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David Levari

@davidlevari.bsky.social

1.1K followers 1.3K following 59 posts

Assistant Professor of Cognitive & Psychological Sciences + Entrepreneurship @ Brown University levarilab.com

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David Levari @davidlevari.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Screenshot of the article "Morewedge, C. K., Huh, Y. E., & Vosgerau, J. (2010). Thought for food: Imagined consumption reduces actual consumption. Science, 330(6010), 1530-1533."

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David Levari @davidlevari.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

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David Levari @davidlevari.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Freeze frame of a US soccer player stepping on a Bosnian player's leg from a slow-motion replay

Screenshot of title/abstract of an academic paper: Caruso, E. M., Burns, Z. C., & Converse, B. A. (2016). Slow motion increases perceived intent. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(33), 9250-9255. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.160386511

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David Levari @davidlevari.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

As The West Wing explained, some sports have exciting moments when "everything's on the line." Likewise, when 90% of people have donated, your contribution can feel marginal, not to mention anonymous. But your decision to break a streak or keep it going has impact on other potential donors. (4/5)

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David Levari @davidlevari.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

The idea is simple: instead of pointing out when “X% of people” donated to charity, we told people that “the last X people in a row” donated, and gave them a chance to keep the streak going. This worked surprisingly well as a way to encourage donations! (2/5)

Left panel: diagram of streak- and percentage-based messages to encourage donation, using cartoon figures (A decides whether to donate, and B/C/D are potential future donors who can either be part of a streak with three past donors or of part of a large percentage (80%). Upper right panel: A bar graph showing three conditions on the x-axis (Control/High Percentage/Short streak) and the donation rate (%) on the y-axis. The high percentage bar (center) is not significantly higher than the control bar, but the short streak bar is significantly higher than both other bars. Lower right panel: similar pattern and plot, but for three conditions labeled Control, No Streak, and Streak, respectively.

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David Levari @davidlevari.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Pointing out that “everyone else is already doing it!” is a classic way to motivate prosocial behavior. But how can we encourage actions which aren't popular yet? In a new paper in @jexpsocpsych.bsky.social, Mike Norton and I had a lot of fun testing a method using "collective streaks." (1/5)

Screenshot of the title and abstract of the article "Levari, D. E., & Norton, M. I. (2026). Collective streaks motivate prosocial behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 126, 104941."

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David Levari @davidlevari.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Tired: moral dumbfounding Wired: *moral* dumbfounding

Screenshot of news headline: "Jesse Eisenberg Reveals Plan To Donate His Kidney To A Stranger 'In Six Weeks,' But Doesn't 'Know Why'"

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David Levari @davidlevari.bsky.social · 16/10/2024

Admirable directness in branding here.

A screenshot from some sort of mobile credit card ad which describes a restaurant deal for a credit card called the "Visa Infinite Privilege card."

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David Levari @davidlevari.bsky.social · 21/03/2024

Some professional news: I'm thrilled to be joining Brown University this summer as an Assistant Professor, based in the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, & Psychological Sciences (CLPS) and the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship!

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David Levari @davidlevari.bsky.social · 02/02/2024

First, we took hundreds of true and false news headlines, and crowdsourced our own "plausibility continuum". There was a lot of consensus on this: some headlines were totally believable, some were completely unbelievable, and some were in the middle. (3/9)

A horizontal line with arrows on both ends. The left side is labeled "less plausible" and the right side is labeled "more plausible." Above the line, there are three examples of headlines. The left-most one says "The U.S. will sell uninhabited parts of Alaska to Russia." The center one says "New York State is banning youth football due to concussions." The right-mose one says "Welch's Fruit Snacks to release new flavor: Kiwi."

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David Levari @davidlevari.bsky.social · 02/02/2024

New working paper: "Blatantly false news increases belief in news that is merely implausible" osf.io/preprints/ps... There's growing concern that AI like GPT-4 is making it easy to create sudden "cascades" of fake news online. But what impact could those cascades have? (1/9)

Screenshot of the title, authors, and abstract for the paper, link available here: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/cz7vy

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David Levari @davidlevari.bsky.social · 28/09/2023

Can't decide whether Kraft has discovered a powerful one-item personality test, or a new moral foundation.

Photograph of two packages of Kraft American cheese slices. The package on the left is labeled "extra thin" slices, and the one on the right is labeled "ultra thick."

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