iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Refusing to release the requested data on how these questions performed undermines the Census Bureau’s scientific integrity and prevents accountability when LGBTQ+ communities are left invisible. (4/4)

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Congress allocated $10 million, the Census Bureau tested nearly half a million households, and now the results are being unlawfully suppressed. (3/4)

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Policymakers, researchers, and multiple federal agencies requested this testing to help enforce civil rights and better understand and address disparities in health, education, employment, and other areas affecting LGBTQ+ Americans. (2/4)

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Democracy Forward & I filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Census Bureau, seeking the release of data from its testing of sexual orientation & gender identity questions in the nation's most important annual demographic survey, key to upholding LGBTQ+ rights. democracyforward.org/updates/sogi... (1/4)

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The results open a path for new interventions that don’t just target stereotypes but also attempt to recalibrate biased visual perception directly, with the hopes of mitigating such high-stakes misjudgments under stress and uncertainty. (6/6)

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While past work has generally assumed such weapon-identification biases involve an accurate perception of the object but then a racially biased impulse that is difficult to control, our findings suggest that part of the problem is a temporary visual distortion as well. (5/6)

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These neural representational shifts predicted subjects' delays in recognizing these tools as tools, rather than weapons, suggesting an initial tendency to perceive them as weapons. (4/6)

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Using neural decoding techniques, we find that when subjects saw a Black man’s face before an image of a tool, their brain’s object-processing regions shifted toward a weapon-like representation. (3/6)

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Unarmed Black people in the US are 3X more likely than unarmed White people to be shot and killed by police. In many tragic cases, unarmed Black men were holding innocuous objects like a wrench, wallet, or cell phone when fatally shot by an officer. (2/6)

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Franki Kung @frankikung.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

New findings from my lab in Nature Communications suggest that racial stereotypes can lead the brain's perceptual system to temporarily "see" weapons where they don't exist. Led by: @dongwonoh.bsky.social Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... (1/6)

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Reposted by Jon Freeman

Three @spspnews.bsky.social members will discuss their grant terminations and next steps, followed by Q&A, story sharing, and community discussion. Moderator: Cynthia L. Pickett, Professor; Past SPSP President Speakers: @lkfazio.bsky.social, @freemanjb.bsky.social, and @frankikung.bsky.social

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Reposted by Jon Freeman

Jeff Zacks @jzacks.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

The Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (@fabbs.org) is searching for a short-term technology policy fellow. Great opportunity for a new PhD interested in policy, maybe before a research postdoc or faculty position: fabbs.org/news/2025/08...

fabbs.org

We’re Hiring: Technology Policy Fellow – FABBS

Location: Washington, D.C. (hybrid) Salary: Approximately $7,000 per month Start Date: September 15, 2025 Duration: 3 months, with potential for longer Position

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Reposted by Jon Freeman

Chujun Lin @chujunlin.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

First paper from my lab out @commspsychol.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s44271-025-00275-w Latent factor models are popular for mental representation of people, e.g. warmth & competence But we show in naturalistic contexts, more complex representations are needed: high-dimensional networks

nature.com

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Reposted by Jon Freeman

Benedek Kurdi @benedek.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

Paper in @pnas.org in which @d-melnikoff.bsky.social and I provide evidence for model-based effects on automatic evaluation. This was a super fun “adversarial” collaboration with 0 adversariality. It may have been nice to be right, but getting it right is nearly as nice: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

pnas.org

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Curious for any reactions/feedback!

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We think it's important to view impressions not so much as drawing on a fixed low-dimensional structure but as emerging in a combinatorial fashion out of the dynamics of a high-dimensional space. This approach may also be valuable for thinking about other dimensional models in social cognition (8/8)

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The model can explain growing findings: ▪️cross-cultural & individual perceiver variation ▪️variation by targets' race/gender/groups And makes novel predictions: ▪️"proximal" vs. "distal" traits in cascades (competent → intelligent → creative) ▪️earlier activation of putatively latent dimensions (7/8)

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In the model, the structure of trait relationships (e.g., trustworthiness–dominance) can change due to targets or context and cultural and individual learning. Top-down factors—like goals, stereotypes, or attention—reshape the attractor landscape, influencing which traits become most stable. (6/8)

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Here the trustworthiness/warmth dimension isn’t a latent mechanism or have a privileged functional/cognitive status—it’s an emergent pattern from correlated traits. That’s why it appears in PCA or factor analysis. But we argue that it’s only a mere snapshot of a fluid, high-dimensional space (5/8)

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How does it work? You encounter another person. Features trigger many trait concepts (e.g., sociable, caring, competent), which activate each other or compete, influenced by top-down goals & higher-order processes. The network settles into a stable neural pattern, resulting in impressions. (4/8)

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Instead, using attractor neural networks, we propose a high-dimensional model. In the brain, social impressions would operate as dynamic trajectories in a neural-state space that can be shaped by sensory cues, conceptual associations, and higher-order social cognition. (3/8)

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How do we infer countless traits? Models have treated trait perception like color vision: impressions arise from combinations of, e.g., “red” (trustworthy), “green” (dominant), & "blue" (youthful). But unlike color, there’s no evidence for this, and we question the value of latent dimensions (2/8)

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A high-dimensional model of social impressions

In a TiCS paper, @chujunlin.bsky.social & I propose a high-dimensional model of social impressions. Existing models focus on 2–4 latent dimensions (e.g. trustworthy/warm), but they often fall apart across different contexts, cultures, & perceivers. We need a paradigm shift. shorturl.at/7GD1n (1/8)

cell.com

People form social impressions from visual cues such as faces, which are argued by various models to arise from some limited set of fixed dimensions (e.g., trustworthiness and dominance). We argue tha...

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

Want your NIH and NSF program officers and division directors to be fired and turned into political appointees? Deadline extended: 3 days left! Already 33,000+ public comments Comments can tank a proposed rule in court. 📣 Oppose the rule with a brief comment: shorturl.at/WKuBj

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

So thrilled @youngkihong.bsky.social will be starting up at UC Boulder!

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Reposted by Jon Freeman

Björn Lindström @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

Join our @erc.europa.eu funded lab @ki.se! We're hiring a postdoc to explore how humans learn from each other — with fMRI, modeling, & behavioral experiments. 🧠👫 A chance to lead cutting-edge work in social neuro & computational psychology. Apply: shorturl.at/GJQuW

shorturl.at

Postdoctoral Researcher in social/cognitive neuroscience with focus on social learning

Do you want to contribute to top quality medical research? The Mechanisms of Social Behavior lab at Karolinska Institutet (PI: Björn Lindström) is seeking a highly qualified postdoctoral researcher.

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

It's currently at 19,430+ public comments, but the deadline is now extended to June 7. The agency may be worried the large, well-reasoned opposition could tank the final rule in court—and is buying time to flood the docket with support. Keep it coming!

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Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

FYI deadline extended until June 7 public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-09356.pdf

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Public comments with just a few sentences can make a difference!

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Then you could mention: - Any experience with NSF, NIH, or other agencies - The risk of replacing career experts with political loyalists - Why unbiased standards and the integrity & credibility of federally-funded science matters - How this could impact science, tech, public health, or innovation

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You can begin your comment with something like: - "I strongly oppose the proposed Schedule F rule" - "The proposed rule will damage U.S. science and innovation"

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