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Zoe Purcell 🕵🏻‍♀️ @zoepurcell.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Why are people so bad at spotting fallacies in climate (mis)information? And what can we do about it? @bencebago.bsky.social and I found a big role of prior beliefs, evidence against identity-protective reasoning, and a neat way to improve climate argumentation. rdcu.be/8X6KVTwk5pTa

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Jérémie Beucler @jeremiebeucler.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

1/15 What do we actually do when we deliberate, and how does it change over time? New preprint with @wimdeneys.bsky.social : "Rhythm of Thought: Tracing the Dynamics of Deliberation in Reasoning". 🔗 doi.org/10.31234/osf... (yes, I like flashy titles 💅) A 🧵👇

Title page showing:

Rhythm of Thought: Tracing the Dynamics of Deliberation in Reasoning
Jérémie Beucler a,* and Wim De Neys a

a LaPsyDÉ, CNRS, Université Paris Cité, F-75005 Paris, France

Abstract

When an intuitive answer is uncertain, people are thought to engage in further reasoning. But what people actually do during this additional thinking, how it unfolds over time, and why it sometimes leads to better answers remain unclear. We scored think-aloud protocols with large language models to track, moment by moment, four possible functions of deliberation (generating candidate responses, justifying them, controlling intuitive responses, and regulating cognitive effort), together with expressed confidence. Deliberation showed a clear temporal organization: generation dominated early, whereas justification, control, and regulation became increasingly prominent as reasoning progressed. Correct responses involved more justification, control, and regulation than biased responses, and these evolving dynamics predicted accuracy for out-of-sample participants and items. Confidence and deliberation also showed reciprocal lagged associations: lower confidence predicted further generation, justification, and control, whereas regulation predicted subsequent increases in confidence. Deliberation, then, appears to involve not a single act of "thinking harder," but an evolving interplay of reasoning processes whose organization is linked to whether reasoning succeeds.

Keywords: deliberation; reasoning dynamics; verbal protocols; large language models; metacognition; dual-process theories

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Esther Boissin @boissinesther.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Happy to share a new preprint with @tomcostello.bsky.social, @dgrand.bsky.social and @gordpennycook.bsky.social 🧵 "What beliefs are most debunkable?" osf.io/preprints/ps... We investigate the characteristics of the beliefs that are (or are not) influenced by counterevidence in 3,341 AI dialogues.

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Zoe Purcell 🕵🏻‍♀️ @zoepurcell.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

How can we collectively contain the threat of dishonest delegation to AI? Our paper "Whistleblowers can contain the unethical externalities of human–AI delegation" is out in PNAS, with @nckobis.bsky.social , Andrew Samuel, and @jfbonnefon.bsky.social. 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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Jérémie Beucler @jeremiebeucler.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Are you thinking in vain? New paper with @zoepurcell.bsky.social, @luciecharlesneuro.bsky.social, @wimdeneys.bsky.social & @kobedesender.bsky.social 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯 𝘝𝘢𝘪𝘯: 𝘈𝘯 𝘌𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘈𝘤𝘤𝘶𝘮𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘈𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘪𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 🔗 osf.io/preprints/ps... A 🧵

a man hanging from a scale where on one side there are really heavy stereotypes, and on the other side very light base-rates, to illustrate base-rate neglect

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Jérémie Beucler @jeremiebeucler.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Our paper with @zoepurcell.bsky.social , @luciecharlesneuro.bsky.social and @wimdeneys.bsky.social on using LLMs to estimate belief strength in reasoning is out in Behavior Research Methods. If you're interested in reasoning biases & LLMs as measurement tools, check it out: rdcu.be/eZXGK (free pdf)

title of the paper in behavior research methods

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Nils Köbis @nckobis.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Many people worry that AI-assisted writing feels “less authentic” and may erode trust. So we tested it in two preregistered, incentivized trust-game experiments (N = 1,637), which just got published in iScience (Cell Press) More details 👇

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Jérémie Beucler @jeremiebeucler.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

Our paper with @zoepurcell.bsky.social, @luciecharlesneuro.bsky.social, and @wimdeneys.bsky.social has been accepted at Behavior Research Methods! 🥳 Here is the updated preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps... Also, the baserater package is now on CRAN: cran.r-project.org/package=base... #psynomBRM

osf.io

OSF

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Jérémie Beucler @jeremiebeucler.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

1/10 🚨 New preprint: Using Large Language Models to Estimate Belief Strength in Reasoning 🚨 When asked: "There are 995 politicians and 5 nurses. Person 'L' is kind. Is Person 'L' more likely to be a politician or a nurse?", most people will answer "nurse", neglecting the base-rate info. A 🧵👇

Abstract

Accurately quantifying belief strength in heuristics-and-biases tasks is crucial yet methodologically challenging. In this paper, we introduce an automated method leveraging large language models (LLMs) to systematically measure and manipulate belief strength. We specifically tested this method in the widely used “lawyer-engineer” base-rate neglect task, in which stereotypical descriptions (e.g., someone enjoying mathematical puzzles) conflict with normative base-rate information (e.g., engineers represent a very small percentage of the sample). Using this approach, we created an open-access database containing over 100,000 unique items systematically varying in stereotype-driven belief strength. Validation studies demonstrate that our LLM-derived belief strength measure correlates strongly with human typicality ratings and robustly predicts human choices in a base-rate neglect task. Additionally, our method revealed substantial and previously unnoticed variability in stereotype-driven belief strength in popular base-rate items from existing research, underlining the need to control for this in future studies. We further highlight methodological improvements achievable by refining the LLM prompt, as well as ways to enhance cross-cultural validity. The database presented here serves as a powerful resource for researchers, facilitating rigorous, replicable, and theoretically precise experimental designs, as well as enabling advancements in cognitive and computational modeling of reasoning. To support its use, we provide the R package baserater, which allows researchers to access the database to apply or adapt the method to their own research.

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Zoe Purcell 🕵🏻‍♀️ @zoepurcell.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

Great week at the CSBBCS/EPS conference! Speaking alongside two of my academic heroes and mentors was such an honour and a really special moment for me! Huge thanks to CSBBCS and Aimee Surprenant for the invitation and opportunity, and all those who attended our symposium 🙏 @exppsychsoc.bsky.social

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Zoe Purcell 🕵🏻‍♀️ @zoepurcell.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Do AI builders hold different values from AI users? We show that AI builders and men are more utilitarian and less supportive of pro-diversity outputs, highlighting ongoing concerns about workforce diversity and whose values are shaping AI. tinyurl.com/AIcognit

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Wim De Neys @wimdeneys.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

New preprint: “Folk Thinking, Fast and Slow: Intuitive Preference for Deliberation in Humans and Machines” Pop culture often praises intuition (“Blink”, Steve Jobs). But do we really trust it? Across 13 studies, we find a strong intuitive preference for deliberation. tinyurl.com/8r54dmyn (1/6)

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Jim AC Everett @jimaceverett.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

Come hear about moral psychology and AI at 11am today at #SPSP2025! @awad.bsky.social @zoepurcell.bsky.social Anne-Marie Nussberger

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Bence Bago @bencebago.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

New pre-print with @jfbonnefon.bsky.social ! Using Generative AI to Increase Skeptics’ Engagement with Climate Science Available at: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

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Daniel Yon @danieljamesyon.bsky.social · 21/10/2024

📣🧠📣 I’m hiring !! 📣🧠📣 We’re looking for a postdoc to join The Uncertainty Lab at @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social You’ll lead fMRI work on a new project studying how communication with others alters private metacognition of our own minds. cis7.bbk.ac.uk/vacancy/post...

cis7.bbk.ac.uk

Postdoctoral Researcher (2011) - Birkbeck, University of London

Birkbeck

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Wim De Neys @wimdeneys.bsky.social · 18/10/2024

Let's give this a try ;-) go.bsky.app/TBS14hQ

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Zoe Purcell 🕵🏻‍♀️ @zoepurcell.bsky.social · 06/09/2024

📢Our paper on AI-mediated communication (out now!) shows that: 1) People expect others to use AI tools more than themselves 2) People are more accepting of open than secret AI use (at least, explicitly) bit.ly/zpurc 👥 w/ Mengchen Dong, Anne-Marie Nussberger, Nils Kobis, & Maurice Jakesch.

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aejbowen.bsky.social @aejbowen.bsky.social · 10/07/2024

Today at IMBES my favourite talk was by @zoepurcell.bsky.social unpicking the relationships between partisan identity, prior beliefs, and reasoning. Partisan identity doesn’t make reasoning less accurate, but it does make the experience of reasoning subjectively more difficult. #academicsky

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Zoe Purcell 🕵🏻‍♀️ @zoepurcell.bsky.social · 13/06/2024

Was thrilled to present our work at #ICT2024! I was overwhelmed by the support for this new angle and am now riding a new wave of motivation for this project -- thank you all✨ @wimdeneys.bsky.social @kobedesender.bsky.social

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