Tania Lombrozo

I am thrilled to announce that this framework is out!

Who is responsible for inequality?

@tanialombrozo.bsky.social and I show that answers depend on whether people are judging causes or obligations, and the past vs the future.

doi.org/10.1177/1745...

Full disclosure: the author is my husband. But my praise is sincere - the book is full of incredible and mostly untold stories about the development of cognitive science and the roots of modern AI.

This is an amazing book - highly recommend for experts and casual readers alike!

🚨🚨🚨
Our 52nd Annual Meeting will be held from June 18–20, 2026 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, with a pre-conference on Mental Control and Agency held at JHU on June 17
🚨🚨🚨

We are currently inviting submissions of papers (talks and posters)!

Link to full text here: cognition.princeton.edu/sites/g/file...

Glad and sad to see this series, which echoes the theme of lost science I wrote about below & does something to make it less invisible www.northjersey.com/story/opinio...

Allow Me to Explain: Benefits of Explaining Extend to Distal Academic Performance How does the act of explaining influence learning? Prior work has studied effects of explaining through a predominantly proximal lens, measuring short-term outcomes or manipulations within lab settin...

Thank you to @anahidmodrek.bsky.social for visiting with my FAQs about Life seminar this week! We read her fabulous work with @tanialombrozo.bsky.social showing positive effects of explaining on test scores & appreciated chatting with her about this research: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Visible light 🔆 or electromagnetic waves 📡: Which helps people understand better?

In a new post for Character & Context (@spspnews.bsky.social), I dive into my work with @tanialombrozo.bsky.social on how jargon shapes scientific understanding. Check it out here!

spsp.org/news/charact...

My lab at UCLA is hiring 1-2 PhD students this cycle!

Join us to work at the intersection of cognitive science and AI applied to pressing societal challenges like climate change.

More info about me: rachit-dubey.github.io

My lab: ucla-cocopol.github.io

Please help repost/spread the word!

We're hiring!!! Princeton Psych has an Assistant Prof search in cog neuro (joint with @princetonneuro.bsky.social). Apply apply apply! puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...

Support Federal Science Funding: A Call to Action The American Physical Society is a nonprofit membership organization working to advance physics by fostering a vibrant, inclusive, and global community dedicated to science and society.

SAVE SCIENCE FUNDING IN THE USA
Here's a link to an American Physical Society tool for sending letters supporting science funding. Please do this ESPECIALLY if you live in a state/district with majority party members. Takes 2 minutes. www.aps.org/initiatives/...

I am privileged to announce the publication of the Anti-Autocracy Handbook: sks.to/autocracy 1/12

cognition.princeton.edu/publications...

In lots of cases that's enough to get by in the world: it tells us what search terms to use, maybe who to ask. But that doesn't mean we infer the meaning of the jargon or connect it deeply with what we already believe about what's being explained.

I don't think it's *only* a credibility cue - we did find that our participants judged the explanations with jargon to have come from a more expert source, but that didn't fully explain the interaction with explanation completeness. One possibility is that jargon is like an explanation placeholder..

I suspect that there are boundary conditions on these effects (e.g., if the source isn't trusted for other reasons), but we didn't test that in this set of studies.

We did! We consistently found that jargon increased the perceived expertise of the source for both poor (nearly circular) and good explanations, and in one study made participants judge the explanations more likely to be true...

In this example the jargon was made up! In some of our studies we used real jargon, and in other studies we used invented jargon (so that we could be sure the jargon was not conveying any additional content beyond the presence of jargon itself). But "candy triboluminescence" is a real phenomenon!

How laypeople evaluate scientific explanations containing jargon - Nature Human Behaviour Cruz and Lombrozo examine how laypeople make sense of scientific explanations and find that although jargon reduces understanding, for short explanations, jargon makes the explanation more satisfying.

This project was a collaboration with @cruzf.bsky.social, who visited my lab at Princeton as an international PhD student. A reminder that science is richer and better when we work together - it makes the US richer and better, too.

Check out our paper for more! doi.org/10.1038/s415...

This doesn't imply that people are stupidly bamboozled by jargon - in many cases, jargon can be a good cue to expertise and it can offer a pointer to expert knowledge. But in everyday cases (like short science explanations in headlines), jargon can create an inflated sense of satisfaction...

We also found that we could reduce the elevated sense of explanation quality engendered by jargon by having people *try to generate their own explanations.* When they did so, they better appreciated the gaps in their own understanding, and that they weren't filled by jargon.

But when explanations are more complete, adding jargon decreases comprehensibility without increasing satisfaction. There aren't obvious gaps for the jargon to fill. We found this across a range of explanations, some with real jargon and some with made-up jargon (like the example)...

"Have you ever noticed that crunching candy can sometimes release a spark of light? That's because, *when candy is crushed*, this can result in visible light" vs *when candy plotens are crushed*. This explanation was judged more satisfying when it contained the extra jargon!

When people receive poor (nearly circular) explanations with jargon, they assume the jargon fills explanatory gaps. So jargon makes the explanation seem more complete and more satisfying. Compare the following two examples:

Consistent with prior work, we find that jargon typically makes explanations seem less *comprehensible* to laypeople. Yet, sometimes, it can also make explanations seem *more explanatory.* Across 9 experiments with over 6K participants, we reveal why...

Laypeople often learn about science from expert explanations & those explanations often contain JARGON. Does jargon make explanations better or worse? In a paper out today in Nature Human Behaviour, @cruzf.bsky.social and I find that jargon can support illusions of understanding...

President Trump’s FY26 budget for #NSF will slash funding for the agency by 56.9% and funding for Social, Behavioral, and Economic sciences by 67.6%

These cuts will end US STEM leadership, weaken national security, and set-back individual prosperity and well-being.

🎊 New preprint 🎊 w/ Tania Lombrozo

Why do people engage in collective actions, even when they believe their actions won't make a difference?

Based on evidence from the 2024 election and a hypothetical election, we find that *moral* responsibility, not causal, drives voting

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Please join @asliozyurek.bsky.social, @tanialombrozo.bsky.social, Hannah Rohde and me **this Wednesday 12pm eastern**. What does the future of cogsci in higher ed look like? I promise it's not all bad news!! Register below!

YouTube video by LastWeekTonight RFK Jr. & HHS: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Want an explanation for the destruction of health and medicine in our country that's completely understandable? Send this far and wide! Please share!! Accurate, simple, and comprehensive, John Oliver describes what's happening to NIH (+others) and medicine better than I can youtu.be/8H34jcpEsFs