🚨New paper on "Psychology as a historical science" w/ @JoHenrich & @slingerland20 in Annual Review of Psychology. Catalyzing the field of "historical psychology" by reviewing work on: origins of psychology and institutions today, psychology of the past (data from dead minds) 1/

Our psychology is shaped by our societies, and our societies are shaped by their histories. We can do better than butterfly collecting--just measuring cross-cultural diffs. For psychology to develop a full theory of human behavior, we need historical psychology. 2/
Psychology is shaped by millions of years of genetic evolution, thousands of years of cultural evolution, & a short lifetime of experience; yet, much of the field has focused on that short lifetime of experience. The WEIRD People Problem is not only about geography but history 3/
Past societies can be as culturally distant as distant societies. Cohort effects are a sliver of the cross-temporal variation we would expect in a culturally evolving species. History serves as a kind of psychological fossil record, a source of "data from dead minds". 4/
We (1) review work in historical psychology; (2) introduce methods including causal inference & how to extract data from dead minds; (3) explore the role of theory in mapping history to psychology; and (4) provide some conclusions concerning the future of this field. 5/
E.g.s: Religious evolution & social psych. Some gods gained the ability to see into hearts & control an afterlife contingent on compliance. In many large-scale societies, these gods became omniscient, omnipotent, & omnibenevolent, coevolving with the scale of their societies. 6/
This historical theory makes predictions not only about expected relationships in the historical record but also about expected contemporary cross-cultural diversity in religious beliefs and cognition. In doing so, the theory links historical psychology to cultural psychology. 7/
WEIRD Psychology may have its origins in suppressing kin networks, changing family structures, & related via one particular religion: The Catholic Church 8/
Institutions rest on invisible cultural and psychological pillars. E.g. a constitution’s proclamations are irrelevant without a belief in the rule of law, or norms of punishment for violations of this rule. 9/
We discuss the importance of causal inference techniques in historical psychology: instrumental variables, difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity. Some e.g. use for slavery & trust in strangers; agriculture & sex diff, gender inequality, collectivism; personality 10/
Historical psychology includes the psychology of the past - data from dead minds, cognitive archeology. Historical databases are emerging. But sometimes the data is qualitative requiring tools like text analysis. 11/
We discuss some examples of the importance of theory. A society has codependent norms, values, beliefs, behaviors, and institutions. If one takes an exploratory approach and looks for correlations in history, there are many to be found. Theory helps clarify causality. 12/
Collaboration between psychologists, historians, and other humanities scholars is important (see https://t.co/3yapB0NbaI for an e.g.). We discuss challenges & strategies. 13/
Taking history seriously is a critical part of moving beyond the WEIRD people problem and making psychology a genuinely universal science of human cognition and behavior. There is more work in "historical psychology" than we could review. Please share your favorite work! 14/14
See also the thread from co-author @JoHenrich: https://t.co/aICrMZ16Tq
Forgot to link the paper!

https://t.co/WQz2n38REM

https://t.co/Nx6NRxCgoK

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@janethooton_ @ErinInTheMorn @fifi_EY 2/…always advocated that trans minors & their families must have no alternative source of care, & subsequent Tory ministers have personally put their signature on renewals of it, and even personally rejected proposals for improvement that have been put forward by NHS England…

@janethooton_ @ErinInTheMorn @fifi_EY 3/…as a result of wider & public consultation. They & their civil servants listen only to GIDS on trans minors - it was GIDS advised against <18s being allowed #GenderRecognition in 2004, & since, on the basis that no one under 18 can be certain of their gender identity, just…

@janethooton_ @ErinInTheMorn @fifi_EY 4/…as many other staff at their trust wrote⬇️ to the press in 2002 (when the first instigator of this case, psychoanalyst Susan Evans was on staff too) that no trans people should be allowed that recognition but needed

@janethooton_ @ErinInTheMorn @fifi_EY 5/…to "cure" us instead. Yet GIDS proved incapable of defending its super-conservative protocol in court - no doubt because GIDS has always expected challenges to be from patients seeking care more like that elsewhere, arrogantly ignoring that services in countries where the…
I think @SamAdlerBell in his quest to be the contrarian on Fauci gets several things wrong here. 1/


First, the failure last year actually was driven by the White House, the #Trump inner circle. Watch what's happening now, the US' scientific and public health infrastructure is creaking back to life. 2/

I think Sam underestimates the decimation of many of our health agencies over the past four years and the establishment of ideological control over them during the pandemic. 3/

I also am puzzled why Tony gets the blame for not speaking up, etc. Robert Redfield, Brett Giroir, Deb Birx, Jerome Adams, Alex Azar all could have done the same. 4/

Several of these people Bob Redfield, Brett Giroir, Alex Azar were led by craven ambition, Jerome Adams by cowardice, but I do think Deb Birx and Tony tried as institutionalists, insiders to make a difference. 5/
You gotta think about this one carefully!

Imagine you go to the doctor and get tested for a rare disease (only 1 in 10,000 people get it.)

The test is 99% effective in detecting both sick and healthy people.

Your test comes back positive.

Are you really sick? Explain below 👇

The most complete answer from every reply so far is from Dr. Lena. Thanks for taking the time and going through


You can get the answer using Bayes' theorem, but let's try to come up with it in a different —maybe more intuitive— way.

👇


Here is what we know:

- Out of 10,000 people, 1 is sick
- Out of 100 sick people, 99 test positive
- Out of 100 healthy people, 99 test negative

Assuming 1 million people take the test (including you):

- 100 of them are sick
- 999,900 of them are healthy

👇

Let's now test both groups, starting with the 100 people sick:

▫️ 99 of them will be diagnosed (correctly) as sick (99%)

▫️ 1 of them is going to be diagnosed (incorrectly) as healthy (1%)

👇

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Trump is gonna let the Mueller investigation end all on it's own. It's obvious. All the hysteria of the past 2 weeks about his supposed impending firing of Mueller was a distraction. He was never going to fire Mueller and he's not going to


Mueller's officially end his investigation all on his own and he's gonna say he found no evidence of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election.

Democrats & DNC Media are going to LITERALLY have nothing coherent to say in response to that.

Mueller's team was 100% partisan.

That's why it's brilliant. NOBODY will be able to claim this team of partisan Democrats didn't go the EXTRA 20 MILES looking for ANY evidence they could find of Trump campaign/Russian collusion during the 2016 election

They looked high.

They looked low.

They looked underneath every rock, behind every tree, into every bush.

And they found...NOTHING.

Those saying Mueller will file obstruction charges against Trump: laughable.

What documents did Trump tell the Mueller team it couldn't have? What witnesses were withheld and never interviewed?

THERE WEREN'T ANY.

Mueller got full 100% cooperation as the record will show.