Larisa Heiphetz Solomon

Ooo, sounds interesting! Perhaps of interest to @willgervais.com as well?

Reminds me of work by @fierycushman.bsky.social & others showing that decisions to do stuff seen as more immoral than decisions not to do stuff. Could drive perception that decision not to vaccinate isn't as bad as decision to harm someone more actively & lay perceptions can drive laws.

Do individuals possess introspective access to their implicit evaluations? Although recent research shows that people can often predict their scores on indirect measures, it remains unclear whether this effect reflects genuine introspection or inferential reasoning. We tested an anchoring-and-adjustment account, proposing that individuals predict implicit evaluations by anchoring on accessible explicit evaluations and then adjusting based on available information, such as cultural knowledge. Across three experiments (N = 3,182), we used a relational evaluative conditioning paradigm with novel nonwords to isolate explicit evaluations as the primary source for inference. Manipulating the align-ment between explicit and implicit evaluations, between or within participants, yielded consistent support for the anchoring-and-adjustment hypothesis. Predictions were accurate only when explicit evaluations provided a valid cue; when the two dissociated, accuracy fell systematically below chance. These findings suggest that knowledge of one’s implicit evaluations is dominantly derived from explicit cues rather than discovered through direct introspection.

Excited to share this preprint with Yahel Nudler and @thatadammorris.bsky.social in which we provide further evidence that people’s awareness of implicit evaluations is shaky at best — when explicit evaluations provide a misleading cue, participants systematically mispredict: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Most recently, a project looking at how kids & adults think about intent when making moral judgments, and how social experiences shape these judgments. Would have supported a grad student, lab manager, etc as well as professional dev opportunities (eg conference travel for trainees).

A wide & growing range of laws are now subject to strict scrutiny if they burden a plaintiff's sincerely held religious belief. Current doctrine requires courts to defer to a claimant's characterization of her own beliefs & burdens when deciding a religious exemption request, making this threshold test exceptionally-indeed, many scholars argue, excessively-easy to pass. But a less deferential approach would risk making civil courts the arbiter of which religious beliefs are orthodox, reasonable, or true. This Article demonstrates that SCOTUS once had an effective solution to this double-bind. Historically, the Court expected religious exemption claimants to show that they were obligated to follow a religious "law" that shared basic features with secular laws, including generality, clarity, and administrability. The Article reaches this insight by reading religious exemption cases alongside a line of cases with which they are rarely linked: church property disputes. Starting in the late 19th c., the Court encouraged churches to give their religious commitments legally cognizable form in private law instruments like trusts and church "constitutions." During the 20th c., the Court imported this practice into the context of individual religious exemption claims. The source of religious rules of conduct could now be personal conscience rather than church doctrine-but believers still needed to frame these rules in legalistic terms when invoking the protection of civil courts. The choice between deciding religious questions or deferring absolutely to religious litigants, then, is a false one. From the 1870s through the 1980s, the Court's prophylactic legality requirement prevented courts from interfering in religious doctrine and minimized frivolous religious exemption claims. Recognizing this history reveals that the current "hands-off" approach to religious belief statements not only is not constitutionally required, but carries constitutional hazards of its own.

I’m thrilled, yes, & also stunned and bewildered, to announce that my job talk paper, Religion as Public Law, will be published in the Yale Law Journal next year. 1/6

OK folks, getting toward the end of my first mass public opinion survey on antisemitism (N=1,000) -- I showed Americans 100 pieces of real graffiti about Jews and/or Israel-Palestine, and asked them to rate the whether they were antisemitic (yes/no/unsure).

Even a cursory look is interesting...

Ordinary Time: Lessons Learned While Staying Put Lessons Learned While Staying Put

I just met Annie B Jones's book Ordinary Time & am loving it. Are you looking for stillness and wisdom? This book is for you. bookshop.org/p/books/ordi...
#booksky

Thanks to Drew Jacoby-Senghor who shared fascinating studies on inequality in our lab meeting today! Advantaged group members misperceive equality-enhancing policies as harmful to their group. One paper he discussed: psycnet.apa.org/buy/2021-826.... And more here: haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/jaco...

Thank you to @pearlhanli.bsky.social for sharing her work with my moral psych class today! Neat data on how kids react when adult testimony conflicts with their own moral judgments: psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/201.... Plus many other cool findings about which you can learn here: www.pearlhanli.com.

A poll on the question "Do moral judgements necessarily motivate us?", to which 18 students answered "Yes" and 33 answered "No".

I was surprised by this distribution of intuitions among a group of Yr12 (aged 16-17) students yesterday!

Turns out most 16-17 year-olds are motivational externalists!

#philosophy

I drafted one section of one chapter for the book I'm writing on religious conflict, and a few paragraphs may not seem like a huge deal, but I am counting this as a big win for today.

The end goal of Christian nationalist policies likely aren't greater religiosity, but power.

New research shows laws that support Christianity or restrict non-Christian groups actually incline committed religious citizens to *disengage* from religious & civic participation. doi.org/10.1111/jssr...

YeJin Park Roberts YeJin Park RobertsPhD StudentNew York University, STERN

Thank you to Yejin Park Roberts for presenting her work on religious & political polarization in lab yesterday! Interesting findings showing that, contrary to pastors' predictions, religious frames don't always reduce polarization. More here: www.yejinparkroberts.com.

What if you find out your own brother is a thief? We asked how people respond when a close other commits a moral transgression. -> It gets people to feel both as the victim + as the perpetrator & changes what punishment they seek. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
#socialpsyc #PsychSciSky

Ad on the wall of subway that says: rejection is hot

Important news for us writers from across the NYC subway tracks:

New paper, conceived of and led by Chyei Vinluan on how people tend to think of Asian Ams as overrepresented in STEM, but that this ISN'T true when considering ethnic subgroups now available at @commspsychol.nature.com

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

January's office hours are 1/29 10-12 Eastern. Theme=your professional goals for 2026 (how best to achieve them etc). More info in thread below, sign-ups here: calendly.com/lah2201/open...
#AcademicSky #PhdSky #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc #CogPsyc

This paper about inferences that kids draw on the basis of parental incarceration is now published! Pretty version here: psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-.... Link to full text & summary in thread below.
🧪 #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc @socphilpsych.bsky.social

Now out in JEP: General, "How working memory and reinforcement learning interact when avoiding punishment and pursuing reward concurrently"

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

Preprint with final version: osf.io/preprints/ps...

1/n

How appealing an explanation is, is only in part down to how well it actually *explains*, research by klopfenstein.bsky.social & @hugoreasoning.bsky.social suggests.

Usefulness and surprisingness matter too, the latter especially explaining why poor explanations become popular:

buff.ly/NaSAlaJ

Numerous studies show Christian nationalism's effect on social & political views often varies by race. In a series of papers (& a book), I'm finding CLASS is a big moderating factor. Here I find the link between CN & support for organized labor diverges by class.

Free link: doi.org/10.1093/socr...

Sounds to me like they could do with some more fuming from an expert in cognitive development - regardless of what you choose for your own kids, there will be other kids at that school who could benefit from your perspective.

I have such a strongly negative visceral reaction to this, just imagine me sputtering incoherently as you read my response.

Language is the thing! Reminds me of a post I saw about politics where someone said "what if nothing is a distraction and there's just a lot of bad stuff happening." There's a lot happening in school but language is definitely one of the things!

Have you noticed how we often describe people from disadvantaged backgrounds as “strivers” or “go-getters” (💪🏼) rather than naturally gifted (🧠)? This may sound benign, but our new KiDLAB research shows that it reveals a harmful, early-emerging stereotype. (1/5)

🧵 New preprint with my advisor, Alex Shaw!
We asked: What does “popularity” actually mean? Is it a distinct status category with specific features? We turned to elementary-schoolers, who have just begun to experience their own "popularity hierarchies," for some answers.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Wrapping up the year with this new paper and framework led by the phenomenal, and always innovative, @mdphamm.bsky.social !

If I free associate, that piece of music makes me think of harps which makes me think of angels/religion/Christmas. Maybe others followed a similar mental path?

I'm so sorry about all of this for you and your family. Thinking all the good thoughts in your direction.

The whole point of being an academic is that you need to be willing to spend three days creating a 700-word footnote that you will later delete. And you need to LIKE IT.