Experimental psychologist | Arizona State University 🌵🌞🦂
Tempe, AZ
Joined June 2017
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Michael Barlev retweeted
Excited to announce @sapinker as an invited speaker at the Evolutionary Psych Preconference at #SPSP2027!
He'll explore Common Knowledge—from traffic laws and money to why genteel hypocrisy beats radical honesty.
🚨 Submissions close Oct 8: ep2027.mystrikingly.com/
Michael Barlev retweeted
The special issue of American Psychologist on antisemitism (a flagship APA journal) is out.
I think some of its editors quit due to the an American Psychologist special issue on "decolonial and liberation psychologies" that contained vitriolic rhetoric against so-called "Zionist psychologies".
Three papers reports several interesting findings that should inform public discussions on the relation between Antizionism and Antisemitism.
Michael Barlev retweeted
A few months ago I sat through a PhD student's talk that wasn't great. Clear delivery, well prepared. The ideas just weren't there yet. Several professors asked tough but respectful questions. Exactly what's supposed to happen.
For a while there, this had become suspect. Critical feedback from someone with more power directed at someone with less got coded as punching down, especially in public. That norm seems to have receded, thankfully, but plenty of people still treat the practice as immoral.
I want to defend it. Scratch that. I want to defend punching, full stop. Up, down, sideways.
Science runs on Merton's principle of universalism: evaluate ideas, not the person attached to them. The "don't punch down" rule violates that. Worse, it ends up infantilizing the people it claims to protect. Telling junior scholars their work is too fragile to scrutinize is not respect.
New essay, free for all. Punch back in the comments.
open.substack.com/pub/michae…
Is the NYT rationalizing today's terrorist attack on a Michigan synagogue? We show that when antisemitism is justified by disapproval of Israel, liberals tolerate it more.
eprints.soton.ac.uk/508855/ (forthcoming, American Psychologist)
Michael Barlev retweeted
What did they realize in B that they hadn’t realized in A? Vote in the poll in the next tweet 👇
(1) they realized others saw they were together
(2) they realized they weren’t living up to their ideal selves
Michael Barlev retweeted
Do you want to date someone *willing* to protect you? Someone *strong* enough to protect? Both? Michael Barlev and colleagues test this. Based on a lot of work in evolutionary psychology, you might think that both would matter about equally. Nope!
Michael Barlev retweeted
"Discovering that someone is willing to protect you from physical harm makes them vastly more attractive. Conversely, discovering that someone is unwilling to protect you turns them into a hideous troll."
stevestewartwilliams.com/p/t…
I'm hiring a postdoc, to be based at Arizona State University, to research the PSYCHOLOGY OF ANTISEMITISM.
Start date as early as Jan-12-25. Email for questions.
Details: apply.interfolio.com/177756
Academics are wonderfully creative. Reviewers start using AI, authors start inserting hidden text into their papers instructing AI to give positive reviews japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/0…
Michael Barlev retweeted
🚨New in @BBSJournal:
"Ecological Affordances across Life Stages: An Affordance Management Framework" is out as a target article & now open for commentary proposals! Ever wonder why an environment once full of promise 🥰 can later feel constraining 😮💨? doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X250… 🧵
Michael Barlev retweeted
Are you a student or professor in psychology -- or any of the social sciences?
If so, you've definitely seen this mistake before.
It's all over the textbooks and journal articles.
You might have seen it formulated in any of these ways:
- Is that behavior evolved or learned?
- Innate or acquired?
- Biological or environmental?
- Evolutionary or sociocultural?
This is 100% the wrong way to think about it.
My newest publication (out now in American Psychologist, @APA_Journals) shows exactly why this is wrong and suggests a better, more accurate alternative:
laithalshawaf.com/uploads/1/…
Pls consider RTing for greater spread. Thanks! 🙏
Michael Barlev retweeted
Psychologists: if you want to complain about how our field lacks a theoretical paradigm, try looking for one in evolution—the thing that actually made the human psyche. Seems like a good place to start, no? At least give that a try before throwing up your hands in despair.
Michael Barlev retweeted
1. The Santa Barbara school of evolutionary psychology holds that a universal set of complex psychological adaptations evolved in Pleistocene Africa. In no particular order, here are few folks on here doing research in this tradition, highlighting one paper/thread each:🧵
Michael Barlev retweeted
Congratulations to Leda Cosmides on being named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science!
news.ucsb.edu/2025/021817/em…
Michael Barlev retweeted
SO love this post from @paulbloomatyale!
Real-world effects are awesome when you can get them, but psychologists run experiments in controlled environments "for the same reason that chemists keep their test tubes clean". YES!
smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net/…
Michael Barlev retweeted
Great obituary of the first great pioneer of evolutionary psychology - Don Symons - by @sapinker Sage of Sex and Psyche quillette.com/2025/02/04/sag…
Michael Barlev retweeted
🚨 Laws about bodily damage originate from shared intuitions about the value of body parts science.org/doi/10.1126/scia…
New research by the great @YunsuhW, with @JaimieKrems & me, in @ScienceAdvances
🧵
Michael Barlev retweeted
We think of our own, biological memory the way we think of computer memory: the more, the better. But that’s not what evolution intended when it created learning. Learning is not just about storing information: it is about choosing what to store and what to discard. 🧵/1
ALT Sea hares getting weighed
Michael Barlev retweeted
Last week was the anniversary of the death of my brilliant and beloved friend John Tooby. Here I'm with his collaborator and wife (and my dear friend) Leda Cosmides on his memorial bench on the UCSB campus.
Michael Barlev retweeted
When do we think THAT X CAUSED Y?
A fire can be caused by a lit match, dry brush, oxygen...
But the PSYCHOLOGY of CAUSALITY prioritizes some factors over others
Which?
Factors correlated with the outcome event ACROSS A RANGE OF possible circumstances
sciencedirect.com/science/ar…