This fall, the Dept of Ecology and Evolution @ the Univ of Lausanne will be looking for an associate professor in behavioral ecology and cultural evolution. If that sounds like you, please apply. CH is an outstanding place to live and work. ⛰️🚄🔥 wwwfbm.unil.ch/releve/appli...

A Demographic Theory of Similarity-Biased Social Learning. Now out in PNAS, led by the incomparable @apvelilla.bsky.social . We use modeling to explore conditions for the (cultural) evolution of parochial (and anti-parochial) learning biases. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Two time scales of adaptation in human learning rates doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

Two time scales of adaptation in human learning rates

Humans adapt learning rates on both a fast and a slow time scale, and the central orbitofrontal cortex may represent the slow time scale.

doi.org

Learning from the most successful people makes sense? We show that social learning, and especially payoff bias, is bad when choice outcomes are dependent on prior success💰 As such "rich-get-richer" dynamics are everywhere, this shows fundamental boundary conditions for the benefits of SL!

Paul Bergmann@pkbergmann.bsky.social · 4w ago

New preprint with @dominikdeffner.bsky.social: While social learning is broadly adaptive when repeated decision outcomes are independent, we show that when outcomes depend on prior success, most social learning strategies deteriorate performance and increase inequality: doi.org/10.31234/osf... 1/7

🚨 Now out in PNAS In decision research, "talk is cheap." We show it isn't. Using LLMs to analyze participants' free-text explanations of their choices, we find verbal reports are a rich, scalable window into how people actually decide. 🔗 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Led by Kamil Fulawka

Semantic knowledge is key for human innovation and cultural evolution! Our paper (thread in repost), led by fantastic @anilyaman.bsky.social & rising star @ts-brain.bsky.social is out in @pnas.org! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... I will present this work at APS Barcelona (29/5), happy to chat!

Björn Lindström@bjornlindstrom.bsky.social · 10mo ago

How do humans keep inventing tools and technologies that no single person could create alone? Our new preprint, led by @anilyaman.bsky.social & @ts-brain.bsky.social shows that semantic knowledge guides innovation and drives cultural evolution. 🧠📘 arxiv.org/abs/2510.12837

📣 I'm hiring! Two positions (PhD student & Postdoc) in my ERC project Macroevolution of European Literature. Let's study the cultural evolution of literature using massive data 📚📈 📍Frankfurt | Apply by August 15 Details: www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/career/jo... Please repost to help spread the word!

The AfD is predicted to become comfortably the largest party in elections in two German states, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in September....The party is also currently leading in polls of voters at the national level.' 1/4

Scientists fight back against far-right plans to restrict academic freedom in Germany

With the far-right Alternative for Germany leading in polls for national and state elections, institutions are facing up to proposed restrictions on academic freedom.

nature.com

Just in time for the start of next week's Braitenberg 100 symposium, I'm excited to share "Dopamine: From prediction to error," a site I built to better understand where the dopamine RPE hypothesis came from and where it might be headed. efharkin.com/s/dopamine-h... 1/3

The confirmed programme of the lecture series on Foundations and Frontiers of Analytical Sociology is now available online. The lectures will take place between September 2 and December 11, 2026. Please find the full programme, and short bios of the lecturers here: liu.se/en/news-item...

World-leading researchers to headline new lecture series in analytical sociology

Some of the world's most influential researchers in analytical sociology, network science, and computational social science will visit Linköping University this autumn as part of a new international l...

liu.se

The Institute for Analytical Sociology@iasliu.bsky.social · 2mo ago

*Upcoming lecture series and PhD course at IAS* 📚 In Fall 2026, IAS will host an online lecture series featuring many of the scholars whose work has been instrumental in the development of analytical sociology.

New preprint led by @lucasmolleman.bsky.social investigates social information use across the human lifespan. Testing >40,000 participants aged 6-80 in museums in Berlin and Japan. psyarxiv.com/hec96

LLMs are used widely in the behavioral sciences. But we have no good standards for how to do so. We introduce a consensus-based reporting checklist to improve transparency, reproducibility and ethical accountability of LLM-based research in the behavioural sciences. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A reporting checklist for large language models in behavioural science - Nature Human Behaviour

Large language models offer new opportunities for behavioural science, but their rapid evolution poses challenges for research rigour. We introduce a consensus-based reporting checklist to improve tra...

nature.com

Computational models are a key part of science but discovering new ones is hard! DataDIVER discovers concise models from data, which surface new mechanistic ideas and clear predictions for future experiments From Google Deepmind Neuroscience Lab + collaborators www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

🧵 Thread: Does the internet threaten democracy? I argue that it does in my latest piece in Science: doi.org/10.1126/scie... Here's the short version. 1/9 1/10

The architecture of the internet creates risks for democracy

Will democracy survive the internet? Do we need to choose between Facebook’s surveillance capitalism or democracy? Layered lines of evidence can inform questions like these. When considered together, the evidence gives rise to a concerning picture, as summarized in a recent report for the European Commission that I co-led.

doi.org

Chimpanzee culture beyond the conspicuous: Evidence for broad-scale observational social learning in wild individuals🧪 www.cell.com/iscience/ful... Suggests wild chimpanzees use peering to learn a wide variety of skills, thereby highlighting unrecognized cultural potential in everyday behaviors.

"The Cultural Ecology of Social Media" is finally out! This article put together a series of thoughts I had in the past years, and that found a productive theoretical background in the ecological approach to culture developed by Baumard and André. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Two poster presentations from my group at #sbdm2026 in Paris. Magdalena Soukupová on the social learning mechanisms of human goal selection and @pierreledenmat.bsky.social on (lack of) mentalizing in social learning.

Semantic knowledge is key for human innovation and cultural evolution! Our paper (thread in repost), led by fantastic @anilyaman.bsky.social & rising star @ts-brain.bsky.social is out in @pnas.org! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... I will present this work at APS Barcelona (29/5), happy to chat!

Björn Lindström@bjornlindstrom.bsky.social · 10mo ago

How do humans keep inventing tools and technologies that no single person could create alone? Our new preprint, led by @anilyaman.bsky.social & @ts-brain.bsky.social shows that semantic knowledge guides innovation and drives cultural evolution. 🧠📘 arxiv.org/abs/2510.12837

Popularity Feedback Constrains Innovation in Cultural Markets arxiv.org/abs/2602.09997 Come to my talks at CogSci and IC2S2 if you want to hear more about this project!

Awesome results from @fluketc.bsky.social @dudman.bsky.social and team, both for dopamine field and for all that train animals in tasks www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Reward magnitude determines reinforcement learning efficiency

Standard animal learning studies minimize individual reward magnitudes to maximize the repetitions of reinforced behaviors. We investigated how reward magnitude influences initial learning across five...

science.org

Autonomous AI agents are now built into many browsers. A naive user can take an online survey with as little as the click of a button. For behavioral research, which depends heavily on online samples, this is a real problem. (1/7)

🚨 CALL FOR ABSTRACTS 🚨 1/ We invite proposals for posters and symposia for the New Directions in Social Media Research conference at St John’s College, University of Cambridge (7–8 Dec 2026). We especially welcome future-facing research on how the social world is changing in the digital age.

1/ I’m excited to share our new @NatureHumBehav paper “Social Functioning in Autism: A Systematic Review & Meta-analysis” 🧵We synthesized 35 yrs of autism research to ask a fundamental Question: How is social functioning organized, developed, and altered in autism? Free link: rdcu.be/figGl

Social functioning in autism: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Nature Human Behaviour - Impaired social functioning is a core feature of autism spectrum disorders. This systematic review and meta-analysis synthesizes the evidence for this across studies...

rdcu.be

Our new paper with @maxtaylordavies.bsky.social introduces a resource-rational model of Theory of Mind. The model can explain many of the successes and failures of mindreading in human adults and children, and non-human primates. 🧵 royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Factive mindreading reflects the optimal use of limited cognitive resources

Abstract. The capacity to represent the mental states of other individuals, known as ‘mindreading’ or ‘theory of mind’, is key to successful social predict

royalsocietypublishing.org

For an early stage scientist: How to: Write an email Ask for a letter of recommendation Network Get new ideas Handle rejection Talk to reporters m.youtube.com/@NAChristakis

For the Love of Science

Weekly videos about the craft of science. A Human Nature Lab science outreach effort. Later in 2026, we will be expanding to include voices from other labs around the world.

m.youtube.com

Postdoctoral Fellow in Agent-based Human–Earth System Modelling at the Anthropocene Laboratory at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. su.varbi.com/en/what:job/... Deadline: June 15. @brunelcce.bsky.social @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social @durhamdcerc.bsky.social @michael.muthukrishna.com

Postdoctoral Fellow in Agent-based Human–Earth System Modelling

Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC) is a leading international centre in sustainability science at Stockholm University. The Centre advances scientific understanding of the dynamic interactions between

su.varbi.com

📣 The difference between replicable and not replicable is not itself scientifically replicable. 📣 New work with Erkan Buzbas, showing that verdicts such as "X% of results replicated" are based on an inferential machinery that doesn't work. arxiv.org/abs/2604.26268

For a year and a half, @carorowland.bsky.social, @lehersingh.bsky.social, Marisa Casillas, Shanley Allen, and I have been meeting to discuss whether innateness is still a useful concept to think about in studying language acquisition. Here's our take: osf.io/preprints/ps...

🚨 New preprint w/ Valerio Rubino and Peter Dayan: how do people discover and use compositional structure under constraints? osf.io/preprints/ps... A key factor is a simple heuristic that favors reuse of repeated and symmetric fragments across scales, is robust to time pressure, and sped up RTs 🧵👇

Cognitive Modelling Research in the Era of Agentic Large Language Models From equations to fitted models in minutes: how LLMs are changing computational cognitive science and how we should adapt My latest post on Medium medium.com/@stefano.pal...

Cognitive Modelling Research in the Era of Agentic Large Language Models

From equations to fitted models in minutes: what LLMs are changing in computational cognitive science and how we should adapt.

medium.com