depends on how one wishes to reason about their target with the model. If the goal is to parsimoniously explain the speed-accuracy tradeoff, the appr...

super excited that the first paper from my PhD is now out! we develop a "philosophical toolkit" for computational cognitive modeling & use it to conceptually re-analyze a long-standing debate about evidence accumulation models of decision making 🧠📈 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

🚨🚨 NEW PRE-PRINT 🚨🚨

Prominent theories in political psychology argue that threat causes increases in conservatism. Early experimental work supported this idea, but many of these studies were (severely) underpowered, and examined only a few threats and ideological DVs. 1/n osf.io/preprints/ps...

Domain Interactions | CogSci 2025 Organizers

If you are attending #CogSci2025 I hope you will consider attending our pre-conference workshop on July 29 - "Putting it Together: Interactions Between Domains of Cognition"
sites.google.com/view/cogsci2...

🙋‍Come by my poster next Tuesday 8-10AM to discuss the good, the dad, and the ugly of Representational Similarity Analysis! (Not an April fools' joke)

🔗 www.cogneurosociety.org/poster/?id=5...

The Trump tax plan only works by cutting public services.

This incredible visualization combines the potential tax cuts (which mostly go to the rich) and loss of services (mostly borne by the poor).

It is a giant wealth transfer from the poorest to the richest. budgetlab.yale.edu/news/250319/...

The updated version of the IIT-Concerned letter has now been published in NN, thanks to the herculean efforts of the corresponding authors (thank you!!!). Here's the link. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Still, the process was frustrating. When the letter was first posted in the archive (1/n)

New Paper in Philosophical Psychology:

Trust in experts is low. Why? How bad is it? And what should we do? To answer these questions, we reviewed philosophy (when *ought* we defer to the experts) and psychology (when *do* people defer to the experts).

Link in comments!

A year ago @kurtjgray and I argued that popular discourse about the "loneliness epidemic" might be making people more lonely.

Today @NatureComms published direct evidence for this: reading news stories about the risks of isolation makes people feel worse about being alone. 🧵

newsletter: march 2025 meet this month's guest editor, Joseph Outa

check out our march newsletter featuring Joseph Outa! open.substack.com/pub/marginal...
#PsychSciSky
#socialpsyc
#AcademicSky
#cogpsyc

In another preprint, we (@stysyropoulos.bsky.social & @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social) found that Americans underestimate how many future generations others see as worthy of consideration in policy and collective decisions, a form of pluralistic ignorance that may hinder long-term action.

We (@stysyropoulos.bsky.social, @jowylie.bsky.social, Gordon Kraft-Todd, @nathanliang.bsky.social, @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social) found striking self-serving asymmetries in how people judge others’ public virtue and how they expect their own to be judged. Check it out below!

Are you a junior faculty member interested in spending 2-4 weeks at Princeton Psych? Please apply for our Microsabbatical program! It’s a fully funded visit for professional development and creating long-term collaborations.
psych.princeton.edu/diversity/mi...

Happy SPSP Day to those who celebrate! I’m looking forward to starting this conference off sharing new research, “Right, Wrong or Reasonable? Morality in Legal Decision Making” in the Moral Pre conference!! #SPSP2025

Very interesting perspective from @katestarbird.bsky.social on our recent preprint 👇

Excited to be a panelist at the Diversity & Climate Committee Undergraduate Mentoring Event! 🎉

If you're a diverse undergrad in psych, don’t miss this chance to connect, ask questions, and network with amazing scholars & grad mentors.

Spots are limited—join us!

Call for papers! Pablo Abitbol, Santiago Amaya and I will be co-editing a Special Issue on "Memory, Emotion and Forgiveness" in the Review of Philosophy and Psychology. If you are a philosopher and/or psychologist working at the intersection of memory, emotion and forgiveness [1/2]

Calling all social cognition researchers; have you ever wondered about the suitability of your measures in the investigation of individual differences? 👥

Well, we have (some) test-retest estimates for you!

osf.io/preprints/ps...

I finally moved to BlueSky 🦋 For quick introductions, I'm Alexa (they/ them), a Dev Psych PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto 🇨🇦 working w Dr. Christina Starmans. My work is broadly related to children & adults' social cognition, moral judgment, & perceptions of change. I'm happy to connect!

Happy to share our new paper published in BJSP. We found that individuals assigned moral value to both biodiversity and cultural diversity independent from instrumental or individual-centric concerns. 1/6 bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...