Vlad Chituc
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vladchituc.bsky.social
Vlad Chituc
@vladchituc.bsky.social
Cognitive scientist studying how morality, happiness, and other subjective magnitudes can be quantified.

Postdoctoral fellow at Yale University

https://www.vladchituc.com/
Pinned
Hi friends! I'm finally feeling well enough to share some news that I've been very excited about: earlier this week, my kidney was removed through a small cut in my stomach, tucked into a box, flown down to johns hopkins, and implanted into a stranger where its working great
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
There’s this one postdoc open to “political science or allied disciplines“, implying the existence of “enemy disciplines“.
November 14, 2025 at 5:55 PM
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I hate that AI has made me approach cute animal videos with an air of suspicion. I resent having to harden my heart to the possibility of an unlikely friendship between a very large dog and a very small one
November 14, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
How do we succeed at self-control? In a new paper in @pnas.org with James Wilson, David Kalkstein, and Melissa Ferguson, we use mouse-tracking of ~47,000 decisions of long-term over short-term to show that 'willpower' is too narrow a conception of self-control www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
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...
www.pnas.org
November 12, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
Our paper @sarabogels.bsky.social covering our pre-registered multi-year research is now finally out in Cognition. We show that in conversations people reduce their multimodal signals non-linearly; the steeper this non-linear drop-off the more communicative success.

www.wimpouw.com/files/Bogels...
November 11, 2025 at 4:49 PM
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Good news everyone: #Duke Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy (SSNAP) are back!! We are now accepting applications for SSNAP 2026, which will take place from May 26 to June 6, 2026. #neuroscience #philosophy #brain Please spread the word! ssnap.submittable.com/submit
SSNAP Applications Manager
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ssnap.submittable.com
November 7, 2025 at 11:58 AM
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dissonance theorists reeling from successful multilab replication of dissonance effect
November 6, 2025 at 4:22 PM
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Are humans really the only rational animals? Our NEW PAPER 🎉 out in @science.org suggests otherwise! In a large collaboration led with my joint first author @hanna-schleihauf.bsky.social, we show that “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs” 🧵
Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs
The selective revision of beliefs in light of new evidence has been considered one of the hallmarks of human-level rationality. However, tests of this ability in other species are lacking. We examined...
www.science.org
October 30, 2025 at 6:23 PM
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Tired: moral dumbfounding
Wired: *moral* dumbfounding
October 31, 2025 at 12:08 AM
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
What's your preferred end of the universe scenario? Take your pick from this segment featuring the last book of our series on science and death -- this week on the @science.org podcast w/ Angela Saini & @astrokatie.com

www.science.org/content/podc...
October 30, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
Our experience of time is powerfully shaped by boundaries between events (i.e., going from one meeting to the next). But what about time *within an event*? In new work, we find reliable distortions of time based on internal event structure (e.g., beginnings, middles, and ends)! tinyurl.com/n8mn2sn7
Unfolding event structure distorts subjective time
Our experience of time is often distorted in striking ways. Although prior work has shown that boundaries between events can shape temporal perception…
www.sciencedirect.com
October 29, 2025 at 2:40 PM
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October 27, 2025 at 6:17 PM
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Important update from two months into my “experiment” (lol) assigning college juniors and seniors to read whole physical books and then having a seminar where they use the physical book and physical notebooks and their ideas and questions to fill three hours of class time:

It rules
October 25, 2025 at 12:33 PM
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
In case you don't know already, the journal Open Mind has a Bluesky account that automatically posts new papers:
@openmindjournal.bsky.social

The journal is diamond open access (free to read, free to publish) thanks to the support of MIT Press, Harvard Library, & MIT Library.
October 24, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
thrilled to share our preprint on false memories in naturalistic recollection!

Distinct paths to false memory revealed in hundreds of narrative recalls

paper: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

w/ phoebehc.bsky.social (co-first) Vy A. Vo @davidpoeppel.bsky.social @toddgureckis.bsky.social

thread below 👇
October 16, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
In between-Ss experiments: without a reference point, people say playing a prank is bad but give the same ‘bad’ rating to committing a war crime.

Not in within-Ss experiments or when giving reference points for judgments.

From @vladchituc.bsky.social

www.crockettlab.org/s/1-s20-S001...

#psych
October 14, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
perfect bluesky reply thank you
Would you prefer the white nationalism replies?
October 13, 2025 at 4:02 PM
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This is a big one! A 4-year writing project over many timezones, arguing for a reimagining of the influential "core knowledge" thesis.

Led by @daweibai.bsky.social, we argue that much of our innate knowledge of the world is not "conceptual" in nature, but rather wired into perceptual processing. 👇
October 9, 2025 at 4:31 PM
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Happy to share that our BBS target article has been accepted: “Core Perception”: Re-imagining Precocious Reasoning as Sophisticated Perceiving
With Alon Hafri, @veroniqueizard.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & Brent Strickland
Read it here: doi.org/10.1017/S014...
A short thread [1/5]👇
October 9, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
Our paper in annual review of dev psych is out! It's a big-picture look at the development of social cognition from a computational perspective: compdevlab.yale.edu/docs/2025/an...
compdevlab.yale.edu
October 9, 2025 at 3:21 PM
I spent like 5 minutes arguing with a philosopher this summer at SPP because I said it was crazy that you see perceptual nonlinearities in moral judgment since morality doesn’t have any physical correlate for a sensory receptor to transduce, and he said “yes it does.” Philosophers rule lmao
smh @vladchituc.bsky.social endorses moral subjectivism. disappointing
October 9, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
CHATGPT: I understand where you're coming from. You worked really hard to get here, and now it's time to enjoy the fruit of your labors.

ISILDUR: So I should keep it? Elrond says I shouldn't

CHATGPT: The ring is precious. Sometimes friends don't have your best interests at heart.

ISILDUR: true
October 6, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Vlad Chituc
UNC is hiring in Quantitative Psychology! Assistant Professor (tenure-track). Please share widely! Find details here: unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...
a logo for the carolina tar heels with a ram head
ALT: a logo for the carolina tar heels with a ram head
media.tenor.com
October 3, 2025 at 7:34 PM