And last but not least, Obshonka and colleagues find that Roman rule explains puzzling variation in modern well-being differences across Germany

Ancient Roman investment in infrastructure may explain why Southwestern Germans are so happy and healthy today

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Masui and Miyamoto next map out trends in collective emotions in Japanese songs, finding a rise in anxiety from 1970 to 2019 but a decline in sadness

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Kaur, Watts and Halberstadt posit a provocative hypothesis that the availability of local materials (e.g., clay versus rock) may have shaped the historical development of god concepts, with preliminary evidence from the database of religious history

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Samani and Baumard map out trends in Romantic love in Persian literature from 10th century to 20th century CE. They find an increasing emphasis on romantic love over time, particularly during the Safavid era. This may reveal a link w economic development

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Fan and Baumard reveal new evidence of rising individualism over history, which suggests that wealth rather than Protestantism contributed to individualism

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Niedenthal and Wohltjen review the varied emotional and personality adaptations to historical heterogeneity, synthesizing evidence from multiple fields

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

McClain and Kenny dig into the history of collectivism in Japan, conducting a pre-registered analysis of self-reported collectivism and tightness in the Japanese social survey and linking responses to historical subsistence patterns across Japan

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@joannaschug.bsky.social leads a paper on gendered racial stereotypes. They show that the civil rights movement coincided with a rise in language about black men, but not black women

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@mohammadatari.bsky.social and I begin with an editorial reflecting on the origins, current trends, and future of historical psych

The future requires strong causal identification and theorizing about how institutions can cement or change historical trends

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

You can submit applications here: spsp.wufoo.com/forms/2026-p...

Please share with any students/colleagues who are not on bluesky but have relevant work!

We're accepting poster & data blitz abstract submissions from all career stages. If your work is broadly related to morality, you should apply! We welcome a wide range of topics and approaches.

Submit here: spsp.wufoo.com/forms/2026-p...

Deadline to submit an abstract: Oct. 23.

Check out the whole paper for many more findings, robustness checks, and to see the work of a rising 💫 @hongkai1.bsky.social

Coolest evidence for differentiation as a cause might be an experiment (n=4000) simulating a comment thread

Incentivizing comment uniqueness (but not conformity) leads negative discourse to rise over time

Coauthored w @williambrady.bsky.social, @ycleong.bsky.social, Yutong Jiang, and Alex Koch