David Amodio

Attending the #SPSP2026 Social Cognition Preconference? I'll see you there!

I'll be giving the talk for the Best Paper Award today at 3:45, representing my coauthors on this paper:

"It's all happening": Trump basks in the pomp surrounding his new "Board of Peace" The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting is taking place in Davos, Switzerland. Follow for live news updates.

They keep misspelling "bored"

Very grateful that our paper was awarded ISCON’s Best 2024 Paper in Social Cognition!! Huge thanks to the fantastic team: Ben Stillerman, @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social , @leorhackel.bsky.social , Damaris Hagen, Nils Jostmann, and @davidamodio.bsky.social 🎊💐

Wow, we're thrilled by this award!

So proud of the team: @davidschultner.bsky.social, Ben Stillerman, @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social, @leorhackel.bsky.social, Damaris Hagen & Nils Jostmann

Thanks to @erichehman.bsky.social and the ISCON committee!

For a thread on our paper:
bsky.app/profile/davi...

The moral of this story (yet again): read the fine print.

n/n

Btw, for those interested in the recent replication attempts of dissonance research, see this excellent thread (6/n):

bsky.app/profile/quil...

In any case, "When Prophesy Fails" was never considered an actual empirical study, but an intriguing anecdote and theoretical analysis.

So if the book is now relegated to the fiction aisle, I think we're with fine that 😁

It's the idea that mattered and all the empirical work it inspired

5/n

Not sure what to make of the rest of the paper—i.e., the detailed examples of specific events and whether they matched Festinger et al.'s account. The differences often seem small, nuanced, or irrelevant to the theory.

But the conclusion—my goodness!—it's a bit much (4/n):

Assistant Professor, Associate Professor or Full Professor of Cognitive Science - Vacancy at Aarhus University Vacancy at School of Communication and Culture - Linguistics, Cognitive Science and Semiotics, Dept. of, Aarhus University

CogSci in Aarhus is hiring, open rank (assi, asso or full prof).
We want somebody working on and teaching computational modelling of cognitive processes and/or social processes. Students are amazing, work/life balance very satisfactory, and colleagues are nice!

international.au.dk/about/profil...

I wondered about the author's background/angle: his affiliation is listed as "Independent Scholar, Washington DC"

And in an earlier paper, a letter to the editor in JAMA, as a "Self-employed political consultant, Columbus, Ohio"

So, perhaps not a psychologist. A political consultant? Unclear.

3/n

The paper incorrectly describes the 'New Look' as a leftwing movement that inspired social psychology—New Look actually refers to Bruner's take on motivated perception, or within dissonance, to Cooper's revision of the theory.

It reads like a low-key rightwing takedown of social psychology...

2/n

So, is "When Prophesy Fails"—the foundation of cognitive dissonance theory—debunked?

Unclear. The article making this claim is... odd.

It describes Festinger and Schachter as leftwing radicals, critiques the political slant of their funding, generally refers to their work as failed...

1/n

Is unconscious bias real? @davidamodio.bsky.social points out critiques (people are aware of “implicit bias”) rely on semantics. In experiments, people have biased priors, which leads to biased “learning” (noticing stereotype-consistent info)…and. They aren’t aware and can’t suppress it. #PMIG2025

Happy birthday, and CONGRATS on the (very well-deserved) tenure vote!!

New findings from my lab in Nature Communications suggest that racial stereotypes can lead the brain's perceptual system to temporarily "see" weapons where they don't exist.

Led by: @dongwonoh.bsky.social

Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

(1/6)

Though boys and girls scored similarly on math aptitude tests before starting first grade, the researchers found that it only took four months of formal instruction for a gender gap to emerge. Even after teachers began introducing math a year earlier, this result held true, and kindergarten boys started to score higher than their female counterparts. "What's causing these differences?" Spelke asked. "We don't know the answer at all, but I think we now have good reason to believe that whatever is causing them is taking place in the schools." Researchers found that the difference between boys and girls' math scores only narrowed during the pandemic, when in-person instruction at schools stopped and students returned home for online education.

Wow. And this is the kind of study that will likely lose funding in our current moment. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

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!

A huge part of the Republican playbook is to break otherwise beneficial social services and then point to their brokenness as evidence that those things are bad actually so they can justify privatizing or abolishing it. They are very good at doing this because they do it across all sectors.

Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to improve the process of Federal

Well, this is a huge Executive Order power grab...

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

1/3

This is perfect.

RIP Ozzy ✌️

Ozzy was my first real concert when I was 14. My ears are still ringing.

Stephen Colbert is a national treasure!

My career peak was when he devoted a whole segment to our paper on scarcity & race perception on The Colbert Report (!) And of course he nailed it.

Sadly it's not on youtube anymore, but it's on AppleTV (Season 10, Episode 119, on June 16, 2014).

Ah, yes—2014! I'll fix that

I can confirm the PBS Passport is a very good deal for $5/month or $2.50/month if you do yearly.

Thousands of hours of top notch content. NOVA is great. The new Ken Burns doc on Leonardo da Vinci is excellent.

You can sign up at the link below!

www.pbs.org/passport/lea...

🎉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-...

Jim Sidanius, Trailblazer in Social Dominance Theory, Added to SPSP Heritage Wall

🌟 Jim Sidanius has been added to the SPSP Heritage Wall! His social dominance theory revolutionized how we study intergroup relations & inequality. A brilliant theorist, master teacher, and mentor who shaped our field over 44 years.

Learn more about his work and legacy: ow.ly/pj7A50WnLfB

Congratulations @page-gould.bsky.social!

University of Virginia President Resigns Under Pressure From Trump Administration

“If You Give A Mouse A Cookie” needs to be added to high school civics curriculums.

University of Virginia President Resigns Under Pressure From Trump Administration

... www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/u...