Jo Cutler

Curiosity, Exploration and Information Seeking Conference 2025 - YouTube

🔭 Did you miss out on the inaugural Curiosity, Information-Seeking, & Exploration conference? Videos of our entire 2-day program are now available: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... #CISE2025 @socforneuroecon.bsky.social @drjocutler.bsky.social

🚨 Fully funded PhD scholarship to work with me, Ali Mazaheri, Dhruv Parekh, and Katrien Segaert at the University of Birmingham on new brain-based tools to improve diagnoses of consciousness after severe brain injury.

🚨 Deadline: 9th January 2026

Full details and application form: lnkd.in/ejZkfFbW

🔍 Behind the Paper: 'Boosting climate motivation with psychological interventions'. Actions that protect the environment are crucial but often require effort, which people avoid. 🔗Read more here: go.nature.com/4ou8b6K. #AcademicPublishing #psychresearch @drjocutler.bsky.social

Excited to share our preprint on variability in patch leaving decisions! Check out the 🧵 below

Psychological interventions that decrease psychological distance or challenge system justification increase motivation to exert effort to mitigate climate change - Communications Psychology Pro-environmental actions often require effort. Participants were less motivated to help the climate than a food charity, but two interventions removed this bias. Computational modelling linked climat...

Pro-environmental actions often require effort. Participants were less motivated to help the climate than a food charity, but two interventions removed this bias. Computational modelling linked climate motivation with pro-environmental traits.
@drjocutler.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

All resources needed to run and analyse the Pro-Environmental Effort Task are publicly available for future research: osf.io/zv2tu/

Boosting climate motivation with psychological interventions Actions that protect the environment are crucial but often require effort, which people avoid. In a large international collaboration, we identified psychological interventions that can effectively bo...

Read more about the story behind the project here - communities.springernature.com/posts/boosti...

Thanks to all the co-authors across @sdnl.bsky.social, @msnlab.bsky.social, @thechbh.bsky.social, @uob-sop.bsky.social, @scanunit.bsky.social & others

Finally, we found that people who believe climate change is man-made and support policies to protect the planet had higher pro-environmental motivation specifically.

People lower in trait apathy and who rated the task as less effortful were more likely to help both causes.

Using computational modelling, we showed that these effective interventions changed how rewards 💰 for the climate 🌍 (vs. food charity) were devalued by effort 💪.

This was independent of how noisy participants' choices were 🤔

Two interventions robustly decreased the preference to help food over climate, across measures and analyses.

These interventions:
- decreased psychological distance to the negative effects of climate change
- used system justification theory to promote pro-environmental action

The International Climate Psychology Collaboration: Climate change-related data collected from 63 countries - Scientific Data Scientific Data - The International Climate Psychology Collaboration: Climate change-related data collected from 63 countries

We tested the 11 expert-sourced interventions from the International Climate Psychology Collaboration led by
@madalina.bsky.social,
@kimdoell.bsky.social, @jbakcoleman.bsky.social & @jayvanbavel.bsky.social

See doi.org/10.1126/scia... & doi.org/10.1038/s415... (all the data are freely available!)

People were more willing to exert effort when:

💪 the effort required was 🔽
💰 the reward available was 🔼

In the control group without intervention, motivation was higher to provide food than mitigate climate change 🌍

➡️ Interventions that promote climate motivation are key

3,055 ppts from 6 countries 🇧🇬🇬🇷🇳🇬🇸🇪🇬🇧🇺🇸 did our new online Pro-Environmental Effort Task ✨ the PEET ✨

On each trial, they choose between rest or work: exerting effort by clicking boxes to earn more credits 💪

Credits were donations to a climate charity 🌍 or a matched control food charity

With @todorova.bsky.social, @jonasnitschke.bsky.social, @katerinamichalaki.bsky.social, @linakoppel.bsky.social, @tgkinopoulos.bsky.social, @toddvogel.bsky.social, @clauslamm.bsky.social, @danielvastfjall.bsky.social, @mtsakiris.bsky.social, @brainapps.bsky.social & @thepsychologist.bsky.social

🌎 New paper in @commspsychol.nature.com 🌍

doi.org/10.1038/s442...

There is an urgent need to choose behaviours that mitigate climate change, but these are often more effortful. Can we increase pro-environmental motivation?

Joint w/ Luis Sebastian Contreras-Huerta & amazing international team 👇🧵

How Dopamine Affects Our Motivation to Help Others New research shows patients with Parkinson's disease were more willing to help others after taking their dopamine-boosting medication.

Does dopamine modulate the willingness to help?

New Psychology Today post, "How Dopamine Affects Our Motivation to Help Others", written by me, with special thanks to @drjocutler.bsky.social and @thepsychologist.bsky.social

www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-...

The computational and neural dynamics of human motivation and cognitive control at University of Birmingham on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - The computational and neural dynamics of human motivation and cognitive control at University of Birmingham, listed on FindAPhD.com

Looking for a PhD? Interested in cognitive computational neuroscience, motivation and decision-making? See our project listed in the BBSRC MIBTP competition for funding for a 4-year PhD in the @msnlab.bsky.social in the @thechbh.bsky.social. Deadline 27/11. More info: tinyurl.com/5d5vz8m7

Great to see this out! Exciting work led by @shawnrhoadsphd.com on how we learn when actions affect ourselves and others 🧠

w/ @aa-marsh.bsky.social, @k-oconnell.com, Kathryn Berluti, & Lin Gan plus @thepsychologist.bsky.social & me @sdnl.bsky.social, @thechbh.bsky.social, @uob-sop.bsky.social

Thank you so much to everyone who came and to our sponsors @carneyinstitute.bsky.social, Brown CoPsy, Brown Neuro, @unibirmingham.bsky.social, UoB College of Life & Environmental Sciences & @thechbh.bsky.social

… George Loewenstein, @modirshanechi.bsky.social, @russell-golman.bsky.social, @vgonzalez.bsky.social, @carocharp.bsky.social, @doctor-bob.bsky.social, @katenuss.bsky.social, @haoxuefan.bsky.social plus so many great short & blitz talks and posters

I had so much fun organising #CISE2025 conference on Curiosity, Information Seeking & Exploration with Romy Frömer, @hayleydorfman.bsky.social, Ohad Dan, Matt Nassar, Tali Sharot & Jacqueline Gottlieb at beautiful Brown University then hearing about all the amazing research from our speakers…

Thank you so much for your great talk Valeria and it was lovely to meet you!

We’re kicking off day 2 of #CISE2025 🔭 with a fun talk from George Loewenstein on his tour de force research program on information gap theory

George Loewenstein summarizing 30 yrs of brilliant studies on curiosity and desire for information (or a desire to not know, eg likely bad news) #CISE2025 at Brown Univ

Successful first CISE poster session at beautiful Brown! #CISE2025 🔭

Great start to the travels @univ-amu.fr in beautiful Marseille. Next up Providence for CISE 2025, Boston @socforneuroecon.bsky.social, and New York

Early bird registration for "The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging 2025" conference ends on 30th September!

This meeting provides a multidisciplinary perspective on the neural, behavioural and computational mechanisms of foraging across species.

uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...

Please share!

Great to have @mjgruber.bsky.social visit @chbh.bsky.social @uob-sop.bsky.social today and give a great talk on curiosity, exploration & memory 🧠

I had a fantastic time at the Computational Social Cognition Summer School at U of Birmingham!

What an amazing resource & opportunity for students.

Thanks to organizers @drjocutler.bsky.social Lei Zhang and @thepsychologist.bsky.social & the speakers, instructors, and students!

So great to share plans for my upcoming online study and broader PhD with brilliant minds at my first conference #BAP2025 and fantastic computational modelling workshop #CSC2025! osf.io/7fqbe