@joshtybur

Professor of Psychology and Infectious Disease at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

 Amsterdam, The Netherlands
joshtybur.com
Joined October 2016
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"As predicted, in all 61 societies, people were more willing to have infection-risky contact with people they valued more." Our new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. stevestewartwilliams.com/p/w…
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Joshua M. Tybur retweeted
Natalia Frankowska@n_frankowskaOct 23
Happy to share our new paper in @PNASNews, led by Hongyu Sun! Proud to have been a part of this team effort. Across 61 societies, we investigated whether people are more willing to risk infection from those they value more. Have a read! 🥳
Joshua M. Tybur@joshtyburOct 22
New in @PNASNews: Interpersonal value regulates infection-risky social contact across 61 societies. pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.26… Our team of 150+ scientists set out to answer a simple question: are we more willing to risk catching something from those we value? 🧵 (1/x)

Interpersonal value regulates infection-risky social contact across 61 societies | PNAS

Interpersonal contact is essential for cooperation and care, but it also provides a route for pathogen transmission between individuals. Hence, a k...

pnas.org
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Whose Germs Are Worth the Risk? The Hidden Trade-Off Behind Every Hug and Handshake stevestewartwilliams.com/p/w…

Whose Germs Are Worth the Risk? The Hidden Trade-Off Behind Every Hug and Handshake

Our new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

stevestewartwilliams.com
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Greetings are visible, ritualized signals that communicate relationship and reputational information, and their meaning varies across societies. Greater variation in greetings likely reflects differences in these signaling conventions rather than openness to microbe risks. (10/x)
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In sum: in all 61 societies, people accepted more microbe risk from people they valued more. We suggest that this cross-societal consistency reflects specialized mental processes that trade off infection costs against relationship benefits. (11/x)
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The paper also describes how much contact comfort (left panel, blue) and greeting contact (right panel, red) vary across societies. Greeting contact varied more (~7% of variance attributable to society) than contact comfort (~3%). (9/x)
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They also reported: (1) their comfort with multiple acts that expose them to that person's microbes (e.g., drinking from a water bottle; using a toilet seat after that person) and (2) whether they typically physically touch that person during a greeting. (5/x)
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A society’s historical pathogen prevalence related modestly to contact comfort, but only for high-value targets. Where pathogen prevalence was higher, people were less comfortable with microbe-sharing acts with friends than where it was lower. (7/x)
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This last result sits uneasily with parasite-stress theory, which posits that high disease prevalence should make people especially wary of strangers and outsiders. Hence, pathogen prevalence should have related more to contact comfort with strangers than with friends. (8/x)
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In a 2020 paper, we found that US participants were more comfortable with microbe-sharing acts with those they value more, as measured by a task in which they divided money between themselves and the other person. journals.sagepub.com/doi/ful… (3/x)

Behavioral Immune Trade-Offs: Interpersonal Value Relaxes Social Pathogen Avoidance - Joshua M....

Behavioral-immune-system research has illuminated how people detect and avoid signs of infectious disease. But how do we regulate exposure to pathogens that pro...

journals.sagepub.com
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In the new paper, led by Hongyu Sun, we examined this relation across societies. Participants in 61 societies thought of a close friend, an acquaintance, a stranger, or someone they disliked, and then completed the same money division task with that person. (4/x)
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New in @PNASNews: Interpersonal value regulates infection-risky social contact across 61 societies. pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.26… Our team of 150+ scientists set out to answer a simple question: are we more willing to risk catching something from those we value? 🧵 (1/x)

Interpersonal value regulates infection-risky social contact across 61 societies | PNAS

Interpersonal contact is essential for cooperation and care, but it also provides a route for pathogen transmission between individuals. Hence, a k...

pnas.org
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Germs are transmitted by other people. The best way to avoid these germs is to never touch another person or anything they've touched. But avoiding all contact with those we value - a best friend, a sibling, a lover - is a medicine worse than the disease. (2/x)
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Joshua M. Tybur retweeted
HBES@HumBehEvoSocOct 19
Young children put almost everything in their mouths, at a time when they’re especially vulnerable to infection. A new study mapping 39 germ-related behaviors from birth to age 10 finds key shifts around ages 2 and 4, and asks whether early exploration might be worth the risk. hbes.com/why-and-when-are-yo…

Why (And When) Are Young Children So Bad at Avoiding Germs? - HBES

– by Serkan Özçakan, Florian van Leeuwen, and Joshua M. Tybur Young children often behave as if they are indifferent to infection. They eat food from the floor, put dirty fingers in their mouths, and...

hbes.com
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Robert Kurzban ✡️
@rkurzbanSep 30
My new book, ALL THE FEELS, is out! Each feeling gets a chapter: What is it for, what is it measuring, and what is it motivating? Paperback and Kindle versions now available: amazon.com/dp/B0H6DML559 (Repost to experience Feel #37: Pleasure from Helping.)
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Serkan@OzcakanSerkanAug 26
New paper with @joshtybur and @florianvl, out in Evolution & Human Behavior: we mapped when kids actually start avoiding pathogens, month by month, from birth to age 10.
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Daractenus
@DaractenusApr 13
I believe it is worth revisiting just how utterly tragic EU accession has been for some of the most recent member states to join, and, in doing so, explain why all local anti-EU actors, for all the backing of Donald Trump and Russia, will always ultimately end up defeated. 🧵
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My three-year-old son's screen time easily surpasses an hour per day. And it's wonderful. Gives me time to cook and clean. Helps his English development. Our curated screen options teach him about cool things like why it rains and why people get sick.
Oliver Scott Curry@Oliver_S_CurryMar 30
The evidence for these recommendations is largely correlational (not causal), and the correlations are routinely very small (r ≈ 0.10). So the intervention is likely to have no effect whatsoever. It's just middle-class meddling. @BBCNews bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1d9…

Screen time for under-fives should be limited to one hour a day, parents told

New government guidance also suggests children under-two should not be watching screens alone.

bbc.co.uk
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Daniel Sznycer@dsznycerMar 24
Is shame maladaptive? A culturally constructed emotion? An adaptation that is part of human nature? And how would one know? 🔴 Cross-cultural evidence that shame is a defense against reputational damage pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.25…
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