Year 2, Week 14 Mar 28 - Apr 3, 2026 - birth days

Paige, I saw this in time to squeeze it into tonight's newsletter! Thank you - buttondown.com/liminalcreat...

Saving SBE Starts Before the Bill Is Written The FY2027 NSF budget request is alarming, but Congress has not made it law. That means there is still time for researchers and universities to act.

I wrote this article to explain in plain English what is happening with the proposed 2027 NSF budget & why so many social psychologists are alarmed.

THE GOOD NEWS: Congress has not finalized this yet. We have time to change Republican politicians’ minds.

www.linkedin.com/pulse/saving...

Paige Amormino - Saving SBE starts before the bill is written. Right now, NSF SBE does not have its own separate line of funding in the FY2027 budget structure. This matters because if SBE is not specifically protected ...

Saving SBE starts before the bill is written.

SBE needs a distinct FY27 appropriation. If your sch. is on the list, get a group of colleagues to meet w your House/Sen. offices. Esp. for Republican seats, direct constituent comms matter. Timeline/templates/updates:

www.paigeamormino.com/pages/9337

Moral Fragmentations and Boundaries | Liberal Arts Events This event through the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making will bring together several scholars in the social sciences and humanities to talk about different disciplinary approaches to the study of "f...

That's not even counting additional talks by @drmeltemyucel.bsky.social @kyleflaw.com, Chuck Huff, Linda Trevino, Mary Beth Oliver, Simone Tang, Desiree Lim. It's going to be in person, also live-streamed on Zoom -- register at QR code or visit the event page: events.la.psu.edu/event/moral-....

Interested in the moral psychology of intergenerational concern? Join us this Thursday for an online seminar this with @kyleflaw.com

The politics of well-being during democratic backsliding: How partisan affiliation and support for government actions relate to happiness and life satisfaction Do politics shape happiness? Evidence from 5-week tracking links policy support to well-being amid democratic backsliding in the U.S.

📰 New Research: The Politics of Well-Being during Democratic Backsliding

@djwu.bsky.social ky.social, @kyleflaw.com, @stysyropoulos.bsky.social y.social, and @sylviapperry.bsky.social show striking partisan differences in well-being during Trump’s second term.

advances.in/psychology/1...

Grateful to co-authors David Markowitz, @stysyropoulos.bsky.social, Thomas Mazzuchi, and @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social!

Taken together, obituaries reflect what families choose to highlight in remembrance and, in the aggregate, offer a window into what society values as a life well lived.

Empirical article here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Cultural scripts around gender and age were also reflected in these memorializations.

Obituaries for men more often referenced achievement and power, while those for women emphasized benevolence and enjoyment of life; older and younger adults were remembered using different value language as well.

Across time, obituaries emphasized tradition and benevolence far more than achievement or power.

But around major disruptions like 9/11 and COVID-19, families tended to foreground different values when remembering loved ones, reflecting subtle shifts in what it means to have lived well.

What 38 million obituaries reveal about how Americans define a ‘life well lived’ Obituaries reveal shifting cultural values across time and place. Here’s a glimpse into how the moral vocabulary has evolved over several decades.

Our new @theconversation.com piece distills findings from our recent @pnas.org paper analyzing 38m U.S. obituaries (1998-2024).

We examine which values families highlight when remembering loved ones and how those values shift over time and major events.

theconversation.com/what-38-mill...

The hidden costs of human cooperation Cooperation enables humans to reshape entire environments and build complex societies. Although often celebrated, cooperation also has hidden costs. By presenting core mechanisms behind its emergence,...

Really good read: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

With @jowylie.bsky.social, Gordon Kraft-Todd, @nathanliang.bsky.social, @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social, and @stysyropoulos.bsky.social!

Practically, if people expect their own virtue to be judged more favorably, this could (potentially) make them more willing to act publicly, which may support norm setting. Still, the consistent discounting of public relative to private virtue suggests those acts may carry a credibility cost.

Yet these asymmetries vanish when judgments are made side by side. Moreover, across studies, public virtue was judged as less morally good than private virtue (i.e., virtue discounting), a difference most consistently accounted for by lower attributions of principled motivation for public actions.

Across 4 preregistered studies (N=2,511), we find self-serving asymmetries. On average, people expect their own public acts of virtue to appear more principled, less reputation driven, and more trustworthy than people tend to rate identical public actions performed by others.

<em>British Journal of Social Psychology</em> | Wiley Online Library Public acts of virtue can promote prosocial norms yet are often met with moral scepticism – a phenomenon known as virtue discounting. What psychological processes might underlie people's propensity t....

Public displays of virtue like donating or speaking up can set norms, but they’re often met with skepticism (“virtue discounting”). Our new paper asks: do people expect their own public virtue to be judged differently than others’ similar actions?
bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Exactly! Obituaries are usually written positively rather than neutrally. But that’s the point. They reveal what a society values as living well, and how those values differ depending on who is being remembered, and how they shift across time and in response to collectively shared events.

The (stellar) team behind this work: David Markowitz, Thomas Mazzuchi, @stysyropoulos.bsky.social, me, and @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social

Taken together, obituaries show how societies remember the dead by encoding values, responding to cultural upheavals, and reinforcing scripts of age and gender. They are cultural time capsules that reveal what we believe makes a life well lived.

Reflecting cultural scripts:

Men’s legacies were more dynamic across the lifespan, often tied to achievement & power.

Women’s were steadier, more often tied to benevolence & hedonism.

Older people were remembered more for tradition & conformity than younger people.

Legacies shifted with major events:
• Security declined after 9/11
• Achievement fell after the 2008 crash
• Benevolence collapsed during COVID and has not recovered four years later

The most common values across obituaries were tradition and benevolence.

Values like power and stimulation appeared less often.

An exploration of basic human values in 38 million obituaries over 30 years | PNAS How societies remember the dead can reveal what people value in life. We analyzed 38 million obituaries from the United States to examine how perso...

🪦 New in @pnas.org: we analyzed 38 million U.S. obituaries to ask what signals a life well lived:

What values are people most remembered for?

How do legacies shift with cultural events?

How do age and gender shape what it means to have lived well?

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Across 6 European countries, people feel more responsible to protect future generations than to directly reduce climate change. Both forms of responsibility predict climate policy support.

🔗 authors.elsevier.com/a/1lcgHzzKDP...

New paper w/ Zhaoquan Wang, @stysyropoulos.bsky.social, & many others.

The team: @stysyropoulos.bsky.social, Bren O’Connor, @amormino.bsky.social, @drcharlie.bsky.social, Brock Bastian, Abigail Marsh & @lianeleeyoung.bsky.social

@seoyeonbae211.bsky.social and I spoke with @drjimdavies.bsky.social about our new preprint on altruistic motivation.

Grateful for his thoughtful write-up in @nautil.us and the outstanding team behind this work (see below)!

@lianeleeyoung.bsky.social @stysyropoulos.bsky.social @amormino.bsky.social @drcharlie.bsky.social @realmoralitylab.bsky.social

Excited to share
@seoyeonbae211.bsky.social's first preprint—an ambitious global study of human motivation!

Using data from 900,000+ people in 100+ countries, we find altruistic motives consistently outweigh egoistic ones across cultures.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

We asked over 8,700 people in 6 countries to think about future generations in decision-making, and this is what we found When people reflect on how their actions shape the future, they are more likely to support solutions to present-day issues like poverty and inequality.

We asked over 8,700 people in 6 countries to think about future generations in decision-making, and this is what we found theconversation.com/we-asked-ove... @stysyropoulos.bsky.social