Brandon Woo
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brandonwoo.bsky.social
Brandon Woo
@brandonwoo.bsky.social
1.5K followers 460 following 52 posts
Cognitive scientist studying the development of the social mind. Assistant professor at UCSB. 🇨🇦🏳️‍🌈 (he/him)

bmwoo.github.io
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Reposted by Brandon Woo
mcxfrank.bsky.social
Very excited to share the first empirical paper from LEVANTE: we describe the LEVANTE core tasks, a set of nine open source tasks for measuring learning and development in kids ages 5-12 years.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

🧵
title line screenshots from the nine tasks
December 18, 2025 at 10:20 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
perfors.net
I have been emailing with a student offering advice about navigating the post-PhD job market and it struck me that the advice was general enough that more people might benefit. So here you go!

tl;dr: Figure out what you want your contribution to be, and make choices that can make that happen.
Q: When I think about what will set me up for a university job, what should I evaluate potential post-docs based on? Should I consider things like the institution and where it's based? Is it about the subject matter of the project and the kind of papers I'll publish and the skill set I'll use? Or is it more about the connections that I'll have the opportunity to make and going to conferences and that kind of thing? A: I think the main things are: (a) the kinds of papers you'll end up being able to publish; (b) the skill set you'll acquire; and (c) the connections you can make. But all of these are contextually dependent -- really what matters is that they pave the path that you want to take and support your narrative of what you do and how you fit (because once a candidate passes a certain bar for quality, hiring decisions are usually made on the basis of skills and fit). To illustrate: if you want to be the kind of researcher whose contribution to your school/field (and narrative) is that you have certain skills, or a certain area of expertise, then you want your postdoc to be one that develops those skills/expertise, where you write papers that showcases that you have those skills/expertise, and where you create connections with people who care about those skills/expertise. That's why it's so important to figure out your narrative and what you want to do: it all starts from there. So the question is not: how do I set myself up to get a university job? It is what kind of university job do I want, and how do I set myself up for that? Some people are like, I don't care, I just want any job! But people don't want to hire people who have no "why" for what they do beyond just getting money -- people hire people who have a contribution to make. So figure out what contribution you want to make, and then choose a postdoc that will best set you up to be able to make it. (And you can always change direction, people do that often, but you want to start with a direction).
December 18, 2025 at 12:32 AM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
roxanegay.bsky.social
Each semester I go in my classroom and I try to figure out what we would use to block the doors, if it would be safe to crawl out the windows, where we could hide if there was a mass shooter in campus. It’s such an indictment of this country how we have normalized these preventable tragedies.
December 13, 2025 at 11:34 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
alisongopnik.bsky.social
New paper with Junyi Chu, Tomer Ullman et al showing that kids think more difficulty is more fun!
Fun isn't easy: Children selectively manipulate task difficulty when “playing for fun” versus “playing to win”. psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-...
APA PsycNet
psycnet.apa.org
December 14, 2025 at 2:37 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
mjcrockett.bsky.social
New preprint: Empathy, Thick and Thin
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

It is perhaps foolhardy to attempt to say something new about a topic as widely studied as empathy. I tried anyway! 1/
Abstract When we empathize with someone going through something, we often draw on our past experiences with the someone and the something. These kinds of experiences ground "thick empathy", a form of empathy that has been largely overlooked in the psychology and neuroscience literature. Consider how a mother, empathizing with her daughter about to give birth, can draw on her own experience of childbirth, and her relationship with her daughter, to deeply grasp what her daughter is going through in a way that others who lack those experiences cannot. I argue that thick empathy deserves more empirical attention because it is associated with well-being and helps us build networks of effective mutual social support. My analysis highlights novel risks and dilemmas posed by "empathy machines" that promise to enhance or even replace human empathy and are becoming increasingly popular as a potential solution to widespread loneliness. Even when empathy machines provide value to individuals, their widespread adoption risks imposing collective emotional and epistemic costs that ultimately make it harder for us to empathize well. Keywords: empathy, understanding, experience, thick description, ethnography, phenomenal knowledge, interpersonal knowledge, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, chatbots
December 11, 2025 at 8:50 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
hyogweon.bsky.social
Officially out! In this review, Aaron Chuey and I discuss how existing work on ToM mostly focused on a single individual’s mental states (e.g., what Sally thinks). Extending ToM, we argue for ToMS—an understanding of how multiple individuals communicate and influence each others’ minds. t.ly/u4rtb
Theory of Minds: Early Understanding of Interacting Minds
The idea that we understand others’ actions in terms of their underlying mental states has shaped decades of developmental research on social cognition. Existing work, however, has primarily focused o...
www.annualreviews.org
December 10, 2025 at 11:30 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
mekline.bsky.social
This is a fundraising post!

An anonymous donor is matching contributions to Children Helping Science up to 100K through the end of the year - if it's in your giving budget, please consider supporting open science infrastructure!

giving.mit.edu/search/node/...

Details below...
Fund Search Results | Giving to MIT
giving.mit.edu
December 8, 2025 at 3:50 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
wywywa.bsky.social
Canada is announcing program details for science talent recruitment from abroad. The first one across my desk this morning is support for 600 doctoral students and 400 post-docs. Research investment is greatly appreciated, especially trainees and early career. www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/research_tra...
NSERC - Canada Impact+ Research Training Awards: Q&A
NSERC - Canada Impact+ Research Training Awards: Q&A
www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca
December 9, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
jsphillips.bsky.social
🚨Super excited that Dartmouth's Society of Fellows is hiring a postdoc with the Program in Cognitive Science 🚨 Specialization in computational and empirical approaches to artificial and natural intelligence, including perception, representation, and complex planning: apply.interfolio.com/176946
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
apply.interfolio.com
December 4, 2025 at 8:40 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
lkfazio.bsky.social
Just finished my last class of the semester🎉Reminded of how much I love teaching this academic writing class for grad students. We focus on improving our writing but also reducing anxiety and becoming a more consistent & productive writer

Some of the students favorite writing tips/learnings below:
December 5, 2025 at 5:33 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
marthaalibali.bsky.social
New job opening in social psychology at UW-Madison! at the associate prof level.
jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/associa...
Associate Professor - Madison, Wisconsin, United States
Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:FacultyEmployment Type:Regula...
jobs.wisc.edu
December 4, 2025 at 4:54 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
chriskrupenye.bsky.social
🚨Job Alert plz RT!

Johns Hopkins Psych & Brain Sciences is looking for a new colleague using behavioral or computational approaches to study cognition!

We are excited about many areas of (esp higher) cognition in human adults, children, or nonhuman animals

Open-rank

apply.interfolio.com/178146
December 2, 2025 at 2:54 AM
brandonwoo.bsky.social
My first time taking my cat to work:
A cat sitting in front of a notebook A cat at a glass board
December 1, 2025 at 10:15 PM
brandonwoo.bsky.social
The weirdest recommendation letter question that I’ve seen so far: “If you fast forwarded 10-20 years, who would this student most closely resemble?”
A question asking: If you fast forwarded 10-20 years, who would this student most closely resemble? There are pictures of people who have been influential, in various domains (e.g., tech, politics, etc.).
November 26, 2025 at 10:28 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
shariliu.bsky.social
New perspective paper (w/ @sedaakbiyik.bsky.social, Joseph Outa, & @minjaek.bsky.social ) in @natrevpsychol.nature.com ⚽💭🧠👶 : www.nature.com/articles/s44...
How physical information is used to make sense of the psychological world - Nature Reviews Psychology
Reasoning about minds and reasoning about physical objects are governed by two distinct systems. In this Perspective, Liu et al. review research from developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscienc...
www.nature.com
November 24, 2025 at 11:14 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
jfkominsky.bsky.social
Looking for a funded Ph.D. in #CogSci in an interdisciplinary, research-first program? Apply to CEU!

cognitivescience.ceu.edu/admission

Deadline February 4, 2026. Please share with any interested students!

#PsychSciSky #DevPsych #CogPsych
Applications Are Now Open for Academic Year 2026-2027 | Department of Cognitive Science
cognitivescience.ceu.edu
November 24, 2025 at 10:48 AM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
socphilpsych.bsky.social
🚨🚨🚨
Our 52nd Annual Meeting will be held from June 18–20, 2026 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, with a pre-conference on Mental Control and Agency held at JHU on June 17
🚨🚨🚨

We are currently inviting submissions of papers (talks and posters)!
November 22, 2025 at 11:04 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
camerontellis.bsky.social
We are recruiting a lab manager/research assistant to start in early 2026! The successful candidate will conduct awake infant fMRI, meet cute babies, and join a fun team!

More details (e.g. responsibilities): soc.stanford.edu/people/#join...

Apply here: careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/social-...
People – Scaffolding of Cognition Team
soc.stanford.edu
November 21, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
miriamposner.com
WE JUST KEEP WINNING. (UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program RESTORED!!!!)
On official UC letterhead: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA James B. Milliken President Office of the President 1111 Franklin Street Oakland, CA 94607 universityofcalifornia.edu CAMPUSES Berkeley Davis Irvine UCLA Merced Riverside San Diego San Francisco Santa Barbara Santa Cruz MEDICAL CENTERS Davis Irvine UCLA San Diego San Francisco NATIONAL LABORATORIES Lawrence Berkeley Lawrence Livermore Los Alamos DIVISION OF AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCES November 18, 2025 Dear Chancellors: I'm writing with regard to the President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (PPFP) and the program's associated faculty hiring incentive. As you know, for more than 40 years, PPFP has provided postdoctoral research fellowships, professional development, and faculty mentoring to scholars in all fields whose research, teaching, and service advance the academic and research missions of the University of California. Since 2003, UC campuses that hire current and former PPFP fellows into ladder-rank positions have been eligible for a hiring incentive funded by the University that provides support for newly hired fellows for five years. Since the creation of the incentive, more than $162 million has been invested by the University to support PPFP faculty hires. This commitment has enabled our campuses to successfully recruit and retain outstanding faculty across a range of disciplines. Given the myriad challenges currently facing UC - including disruptions to billions of dollars in annual federal support, as well as uncertainty around the state budget- reasonable questions were raised in recent months about whether the University could maintain the commitment to current levels of incentive funding. After considering a recommendation to sunset the incentive program due to these significant fiscal constraints, I consulted with all of you as well as faculty and campus academic administrators and systemwide Academic Senate leadership. [continued on next image] After learning more about the history and success of the program and weighing the thoughtful perspectives that have been shared, I have concluded that barring extraordinary financial setbacks, the PPFP faculty hiring incentive program will continue while the University continues to assess the program's structure as well as its long-term financial sustainability. As a result of our continuing consultation and review, there may be consideration of some changes to elements of the program including the total number of incentives supported, a number that has fluctuated significantly over the years, and how the awards are distributed among campuses. In the meantime, the University will continue to fund the PPFP faculty hiring incentive program and campuses may continue to take advantage of these incentives. We will have an opportunity to discuss any potential changes prior to adoption. As we look to the future, I will continue to engage with faculty leaders, program stakeholders, and UC community members about this important program. I especially appreciate the thoughtful perspectives shared in recent weeks by Academic Council Chair Palazoglu and Vice Chair Scott, the Council of Graduate Deans, UC faculty members, and you as our campus leaders. Sincerely, James B. Milliken President
November 18, 2025 at 10:34 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
npr.org
The Trump administration demanded UCLA pay $1.2 billion to restore frozen research funding and ensure eligibility for future funding after accusing the school of allowing antisemitism on campus. n.pr/4hYa0pY
Judge indefinitely bars Trump from fining UC over alleged discrimination
The Trump administration demanded UCLA pay $1.2 billion to restore frozen research funding and ensure eligibility for future funding after accusing the school of allowing antisemitism on campus.
n.pr
November 15, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
sydneylevine.bsky.social
I'm recruiting a grad student! My lab at NYU (psych dept) studies the computational basis of moral cognition and aims to build AI systems that are aligned with human values. Now admitting a PhD student for Fall 2026. Apps due 12/1. sites.google.com/corp/site/sy...
Sydney Levine - Open Positions
Graduate Students (PhD program) I will be accepting PhD students through the NYU psychology department for the current application cycle (for admission in Fall 2026). My lab is joint between the Co...
sites.google.com
November 14, 2025 at 2:18 AM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
ashleyjthomas.bsky.social
Interested in understanding how young humans think about social relationships? I am reading PhD applications this year! **Please note**, that Harvard now requires the GRE. More information here: www.ashleyjthomas.com/workwithme
WANT TO WORK WITH ME? | Mysite
www.ashleyjthomas.com
October 6, 2025 at 8:55 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
tessahill.bsky.social
A devastating set of decisions on the part of UC leadership to withdraw support from our nationally recognized postdoc program that prioritizes research excellence combined with addressing our university public service mission. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...
UC to Stop Funding Systemwide Postdoc Program
Established in 1984 to encourage women and minority Ph.D.s to pursue academia, the program has attracted right-wing criticism for prioritizing diverse candidates.
www.insidehighered.com
November 5, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
tomerullman.bsky.social
It’s grad school application season, and I wanted to give some public advice.

Caveats:
-*-*-*-*


> These are my opinions, based on my experiences, they are not secret tricks or guarantees

> They are general guidelines, not meant to cover a host of idiosyncrasies and special cases
November 6, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Reposted by Brandon Woo
levelsof.bsky.social
Now out in an issue! ~~ www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
November 6, 2025 at 2:29 PM