Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 15/03/2026... preferences about inequality inform economically conservative attitudes while social control preferences inform socially conservative attitudes. But do these value preferences actually predict different kinds of real-world attitudes? Our work indicates the story is more complex than expected: 001
Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 15/03/2026📢 preprint 📢 Read it here first! People can be conservative in different ways. A common account distinguishes economic conservatism from social conservatism on the basis of two different sets of values... doi.org/10.31234/osf...doi.orgOSF 110
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythAbby Cassario @abbycassario.bsky.social · 11/03/2026Update: we got feedback. It was helpful! So we added a study to address it. In summary, threat-conservatism effects reliably emerge *only* at a very narrow intersection of both DV operationalization (terrorism policy) *and* threat stimuli (terrorism threat). Check it out! 👇 osf.io/preprints/ps...osf.ioOSF 1102
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythJulius Koschnick @juliuskoschnick.bsky.social · 19/12/2025New working paper 🚨🚨🚨 What was the origin of modern economic growth? Joel Mokyr had a Nobel winning answer - growth took off when science and technology began to reinforce each other But can we test this quantitatively? This paper does so – read more ⬇️ 🧵 22813
Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 14/12/2025Extremely proud to have contributed to this amazing three-part Special Issue on Vanuatu languages, out now in Te Reo! Especial thanks to the wonderful editors for pulling off this major achievement. You can read my contribution here: nzlingsoc.org/journal_arti...nzlingsoc.orgLanguage shift in Vanuatu’s 2020 census: Investigation of a national dataset for 250,000 people - Linguistic Society of New Zealand 043
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythRebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 17/11/2025"The cooperative eye hypothesis proposes that human eyeballs are uniquely conspicuous and evolved under selective pressures to behave cooperatively....but lacks robust empirical support: human eye pigmentation does not uniquely stand out among primates, is not uniform at species level..."onlinelibrary.wiley.comLook past the cooperative eye hypothesis: reconsidering the evolution of human eye appearanceThe external appearance of the human eye has been prominently linked to the evolution of complex sociocognitive functions in our species. The cooperative eye hypothesis (CEH) proposes that human eyeb.... 1167
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythTarik Abou-Chadi @tabouchadi.bsky.social · 25/09/2025Now out in @cpsjournal.bsky.social. In our new article, @denis-cohen.bsky.social @thmskrr.bsky.social and I show that where local rent prices increase more, residents with lower incomes become more likely to support the radical right AfD. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... 4322124
Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 18/09/2025My new paper critically analyses the available evidence (qualitative & quantitative) + defines plausible mechanisms that can be tested in future work with existing data So stay tuned for more! 010
Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 18/09/2025Vanuatu’s lingua franca, Bislama, has been learnt by most people as a 2nd language for decades But it's increasingly the main language of daily life. Linguists' reports reflect growing worries that this is interrupting transmission of local Indigenous languages What is causing this shift? 120
Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 18/09/2025Vanuatu is the world’s most language-diverse country: >130 languages amongst 300k people. But is there a language shift ongoing that could threaten this? The last major review said no. But that was 25 yrs ago. Has the story changed? In a word––yes. 110
Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 18/09/2025New paper alert! 🧪 www.doi.org/10.1057/s415...doi.orgLanguage endangerment in Vanuatu: Bislama likely does pose a threat in the world’s most language-diverse country - Humanities and Social Sciences CommunicationsHumanities and Social Sciences Communications - Language endangerment in Vanuatu: Bislama likely does pose a threat in the world’s most language-diverse country 192
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythSheina Lew-Levy @sheinalew.bsky.social · 11/09/2025@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised! 3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution 2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions. Please share and apply! www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...durham.ac.ukFees and Funding - Durham University 07086
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythJosh Luke Davis 🏳️🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · 03/09/2025woah this is genuinely, utterly WILD Ant queens of one species produce males of another species, so she can then mate with them and produce hybrid workers! This is so gloriously weird I can't quite compute it 🤯🧪🐜 www.nature.com/articles/d41...nature.com‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a motherAnt queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding. 18887338
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythJohn Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 18/08/2025Climate models since the 1970s nailed it—most predicted global warming almost exactly as it happened. 371431613
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythProf Nichola Raihani @nicholaraihani.bsky.social · 19/07/2025My colleague Quentin Atkinson wrote this piece - How Not To Run a University. It is an insanely good read about how managerialism is destroying universities. Make time for it. Talk about it. Share it. quentinatkinson.substack.com/s/how-not-to...quentinatkinson.substack.comHow not to run a university | Quentin’s Substack | Quentin Atkinson | SubstackA case study of one university’s managerial misadventures, why it is happening and what we can do about it. Click to read Quentin’s Substack, by Quentin Atkinson, a Substack publication. Launched a mo... 56022
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythKiran Basava @incertaesedis.bsky.social · 23/06/2025Happy to share our new paper introducing the Animal Culture Database in Scientific Data: We’re putting together a resource consolidating primary research on cultural behaviors in wild animal populations and how they’re affected by human activity (1/5) www.nature.com/articles/s41...nature.comMapping nonhuman cultures with the Animal Culture Database - Scientific DataScientific Data - Mapping nonhuman cultures with the Animal Culture Database 319584
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythDavid @daverino.bsky.social · 18/06/2025"Nasa has revealed a dramatic rise in the intensity of..events such as droughts & floods over the past 5 years. The study shows that..extreme events are becoming more frequent, longer-lasting & more severe" www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...theguardian.comNasa data reveals dramatic rise in intensity of weather eventsExtreme events such as floods and droughts are becoming more frequent, longer-lasting and more severe, study says 35121
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythCecilia Padilla-Iglesias @ceciliapad.bsky.social · 18/06/2025I could not be more proud of my lab, and my fantastic colleagues for the study they just published in @nature.com revealing a massive expansion of our species' niche before dispersing out of Africa. Have a read, because it's an amazing paper 🤩 193
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythTim Bale @timbale.bsky.social · 17/06/2025Fascinating - not least on why different datasets produce very different results.theconversation.comIs there really a religious revival in England? Why I’m sceptical of a new reportIn Anglican and Catholic churches, average weekly attendance is down about 20% from pre-pandemic levels. 2215
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythRebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 16/06/2025“Historically, no one lived past age 35” "I’ve heard *so* many versions of this claim, including recently from a menopause doctor (implying menopause is not “natural” because noone lived long enough to go through it). Every time someone states this “fact,” a demographer loses a piece of their soul"jenndowd.substack.comThere Were Still Old People When Life Expectancy Was 35.A demography myth that won't die 1103090801
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythOmid Ghasemi @omidghasemi.bsky.social · 05/06/2025Our recently published paper in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review on #reasoning styles and #belief in God is now featured by @psychonomicsociety.bsky.social! Thanks, Jonathan Caballero, for the interesting article. 📄 Read the paper here: doi.org/10.3758/s134...doi.orgReflective thinking predicts disbelief in God across 19 countries - Psychonomic Bulletin & ReviewIn the present study, we tested three hypotheses about relationships between reflective thinking, intuitive thinking (both measured using the Cognitive Reflection Test; CRT), and belief in God or gods... 0189
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythCecilia Padilla-Iglesias @ceciliapad.bsky.social · 04/06/2025I was really excited when I saw this study being presented at @icarehb.bsky.social last January and I'm really glad to see the paper out! Amazing record of cultural transmission strategies & cultural traits over 3 million years 🤩 journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...journals.plos.orgAn empirically-based scenario for the evolution of cultural transmission in the human lineage during the last 3.3 million yearsHumans accumulate an ever-growing body of knowledge that far exceeds the capacity of any single individual or generation. Social learning and transmission are essential for this process. However, how ... 0149
Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 03/06/2025Very thought provoking But it's difficult to see how “science cannot be mandated” tackles the incentives for 'fast science', quantity over quality, etc that the best of Open Science aims to overturn 010
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythAbby Cassario @abbycassario.bsky.social · 20/05/2025🚨🚨 NEW PRE-PRINT 🚨🚨 Prominent theories in political psychology argue that threat causes increases in conservatism. Early experimental work supported this idea, but many of these studies were (severely) underpowered, and examined only a few threats and ideological DVs. 1/n osf.io/preprints/ps...osf.ioOSF 26222
Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 08/05/2025🧪 New research for the science feed from #anthropology! 000
Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 04/05/2025Thank you! Yeah it was quite a process but, perhaps like wine, I hope some aging has improved the piece haha 010
Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 01/05/2025Many thanks to my co-authors/supervisors Quentin Atkinson & Ananish Chaudhuri and to my former PhD student compatriates @scottclaessens.bsky.social & @akfischer.bsky.social for their help in the six years since I first started working on this piece back in 2019! 020
Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 01/05/2025... by presenting evidence that these political dimensions are not unique to Western or industrialised societies, and are not just products of modernisation/the Enlightenment as some others have suggested 120
Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 01/05/2025We here extend our previous work on the 'dual evolutionary foundations of politics', which argues that the two dimensions of politics reflect two trade-offs in human group living about cooperation vs competition and autonomy vs social control... (see www.nature.com/articles/s41...)nature.comThe dual evolutionary foundations of political ideology - Nature Human BehaviourClaessens et al. propose that the two dimensions of political ideology identified by previous research correspond to two key shifts in the evolution of human group living: a shift towards cooperation ... 110
Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 01/05/2025We review ethnographic evidence to argue that the political conflicts that we see in Western societies – specifically about fairness in resource sharing and about social control in managing group behaviour – are typical of politics in societies around the world 110
Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 01/05/2025Extremely happy to see some of my PhD work out in Current Anthropology! "The Dual Foundations of Political Ideology Are Ubiquitous across Human Social Life" www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...journals.uchicago.eduThe Dual Foundations of Political Ideology Are Ubiquitous across Human Social Life | Current AnthropologyMany people in Western countries represent the political landscape as a single dimension of conflict: authority, hierarchy, and tradition on the right versus greater freedom, equality, and systemic ch... 3103
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythAndrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 18/04/2025Thing I just learned in #rstats: unz() lets you connect to a .zip and load files from inside it without actually unzipping it (great for a file I'm working with that's 30 MB zipped and 1+ GB unzipped, with multiple CSVs in it) 1023446
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythSimon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 24/03/2025Two Fully-Funded PhD positions at Auckland Uni! Come help us understand the past and future of global cultural and linguistic diversity. #linguistics #evolution #academia #phd www.findaphd.com/phds/project... 75565
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythDan McGarry @danmcgarry.bsky.social · 12/03/2025A few words of appreciation for Marc Neil-Jones, founder of the Vanuatu Daily Post. I owe my journalism career to him. village-explainer.kabisan.com/index.php/20... 021
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythNicholas Gibson @njsgibson.bsky.social · 26/02/2025Religion data for reuse! Those stories about U.S. religion you're currently seeing in the news? They're from the Pew 2023-2024 Religious Landscape Study. While anyone can explore the data with their online tools, Pew has also shared the underlying dataset: doi.org/10.58094/3kw...doi.org2023-24 Religious Landscape Study (RLS) Dataset Archives 1108
Reposted by Guy Lavender Forsythmanvir singh @manvir.bsky.social · 11/02/2025Thrilled to see this out! In our new Psych Review paper, we argue that prosocial religious beliefs develop as people strategically push narratives that motivate others to cooperate. We show how this "mutual policing" dynamic explains (among other things) the origins, decline, & varieties of belief. 12610
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythAlison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 09/02/2025This little bird survived a volcanic eruption! Buried by volcanic ash from Vesuvius in AD 79, this Roman fresco of a little bird pecking at fruit re-emerged looking as delightful as it did some 2,000 years ago! Villa Poppaea, Oplontis, Italy 📷 by me 2023 #Archaeology 121043197
Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 07/02/2025I'm excited to share that I've just started a new Research Fellow position at the University of Auckland! I'll be working alongside Quentin Atkinson on a project about the connection between religiosity and socially conservative attitudes, so stay tuned for some cool new work! 020
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythMartin Lang @martinlangcz.bsky.social · 23/01/2025Our new Registered Report testing whether secular individuals would be willing to join religious groups when threatened with cooperative insecurity. While this effect was weak in a behavioral test, a self-reported willingness to join was much stronger than anticipated. bit.ly/secularizati...online.ucpress.eduMechanisms of Secularization: Testing Between the Rationalization and Existential Insecurity TheoriesThe study tests two competing explanations of the secularization process related to rationalizing worldviews and decreasing existential insecurity. While the former explanation argues that people are ... 163
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythRoope Kaaronen @roopekaaronen.net · 04/12/2024I am delighted to share our latest piece of research: ‘A global cross-cultural analysis of string figures reveals evidence of deep transmission and innovation’. This was long in the works and is by far the largest project I’ve led to date. A thread: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... 1124191
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythAssociate Professor Siouxsie Wiles @siouxsiew.bsky.social · 04/12/2024It’s a dark day for research in Aotearoa New Zealand and the ramifications for the country are huge. Minister Judith Collins has just announced our blue-skies funder will no longer fund humanities & social science research and that 50% of what is funded must have economic benefit. 53962400
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythVincent Arel-Bundock @vincentab.bsky.social · 02/12/2024Our JSS article is out! And now I get to focus on {marginaleffects} 1.0.0. Stay tuned. www.jstatsoft.org/article/view... 13379112
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythRachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 01/11/2024Since I am suddenly inundated with statistics-oriented followers, I should post again that I am still conducting free weekly open office-hours for anyone in the world with Econometrics questions, Wed 10-12AM Eastern or by appointment. Details and sign up at donskerclass.github.io/OfficeHours.... 26023
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythDavid Brady @davebrady72.bsky.social · 30/11/2024Cool paper on “humanity’s perennial tendency to denigrate kids”. Here’s screenshot of abstract: 1249
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythProf Nichola Raihani @nicholaraihani.bsky.social · 27/11/2024New paper: in what we think is one of the largest meta-analyses of animal behaviour, we find no evidence for inequity aversion in nonhumans (in accept/reject paradigms) royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... Led by Oded Ritov & with @engelmann.bsky.social & Christoph Völterroyalsocietypublishing.orgNo evidence for inequity aversion in non-human animals: a meta-analysis of accept/reject paradigms | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological SciencesDisadvantageous inequity aversion (IA), a negative response to receiving less than others, is a key building block of the human sense of fairness. While some theorize that IA is shared by species acro... 35025
Reposted by Guy Lavender ForsythRafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 27/11/2024Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) against women is a major public health and inequality concern. It's not clear what causes it or how to reduce it. Gaby Deschamps' JMP considers that IPV is positively correlated with motherhood, and asks if we can understand why. www.gabrieladeschamps.com/research 1121067