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Screenshot of a data visualization titled “The Cost of American Exceptionalism,” subtitled “What would change if the U.S. matched the OECD average?” The page explains that each card shows how outcomes would change if the U.S. matched the average of 31 peer democracies. Below, a section labeled “Economy & Inequality” displays eight cards comparing U.S. figures to OECD averages. Highlights include: +$19K per household per year in redistributed income and +$96K in redistributed wealth if the top 1% matched OECD shares; a 71% lower CEO-to-worker pay ratio (from 354× to 101×); 50 million more workers with union coverage; 26 million more people with health insurance; $2.1 trillion saved annually in healthcare spending; $691 less per person per year in prescription drug costs; and intergenerational economic mobility being twice as high. Each card shows the U.S. value alongside the OECD average.
If there's one empirical insight I'd want everyone to understand about American politics, it's this:
America's problems are solved problems. Just not here.
What would change if the US simply matched the average of 31 peer democracies? Not Denmark or Norway. Just the middle of the pack. 🧵
🧩 Big picture: People don’t just model choices, they model the generation of options preceding choice. Our findings reveal a folk theory of the two-stage decision process: we intuitively “invert” how minds generate options to infer what others value.
@jsphillips.bsky.social @fierycushman.bsky.social
🔍 Across studies, value inferences followed the principles of diagnosticity and screening off: people made strong inferences only when an option couldn’t be explained another way (like being statistically common).
In the moral domain…
Study 3: People inferred immoral values only when the option was unexplained by context (📊left panel).
Study 4: Value inferences also depended on how easily immoral options came to mind, even when these thoughts were beneficial in context.
Study 1: Inferences about others’ values from what came to mind were sensitive to frequency and context—uncommon, context-inappropriate options were most diagnostic.
Study 2: People also inferred higher value for options generated earlier. 📊Plot shows order predicts inferred liking.
🧠 New paper alert! Can people infer others’ values not from what they choose, but simply from what comes to mind? Across four studies, we show they can—drawing on an intuitive theory of how options are generated.
doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106238
👇
Our findings highlight the need for more research on how social norm messages interact with culture to shape climate attitudes and behavior.
@smconstantino.bsky.social @greggsparkman.bsky.social @joelginn.bsky.social @etedaldi.bsky.social
We examined three common norm appeals: dynamic norms, work-together norms, and correcting pluralistic ignorance. Contrary to expectations, we find little evidence that survey-based social norm appeals to increase climate action are uniformly amplified in tight cultures.