Hugo Mercier
hugoreasoning.bsky.social
Hugo Mercier
@hugoreasoning.bsky.social

Evolutionary and cognitive psychologist. Author, Not Born Yesterday (http://tinyurl.com/yyh929ns), The Enigma of Reason (http://tinyurl.com/6hbpn84).

Psychology 27%
Sociology 17%
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
Wow - debunking “When Prophesy Fails” - the canonical foundation of cognitive dissonance theory onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Reposted by Hugo Mercier

🚨Friends, we’re happy to share that our book is available for pre-order! 🎉
We aimed to cover all the foundations of the topic in an accessible manner for a large audience.
It could help set up a bachelor-level curriculum on the topic.
Pre-orders are very key for the fate of books: shorturl.at/Dxbif
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...
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
international.au.dk
Happy to share our latest study published in PNAS.

Using data from 274,316 French students, we find that lower-SES students are less likely to wait for better university offers, even when waiting would lead to more prestigious or better-fit programs.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Waiting time during admission procedures increases social inequalities in higher education | PNAS
Many domains in life require people to wait to access better outcomes, such as waiting in line to access prized tickets for a show, waiting to obta...
www.pnas.org
Wow - debunking “When Prophesy Fails” - the canonical foundation of cognitive dissonance theory onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
As @seanjwestwood.bsky.social's terrifying new PNAS article demonstrates, LLMs can now pass almost every attention check, mirror personas, stay consistent across pages, and systematically bias responses in the aggregate.

So here’s a different angle: verify physical presence, not text.
Postdoc call‼️

I am opening a call for a postdoctoral position within my ERC project CONSENT.

Come to Madrid to be part of my research team and more broadly of the @ipp-csic.bsky.social community.

Application deadline: December 10th.

Call details: tinyurl.com/yfu83p9m
Dropbox
tinyurl.com
Origins of language, one of humanity’s most distinctive traits, may be best explained as a unique convergence of multiple capacities each with its own evolutionary history, involving intertwined roles of biology & culture. This framing can expand research horizons. A 🧵 on our @science.org paper.🧪1/n
What enables human language? A biocultural framework
Explaining the origins of language is a key challenge in understanding ourselves as a species. We present an empirical framework that draws on synergies across fields to facilitate robust studies of l...
www.science.org

Congrats! And ironic given that Pierrick has just been denied tenure...
This is such a cool study. A parasitic ant queen tricks worker ants into murdering their own queen, so the parasite can take over the colony.
This parasitic ant tricks workers into committing matricide
Newly mated parasitic queen ants invade colonies and spray their victims with a chemical irritant that provokes the workers to kill their mother.
www.sciencenews.org
Postdoc position in individual-level incentives, social
learning, and payoff-biased imitation shape group-level accuracy in complex prediction and decision-making tasks in Konstanz

files.newsletter2go.com/l3slzozn/s_i...
files.newsletter2go.com
The deadline has been extended - there is still time to get your abstracts in to join us in Morocco!
The submission deadline for #CESRabat has been extended to 30 November

@ces2026.bsky.social @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social
👉 A reminder that the deadline for submitting your abstract to the CES 2026 #CESRabat is the 16th of November.

🔗Submit here: airess.fgses-um6p.ma/ces2026

We look forward to seeing you in Rabat!
The emails have Summers reporting to Epstein about his attempts to date a Harvard economics student & to hit on her during a seminar she was giving.
The submission deadline for #CESRabat has been extended to 30 November

@ces2026.bsky.social @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social
👉 A reminder that the deadline for submitting your abstract to the CES 2026 #CESRabat is the 16th of November.

🔗Submit here: airess.fgses-um6p.ma/ces2026

We look forward to seeing you in Rabat!
We’re delighted to share that the CES2026 Conference website is now live!

We warmly invite researchers, scholars, and practitioners to submit their presentation proposals by November 16th through the submission portal on the website.
I'm recruiting a grad student! My lab at NYU (psych dept) studies the computational basis of moral cognition and aims to build AI systems that are aligned with human values. Now admitting a PhD student for Fall 2026. Apps due 12/1. sites.google.com/corp/site/sy...
Sydney Levine - Open Positions
Graduate Students (PhD program) I will be accepting PhD students through the NYU psychology department for the current application cycle (for admission in Fall 2026). My lab is joint between the Co...
sites.google.com
🎉 New preprint: Bayesian Competence Inference guides Knowledge Attribution and Information search

If someone knows that Venus is the only planet in the Solar System that rotates clockwise, will they also know what Earth’s only natural satellite is? What about which planets have no moons at all?
📣 Are you a PhD student in the quantitative social sciences interested in interdisciplnary research? Join us at the Toulouse Summer School in Quantitative Social Sciences (25 May-19 Jun 2026) at @tse-fr.eu.

Apply by 15 Dec 2025 🎓🔍

👉 More info + application: www.tse-fr.eu/toulouse-sum...
Toulouse Summer School in Quantitative Social Sciences
www.tse-fr.eu

Reposted by Hugo Mercier

Right now, Karoline Leavitt is being coached on how to say “ephebophilia” in the least creepy way possible.
Three preregistered experiments with prolific participants (N = 2,254) found no evidence for experimenter demand effects

osf.io/preprints/ps...
Two postdoctoral opportunities in evolutionary anthropology at Duke University!
The Pontzer Lab is hiring for projects on human ecology, energetics, and aging & health.
More info: www.hbes.com/two-postdoct...
Two postdoctoral opportunities in evolutionary anthropology at Duke - HBES
https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30783 Position Description The Pontzer Lab in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University seeks two Postdoctoral Associates for research in h...
www.hbes.com
New job:

Professor of History

University of Wisconsin - Madison

jobs.h-net.org/jobs/69456

Merci !
Rarement, un livre m'a autant stimulé intellectuellement !

"Pas né de la dernière pluie", d'Hugo Mercier démonte l'idée reçue que les gens seraient majoritairement stupides et les foules crédules.

J'extrais ici trois arguments très pertinents pour défendre son hypothèse. ⤵️
this is an obvious overcorrection that misleads the polling data and will lead to disaster in the Heartland. the results of tonight show that the Democrats should moderate: adopting two or at most three of the five pillars of Islam
if democrats are serious about winning they need to learn from tonight and convert to islam
My first paper, out in PsychReview!!

Along with @orbenamy.bsky.social, Nik & @jaeggiadrian.bsky.social, @realadamhunt.bsky.social & I revisit an old theoretical question using concepts from evo psychiatry and anthro:

Why do mixed associations exist b/w social media & mental health?

A 🧵
I am looking for a post-doc working on behavioral/environmental/urban/energy economics to join my group at the University of Copenhagen. Position is 2 years (possibly 3), good salary, free health insurance, one of the most livable cities in the world. Apply here: jobportal.ku.dk/videnskabeli...
Postdoctoral Position in Behavioral and Environmental Economics
jobportal.ku.dk

Reposted by Hugo Mercier

Does the Danish foreign minister just go around giving everyone culturally appropriate lego sets? That has to be the best job.
Anyway, we need some joy, so here's the Egyptian foreign minister being given a Lego Pyramid by the Danish foreign minister.
Great investigation of the Nazis, racists and criminals mobilising the flag-on-lamp-posts movement. This is the kind of journalism that the national media could and should have conducted:

manchestermill.co.uk/the-men-who-...
"only about 5% of the variance in personality can be
predicted from digital footprints, and personality‐tailored messages show negligible effects on behavior... When design and evaluation flaws are controlled, the combined end‐to‐end effectiveness of psychological targeting approaches zero."
The (In)Effectiveness of Psychological Targeting: A Meta‐Analytic Review
The use of psychological targeting—employing machine learning to predict consumer personality from digital footprints and subsequently tailoring persuasive messages—has emerged as a controversial yet...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com