Blog: Social Science Evolving — Michael McCullough

We have come to think of hunger as a "drive," but we really ought to be thinking of it as an "emotion," with a long reach into our bodies, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

UncategorizedMarch 9, 2021emotion, Evolutionary Psychology, Hunger

Helping Others with Purpose in the Age of COVID-19

UncategorizedDecember 23, 2020

Economic Pain is Coming for the College Graduates of 2020. But Who Will Suffer, and How Will They Suffer, and For How Long?

UncategorizedJune 10, 2020college graduates, economics, employment, jobs, university graduates

What is Classic Style? A Primer for Social Scientists

UncategorizedApril 17, 2020

The UK Publication of My Upcoming Book, The Kindness of Strangers, has been delayed until September 2020

UncategorizedApril 14, 2020

Trust in the Time of Coronavirus: Low Trusters are Particularly Skeptical of Local Officials and Their Own Neighbors

UncategorizedApril 13, 2020Behavior, social psychology, trust

Social Distancing By the Numbers: Who's Staying Home?

UncategorizedApril 2, 2020

The Kindness of Strangers: Release Date Changed to July 21

UncategorizedApril 1, 2020

Empathy: Does "Putting Yourself in the Other Person's Shoes" Make any Difference?

UncategorizedNovember 27, 2019

The Golden Rule: Gold or Fool's Gold?

UncategorizedMay 1, 2019ethics, golden rule, religion

Behavioral Altruism is an Unhelpful Scientific Category

UncategorizedJanuary 30, 2019Behavior, Cooperation, Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, experimental economics, trust

Evolution's Gravity: A Paean to Natural Selection

UncategorizedDecember 15, 2018

Lexical Cognitions: Misbegotten altruism, sniping ethnographers, and who actually wrote the Bible? Book recommendations for 24 July 2018

UncategorizedJuly 24, 2018Lexical Cognitions

Think Globally, Forgive Instrumentally

UncategorizedJune 18, 2018cross-cultural, forgiveness, life history theory, Mind, psychology

When is a Measure of Oxytocin No Such Thing?

UncategorizedSeptember 27, 2017

The Concept of Validity is Much, Much Simpler Than You Think (a Chip off the Old Blog)

UncategorizedSeptember 24, 2017Behavior, research methods, social psychology

35 Reasons to Join Our Lab, Updated, with New Reasons (Thanks, Lab!)

SatireSeptember 12, 2016

33 Reasons to Join Our Lab

SatireSeptember 10, 2016psychology

Are We Just Going to Burn Illegal Ivory? How About Flooding the Market with Synthetic Ivory?

UncategorizedMay 1, 2016

The Generosity of Nations Before the Welfare State

UncategorizedApril 26, 2016

My Kid's Middle School Teacher Teams Up with Richard Dawkins to Start The Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science (TIES)

UncategorizedNovember 4, 2015

Is Kim Davis Really Wrestling with a Violated Religious Conscience?

UncategorizedSeptember 22, 2015disgust, morality, religion

Thinking Outside the Box: The Power of Apologies in Cooperative Agreements

UncategorizedJune 23, 2015apologies, Cooperation, Evolution, forgiveness

Human Oxytocin Research Gets a Drubbing

UncategorizedMay 20, 2015Behavior, humans, oxytocin, research methods

What Does Revenge Want?

UncategorizedFebruary 9, 2015

A P-Curve Exercise That Might Restore Some of Your Faith in Psychology

UncategorizedDecember 4, 2014Behavior, Evolutionary Psychology, false positives, psychology, replication, social psychology

Do Humans Have Innate Concepts for Thinking About Other People?

UncategorizedSeptember 15, 2014

The Myth of Moral Outrage

UncategorizedAugust 6, 2014anger, Behavior, experimental economics, moral outrage, morality, research methods, social psychology, third-party punishment game

Happy International Forgiveness Day!

UncategorizedAugust 3, 2014

The Real Roots of Vengeance and Forgiveness

UncategorizedJuly 1, 2014Beyond Revenge, Evolution, forgiveness, revenge

The Trouble with Oxytocin, Part III: The Noose Tightens for The Oxytocin-->Trust Hypothesis

UncategorizedJune 25, 2014Behavior, Cooperation, Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, experimental economics, oxytocin, replication, trust

Of Crackers and Quackers: Human-Duck Social Interaction is Regulated by Indirect Reciprocity (A Satire)

SatireJune 11, 2014Behavior, Cooperation, Evolution, indirect reciprocity, natural selection

Why Do Honor Killings Defy the First Law of Homicide? And Will Smaller Families Lead to Fewer Of Them?

UncategorizedMay 19, 2014decision-making, Evolution, honor, honor killings, humans, natural selection, social psychology

Why Not Use Cap and Trade to Reduce False Positives In Science? An Elaboration

UncategorizedApril 16, 2014cap and trade, economics, false positives, replication, research methods, social psychology

Solving Science's False-Positive Problem with a Cap and Trade System: My Letter (w/ Dave Kelly) in Nature

UncategorizedApril 16, 2014

David Brooks Declares: “Evolutionary Biology and the Other Axis Sciences Declare War on Character and Depth!”

UncategorizedMarch 15, 2014Character, David Brooks, Evolutionary Psychology, Mind, Steven Pinker

The Trouble with Oxytocin, Part II: Extracting the Truth from Oxytocin Research

UncategorizedFebruary 25, 2014experimental economics, oxytocin, psychology, replication, social psychology

A Refreshingly Human-Sounding Public Radio Interview: Yours Truly on Morality, Revenge, Forgiveness and Evolution

UncategorizedJanuary 17, 2014Evolution, forgiveness, morality, revenge, social psychology

I’m feeling Edge-y about Human Evolutionary Exceptionalism

UncategorizedJanuary 16, 2014Behavior, Cooperation, Edge, Evolution, human, Language

The Trouble with Oxytocin, Part I: Does OT Actually Increase Trusting Behavior?

UncategorizedDecember 17, 2013experimental economics, oxytocin, replication, social psychology, trust