Do newborn boys really tend to prefer a ‘mechanical object’ to a human face? Failure to assess the confounding effect of an exceptionally high caesarean section rate

Biological Sex is a social construct

I recently tweeted, as an aside, that biological sex is a social construct, and the backlash and attacks were swift, incredulous and heavily reliant upon very basic biology. There is a common perce…

Sex Differences in Personality are Large and Important - Marginal REVOLUTION

Men and women are different. A seemingly obvious fact to most of humanity but a long-time subject of controversy within psychology. New large-scale results using better empirical methods are resolving the debate, however, in favor of the person in the street. The basic story is that at the broadest level (OCEAN) differences are relatively small […]

Taking a look at looksmaxxing — and what parents should know

The trend among boys and young men of optimizing their physical appearance includes dangerous practices. Experts offer advice on how to talk to their sons about body image and healthy behaviors.

Gender Obliviousness in Autism:

Accuracy Concerns Are Not Identity Concerns

Our Babies Aren’t 'Bad'—Understanding Autism in Black Children

Too many Black children—especially our Black boys—are being labeled as “bad." Let's get understanding of autism in Black children.

Re:collection | Home

If the yardsticks of maturity are an understanding, respect and recognition of history, then we are still in utero.

Survival of the Prettiest (Published 2017)

Darwin’s theory of aesthetics may be the sexiest, most dangerous idea in evolution.

Crying Newborn Has No Idea How Much Worse It Gets

MEDFORD, OR—Saying the infant really ought to save her tears for the real shit that’s headed her way, sources familiar with crying newborn Sophia Whitfield confirmed Monday that she had no idea how much worse it was going to get. Observers told reporters the shrieking baby was clearly oblivious to the fact that any distress she experienced […]

Can names shape facial appearance?

Our given name is a social tag associated with us early in life. This study investigates the possibility of a self-fulfilling prophecy effect wherein individuals’ facial appearance develops over time to resemble the social stereotypes associated with given names. Leveraging the face–name matching effect, which demonstrates an ability to match adults’ names to their faces, we hypothesized that individuals would resemble their social stereotype (name) in adulthood but not in childhood. To test this hypothesis, children and adults were asked to match faces and names of children and adults. Results revealed that both adults and children correctly matched adult faces to their corresponding names, significantly above the chance level. However, when it came to children’s faces and names, participants were unable to make accurate associations. Complementing our lab studies, we employed a machine-learning framework to process facial image data and found that facial representations of adults with the same name were more similar to each other than to those of adults with different names. This pattern of similarity was absent among the facial representations of children, thereby strengthening the case for the self-fulfilling prophecy hypothesis. Furthermore, the face–name matching effect was evident for adults but not for children’s faces that were artificially aged to resemble adults, supporting the conjectured role of social development in this effect. Together, these findings suggest that even our facial appearance can be influenced by a social factor such as our name, confirming the potent impact of social expectations.

Links between the discovery of primates and anatomical comparisons with humans, the chain of being, our place in nature, and racism

- For more than a millennium humans knew more about the internal anatomy of a single monkey species than about that of their own bodies, because Galen used monkeys to infer human anatomy, in line wit...

If You Want to Raise Birthrates, You Need to Fix Men

New evidence that patriarchy plus economic growth leads to declining birthrates

Jon Barron on Twitter / X

This idea that intelligence is solely a function of what you've observed since birth and not also a function of the 500 million years of evolution that preceded your birth is surprisingly sticky despite being demonstrably untrue. https://t.co/m2z5cN8Byb— Jon Barron (@jon_barron) January 28, 2026

Moving Car-Free as a Parent

Observations & reflections on moving around with an infant–photo diaries included.

Advancing the Understanding of Phenotypic Mimicry in Men’s Conspicuous Consumption

Two studies advance the understanding of phenotypic mimicry in consumer products. Product features mimicking more prominent male secondary sexual characteristics are associated with men’s behavioral strategies which are higher in mating effort and lower in paternal investment in offspring, in parallel with reproductive strategies across species and within the human population. The first study demonstrated a continuous relationship between the sizes of luxury brand logos and perceptions of the owners’ life histories. Two partial replications reproduced Study 1 results. Study 2 demonstrated that a manipulation of coloration, another fundamental dimension of variation in secondary sex characteristics, generates a similar pattern of results. In both studies, men owning shirts with more prominent sensory characteristics were believed to use authority and intimidation as strategies for advancing social status, whereas men owning shirts with less showy characteristics were believed to demonstrate useful abilities and foster cooperative alliances. Participants also recognized the strategic use of luxury display properties across social contexts.