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Simon Columbus

@simoncolumbus.bsky.social

Lecturer, University of St Andrews | I work on cooperation, norms, institutions, & personality | http://simoncolumbus.com

575 Posts1012 Follower 446 Folgt

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 4d ago

Fascinating that people continue to defend Arday, incl Zach Polanski. Arday has already corrected two papers, including one where he removed or altered quotes from supposed participants which had word-for-word overlap with another paper. How's that for plagiarism? retractionwatch.com/2026/07/27/c...

Exclusive: News outlet killed story on plagiarism allegations after Cambridge prof hired law firm

Jason Arday In September 2025, Times Higher Education had a bombshell story in the works: A star sociology professor at the University of Cambridge had allegedly plagiarized parts of his Ph.D. thes…

retractionwatch.com

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 3w ago

My department is hiring a lecturer (i.e. assistant prof) in developmental psychology.

School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St. Andrews@standrewspsyneuro.bsky.social · 3w ago

We are advertising for www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DSG131/l...

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 3w ago

Dear editors: sending me manuscripts missing basic information is the best way to make me think twice about reviewing for your journal. Second time in as many months that I have to return a manuscript because I simply cannot figure out the design of the experiment.

Will Lowe @conjugateprior.org · 4w ago

Whether or not radicalization is a good replacement, the political science concept of polarization is normatively dubious, descriptively thin and causally... eh, let's not even go there. I know you just got a big grant to study it but I'm sure they'll let you spend the money on something more useful

Petter Törnberg@pettertornberg.com · 4w ago

‘Polarization’ has become the master concept for diagnosing our current democratic crisis. But this is not polarization. It is the radicalization of the political right. By misdiagnosing it, we risk becoming complicit in the crisis. 🧵 Just out in Perspectives on Politics doi.org/10.1017/S153...

Julia Stern @juliastern.bsky.social · last mo.

I'm hiring! I am currently establishing my new Research Group for Personality Psychology at Ulm University and am looking for a motivated researcher to join the team starting October 1, 2026 (or by arrangement). 🧵👇 (1/4) 🔗 Full description and details: stellenangebote.uni-ulm.de/jobposting/a...

Akademische/r Beschäftigte/n (m/w/d) - Abt. Persönlichkeitspsychologie - Referenz-Nr. 26091

stellenangebote.uni-ulm.de

Eva Zschirnt @evazschirnt.bsky.social · last mo.

For the 4th time, @bramlancee.bsky.social & I, in collaboration with AMCIS, organise a workshop on survey experiments on 5 Oct. 2026. CfP below ⬇️. We particularly welcome papers/research designs from early career researchers. Deadline for submissions: 23 Aug. @aissr.bsky.social

Call for Papers/Research Designs - Workshop on Survey Experiments in the Social Sciences on 5 October 2026 at the University of Amsterdam

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 2mo ago

As an adult, can I sign up voluntarily?

Politics UK@politicsuk.com · 2mo ago

🚨 NEW: Keir Starmer will introduce nightly social media curfews for 16 and 17-year-olds as part of the Government's social media ban [@thetimes]

Angelika Stefan @ephemeralidea.bsky.social · 2mo ago

🧑🏻‍🏫 Do you teach statistics? 📊 Have you ever taught ANOVA? ⏰ Do you have 5 minutes to spare? Then participate in our survey and help us improve statistics education! run.pavlovia.org/pavlovia/sur... #stats #edusky #mathsky #scisky #academicsky

Pavlovia Survey 2025.2.0

run.pavlovia.org

Qinyu Xiao @qinyuxiao.bsky.social · 2mo ago

New working paper with @robertboehm.bsky.social: it is an early version likely needing significant revision, so feedback is very much appreciated. We review multi-level games: a family of economic games that capture tensions within and between groups simultaneously. (1/5) doi.org/10.31234/osf...

OSF

doi.org

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Today's Cooperation Colloquium!

Simon Columbus@simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 3mo ago

A special Cooperation Colloquium this week: Shuxian Jin @shuxianjin.bsky.social The cultural logic of honor in cooperation and punishment across societies Date: Friday, May 22 Time: 15:00 UTC+2 (Vienna) / 9am ET (NYC) Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

Abstract: In social interactions, individuals frequently face trade-offs between personal and collective interests, ranging from zero-sum situations — where personal gain may come at others’ expense — to positive-sum situations, where joint efforts lead to mutual benefit. Punishment can sustain cooperation by deterring free riding (prosocial punishment), yet it can also provoke retaliation; when directed at cooperators (antisocial punishment), punishment may even undermine collective welfare. In this talk, I will present two cross-cultural studies examining the role of the cultural logic of honor in shaping how individuals navigate these tensions and adopt particular punishment strategies in situations involving conflicts of interest. Drawing on a 13-society online behavioral experiment (n = 3,371), we found that perceived societal norms of honor were associated with greater competition in zero-sum situations, but also greater coordinative efforts in positive-sum situations at both individual and societal levels. In a multi-lab experiment conducted in Egypt (n = 266), South Korea (n = 212), and the UK (n = 192), we found that honor values and norms were not directly associated with engagement in prosocial or antisocial punishment. However, when individuals experience unfair treatment, honor values and norms intensified antisocial retaliatory responses. Together, these studies show how honor, as a relatively understudied cultural construct, helps explain variation in cooperation and punishment across societies.

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 3mo ago

If you are an early-career researcher (PhD student, postdoc, or similar) in personality psychology, consider signing up for the EAPP Mentoring Programme: forms.gle/zH8DmY57eLQ6... Consider forwarding this call to early-career researcher who may be less likely to be aware of this programme.

Alex Stewart @alexanderjstewart.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I think a big problem has been a kind of confused circular logic where people (especially researchers, but not political scientists) go “Things seem bad and polarized. What is polarization? It’s a bimodal opinion distribution. Anything that produces a bimodal opinion distribution is bad!”

Lizzie Bradford @lizziebradford.bsky.social · 3mo ago

💫Job Alert 💫 We are hiring a Lab Manager in the ABC Lab @standrewspsyneuro.bsky.social! Help support exciting developmental research with children and families ☺️ Closing Date: 18th May 2026 Full Details: www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

Laboratory Manager - AD2886

Laboratory Manager - AD2886, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, Salary: £38,784 - £46,049 per annum, Start: date to be confirmed , <p><span>The School of Psychology & Neuroscience at the Un...

vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk

Annika Brockschmidt @ardenthistorian.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Just saw that Die Zeit did a big interview with Carlson as well. Maddening. Repeat after me: you. Don’t. Platform. Fascists.

Zeit Screenshot: © Ethan Noah Roy für DIE ZEIT
Z+ Tucker Carlson
»Ich weiß, er ist wütend auf mich«
Lange stand kaum jemand Donald Trump näher als der rechte Influencer Tucker Carlson. Warum bricht er jetzt mit ihm? Ein Gespräch über Krieg, Antisemitismus und Friedrich Merz
Interview: Paul Middelhoff und Juliane Schäuble

Parker Molloy@parkermolloy.com · 3mo ago

I have faith that someday journalists will finally get to the bottom of this mystery

2019 Atlantic article: What Does Tucker Carlson Believe

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 3mo ago

This week's Cooperation Colloquium: Sebastian Hafenbrädl @shafenbraedl.bsky.social Social rewards protection theory: Why people morally derogate prosocial actors for undisclosed personal benefits Date: May 8 Time: 15:00 UTC+2 (Vienna) / 9am ET (NYC) Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

Abstract: Prosocial behavior is common and often socially rewarded (e.g., via liking, status, and trust). Yet prior research has found that if actors themselves also benefit from their prosocial behavior, then they are morally derogated: They are evaluated as worse than purely selfish actors. This tainted-altruism effect has been explained by the use of different counterfactuals for the evaluation of prosocial and selfish actors. Here I propose social rewards protection theory, which explains why evaluators use these different counterfactuals in the first place: Social rewards are treated as being reserved for costly prosocial actions. Claiming such rewards without incurring costs seems like cheating and thus deserves moral derogation. Accordingly, being transparent about the action’s costs and benefits prevents such derogation. I conducted six experiments (five preregistered) with Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers in the United States and lab participants in Spain (total N = 4,732 adults). The findings provide support for the proposed functional explanation of tainted altruism, which also sheds light on related phenomena, such as overhead aversion and hypocrisy.

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 3mo ago

This looks like a paper every personality psychologist should have an opinion on. I've often defended broad factor models to cognitive scientists and economists who look at them askance because they are genuinely useful, but it's hard to argue that personality traits are common causes as modelled.

Michael P. Grosz@mp-grosz.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I'm excited to share that my paper "Why the Big Five Personality Traits Are Composites, Not Common Causes" has just been accepted at Psychological Review. The preprint is available on PsyArXiv: osf.io/preprints/ps...

A table illustrating the benefits of adopting a composite-formative model and of focusing on narrower personality traits

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This week's Cooperation Colloquium: Aron Szekely @aronszekely.bsky.social Measuring social norms with surveys Date: Friday, April 24 Time: 15:00 UTC+2 (Vienna) / 9am ET (NYC) Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

Abstract: Accurately measuring social norms is crucial both for explaining cooperation and prosociality and for designing effective policy measures that support these. While established laboratory-based approaches represent “gold-standard” approaches, their practicality and widespread use are limited by the restrictions involved in their implementation. In contrast, non-incentivised survey measures are simple and widely used yet remain unvalidated, leaving it unclear what they truly capture. We address this gap by validating a popular set of non-incentivised measures against incentivised benchmarks across two diverse contexts—one WEIRD (Italy) and one non-WEIRD (India)—using student and general-population samples (N≈1,400) in laboratory and lab-in-the-field environments. Every measure is validated in seven settings representing a range of interaction domains including cooperation (e.g. Public Goods Game, Dictator Game). From these results, we assemble a menu of validated survey measures, highlighting their respective strengths and offering guidance for best practice across different research contexts and constraints.

Caspar van Lissa 🟥@cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Shape the future of social science as a PhD student of machine learning-informed theory construction, based on patterns in high-frequency longitudinal data! You will be part of vibrant communities like the INSIGHT Lab, Theory Methods Society, and Tilburg Experience Sampling Center tiu.nu/23721

Job opening: PhD candidate in Machine Learning-Informed Formal Theory Construction (23721)

tiu.nu

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This strikes me as a terrible idea. The US government is not trying to enhance scientific integrity, no matter how they are framing their attacks on science. Treating their concerns and efforts as legitimate undermines genuine reform efforts.

Katy Milkman@katymilkman.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I'm co-organizing a free, 2-day Zoom workshop from the NAS & hope you'll consider attending! 📅 April 23-24: Discuss how we can enhance scientific integrity in the social and behavioral sciences REGISTER: www.nationalacademies.org/projects/DBA... PROGRAM: www.nationalacademies.org/cdn/material...

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Today's Cooperation Colloquium with @saptarshi.bsky.social is coming up in a few hours

Simon Columbus@simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This week's Cooperation Colloquium: Saptarshi Pal (Harvard) From simultaneous to leader-follower play in direct reciprocity Date: April 10 Time: 15:00 UTC+2 (Vienna) / 9am ET (NYC) Sign up here: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

Abstract: Repeated interaction is a key mechanism driving the evolution of cooperation, generosity, extortion, and other social behaviors. These behaviors are typically studied using two-player repeated games, where the two players act simultaneously in every round. In this paper, we begin with a standard two-action repeated game, but transform it into a leader–follower game. We do this by forcing one player to indicate their impending move, or to openly commit first in each round. We show that this simple transformation provides new and useful analytical insights. In particular, we use this transformation to derive expressions for the main classes of simultaneous-move Nash equilibria of memory-1, when payoffs are discounted. We show that these equilibria also remain stable under the leader–follower structure. We prove that this reassuring property does not always extend to games with more than two actions or to equilibrium strategies with longer memory. Overall, we establish a novel connection between repeated simultaneous-move games and repeated leader–follower games in evolutionary game theory. This approach offers fruitful means of investigating how prediction and anticipation play a role in stable social behavior.

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Any recommendations for a (recent-ish) workflow or tutorial for mixed-effects modelling of experience sampling data in R? Looking for something to hand to my master's student.

Saptarshi Pal @saptarshi.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Hey all! Been away from BSky for a while but this Friday I am giving a talk on our latest PNAS Nexus paper on repeated games! We model situations where players, instead of acting simultaneously, act in order. We study the status of well-known equilibrium strategies when simultaneity is broken.

Validate User

academic.oup.com

Simon Columbus@simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Emir Efendić @emire.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Do you want to do a PhD in Judgment and Decision Making in two beautiful European locations on human-AI interaction? Well have I got news for you. @bahniks.bsky.social and I are recruiting a candidate to start around September 2026. See here: decisionlab.vse.cz/english/we-a...

We are hiring

PhD Position in Judgment & Decision Making At a Glance Topic: Human-AI Interaction & Cognitive Biases Locations: VŠE Prague (2 years) + Maastricht University (2 years) Funding: Fully funded (4-year pr...

decisionlab.vse.cz

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 4mo ago

This is worth a read even if you're not into evolutionary theory. Trivers' work was as obviously brilliant as his reported behaviour was awful. It forces us to consider how much space academia should give to people whose behaviour towards others is frequently hurtful.

Erez Yoeli@erezyoeli.bsky.social · 4mo ago

"I’ll miss you, Robert. You asshole." robertc12.substack.com/p/rememberin...

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Today on the Cooperation Colloquia:

Simon Columbus@simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 5mo ago

This week's Cooperation Colloquium: Minhua Yan @minhuayan.bsky.social @iast.fr The persistence and adaptation of social norms: Theory and field evidence Date: March 27 Time: 15:00 UTC+1 (Vienna) / 10 am ET (NYC) Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

Abstract: Social norms are unwritten rules that guide human behavior and social interaction. They play a central role in promoting cooperation and maintaining cultural diversity. Yet because norms pressure people to do what others do, they may also sustain practices that are inefficient or harmful. In this talk, I present insights from a mathematical model and a field study that together examine whether and how such norms can persist. The model challenges the idea that arbitrary or harmful norms can be maintained solely through social pressure. It shows that norms with continuously varying behavioral options cannot be maintained at ecologically or psychologically suboptimal equilibria, suggesting that norms adapt more readily than previously assumed. I then present evidence from a field study among the Derung, small-scale horticulturalists in Yunnan, China. Derung farmers continued to follow a traditional cooperative farming harvest division norm after market integration. They did so even though they recognized its lower ecological payoff and expected no social disapproval for deviating from it. Rather than payoff calculations, Derung farmers adhered to the norm out of a desire to follow tradition and common practice. However, five years later the norm had changed, consistent with the model’s prediction that norms with continuously varying options eventually adapt to ecological conditions.

Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Scientific Reports is just Frontiers for people who think their work should've been published in Nature. In my experience, their editors frequently have no clue about the research they are handling and their communication is shoddy. I no longer review for them.

Daniel Heck@danielheck.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I always had the vague feeling that Scientific Reports and Nature Communications are mainly APC business models. A paper estimated the total APC for gold/hybrid Open Access per journal 2015–2018: doi.org/10.1162/qss_... Surprise, surprise - there are 2 outliers at the top😐