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Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 7d

Happy to see this work published in Psych Review. It's an impressive and important bit of theory/modeling about how we learn about decision-making under risk. Here's a slide with the super-coarse-grained summary of our results. Read the paper for (much) more. osf.io/preprints/so...

Modeling the evolution of peer and vertical/oblique learning strategies for gambles under uncertainty
We recover many empirical results and generate new hypotheses:
Worse conditions lead to more pessimistic behavior
Younger people are overly optimistic
Wealthy people can afford to take more risks
Payoff-biased learning for the rich, parochialism for the poor
Poor people may be slower to adapt to environmental change, creating the appearance of “poverty traps”

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Alejandro Pérez Velilla @apvelilla.bsky.social · 9d

Whoops, that's the wrong link to the commentary. The right link is this one: osf.io/preprints/so...

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Alejandro Pérez Velilla @apvelilla.bsky.social · 11d

We believe these ideas can help explain behavioral variation in many domains by specifying how risk landscapes shape beliefs and behavior through learning strategies. See our (in press) commentary to the (great) target article by @sheinalew.bsky.social & @dorsaamir.bsky.social
osf.io/preprints/so...

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Alejandro Pérez Velilla @apvelilla.bsky.social · 11d

@psmaldino.bsky.social and I also made a contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology on how an integrative view spanning evolutionary, developmental and cultural influences on risk behavior can help us understand decisions under risk—a good companion piece. osf.io/preprints/so...

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Alejandro Pérez Velilla @apvelilla.bsky.social · 11d

I am happy to announce that our project on risk and social learning is now in press at Psychological Review. Several new additions and revisions thanks to detailed feedback from colleagues and anonymous reviewers. osf.io/preprints/so...
@psmaldino.bsky.social @babeheim.bsky.social

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Alejandro Pérez Velilla @apvelilla.bsky.social · 11d

@psmaldino.bsky.social and I also made a contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology on how an integrative view spanning evolutionary, developmental and cultural influences on risk behavior can help us understand decisions under risk—a good companion piece. osf.io/preprints/so...

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osf.io

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Bret Beheim @babeheim.bsky.social · 22d

How to quantify the impact of AI on long-run cultural evolution? Published today, I give it a go!

400+ years of strategic dynamics in the game of Go (Baduk/Weiqi), from feudalism to AlphaGo!

Miyagawa Shuntei's 1898 painting, "Playing Go (Japanese Chess)"

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Eleanor Power @eapower.bsky.social · 19d

📣 Job alert! *Assistant Prof in Computational Social Science*. We're a friendly department, with sharp students, at a great institution, in a lovely city. We have real strengths in computational social science & are looking for a colleague to build this further. Share and reach out with quesions!

LSE Methodology @lsemethodology.bsky.social · 19d

We're hiring an Assistant Professor in Computational Social Science ❗

📚 jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

Apply before 26 October to join an internationally outstanding group of social science methodologists 🌎

we're hiring assistant professor in computational social science, applications close 26/10/2025

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Jorge Peña @jorgeapenas.bsky.social · 16d

📢 Apply to our (2-year) research fellowships at @iast.fr

Join a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and indisciplinary group of scholars in Toulouse, walkable/cyclable pink city of chocolatines in the South of France.

Deadline: November 15, 2025.

www.iast.fr/research-fel...

Research Fellowships

Each year, IAST invites applications for post-doctoral Research Fellowships, which offer candidates an opportunity to devote themselves full-time to their research at the start of their careers. Fello...

www.iast.fr

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Haneul Jang @haneuljang.bsky.social · 24d

💙New paper!💙

How is knowledge transmitted across generations in a foraging society?

With @danielredhead.bsky.social
we found: In BaYaka foragers, long-term skills pass in smaller, sparser networks, while short-term food info circulates broadly & reciprocally

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Transmission networks of long-term and short-term knowledge in a foraging society

Abstract. Cultural transmission across generations is key to cumulative cultural evolution. While several mechanisms—such as vertical, horizontal, and obli

academic.oup.com

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Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · Jul 1

New preprint w/ Nathan Gabriel & @avbell.bsky.social: The Evolution of Identity Signals for Coordination in Diverse Societies

The model tackles multiple nested/overlapping identities and complex signaling structure. Recovers lots of old results and adds several new ones osf.io/preprints/so...

Individual social identities indicate group affiliations and are typically associated with 3 group-typical preferences, signals that indicate group membership, and the propensity to condition actions on the social signals of others, resulting in group-differentiated interaction norms. Past work modeling identity signaling and coordination has typically assumed that individuals belong to one of a discrete set of groups. Yet individuals can simultaneously belong to multiple groups, which may be nested within larger groupings. Here, we introduce the generalized Bach or Stravinsky game, a coordination game with ordered preferences, which allows us to construct a model that captures the overlapping and hierarchical nature of social identity. Our model unifies several prior results into a single framework, including results related to coordination, minority disadvantage, and cross-cultural competence. Our model also allows agents to express complex social identities through multidimensional signaling, which we use to explore a variety of complex group structures. Our consideration of intersectional identities exposes flaws in naive measures of group structure, illustrating how empirical studies may overlook some social identities if they do not consider the behaviors that those identities function to afford.

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Elspeth Ready @elspethready.bsky.social · May 7

Job announcement 🚨: paid fieldwork opportunity with Sanguatsiniq research project! Details in thread ⬇️ Please share!

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Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · May 9

As grant money starts drying up, it's more important than ever not to waste it on paying publishers' open access "article processing fees" when we can host PDFs for free. Tom Morgan and I wrote a paper on this, forthcoming at Science and Public Policy. Accepted draft here: osf.io/preprints/os...

Author-Paid PublicationFees Corrupt Science and Should Be Abandoned
Thomas J. H Morgan & Paul E. Smaldino

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Bret Beheim @babeheim.bsky.social · Apr 10

Here's the stable link to the most recent version 👀

osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Bret Beheim @babeheim.bsky.social · Apr 9

🚨 New preprint! 🚨

I looked at 400+ years of cumulative cultural evolution in the Game of Go from feudalism to superhuman AI. Did AlphaGo etc. completely disrupt human play? No! More like human-machine convergence, rather than revolution.

Check out these decision trees!

osf.io/preprints/ps...

decision trees in human play in the game of go before and after the arrival of superhuman AI, showing gradual change rather than revolutionary disruption

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Maven's Notebook @mavensnotebook.com · Feb 24

Merced River, Yosemite National Park

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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · Feb 21

Week 7 of my Bayes stats course, now deep in multilevel models, correlated effects, centered and non-centered parameterizations, diag(σ)LZ ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn (link to lectures: github.com/rmcelreath/s...)

meme with escalating multilevel priors, from fixed to simple random to correlated random effects

Complex generalized linear multilevel model with an image of a monster emerging from the ocean behind it

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Alejandro Pérez Velilla @apvelilla.bsky.social · Feb 20

L'Impératrice

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Alejandro Pérez Velilla @apvelilla.bsky.social · Feb 20

Sea Power
La máquina de hacer pájaros
El baquiné de Angelitos Negros de Willie Colón

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James Holland Jones @juemos.bsky.social · Feb 14

We are gutting EIS and our general capacity to respond to novel infectious threats right as bird flu is ramping up. What could possibly go wrong?

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Bird Flu Is a Big Threat. The US Needs to Start Acting Like It.

Scientists suspect a new strain is spreading via dust from bird droppings, carried by the wind.

www.bloomberg.com

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Christian Hilbe @chilbe.bsky.social · Feb 12

In game theory, we often assume that people only interact in one game at a time. In a new paper, we explore theoretically and experimentally how people cooperate when they engage in two games concurrently, either with the same partner or with different partners, www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Léo Fitouchi @lfitouchi.bsky.social · Feb 11

Where do moralizing religions come from? Useless cognitive by-products?Cultural group selection for complex societies?

Our Psych Review paper argues: neither. Let’s rethink their cognitive & evolutionary origins🧵
w/ @manvir.bsky.social @nbaumard @jbaptistandre.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1037/rev0...

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Dominik Deffner @dominikdeffner.bsky.social · Feb 6

Looking for a first intro to theoretical models in cultural evolution? For yourself or your students? 🔍

In our chapter for an upcoming @ehbea.bsky.social textbook, we outline what models are for, what questions they address, and how they can be coded in R!

Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · Feb 5

Doing violence to reality: Theoretical models of cultural evolution: http://osf.io/9j65p_v1/

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Martin Lang @martinlangcz.bsky.social · Feb 6

Postdoc position available in our team!

We are testing a computational model explaining the decision-making process during in normative/moral situations while incorporating the formative role of culture in this process.

www.muni.cz/en/about-us/...

#socialpsyc
#PsychSciSky
#cogpsyc

Postdoctoral researcher in social cognition | Masaryk University

www.muni.cz

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Björn Lindström @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social · Feb 7

💥Two 💥 post-doc positions open in my @erc.europa.eu ERC-funded group. In an interdisciplinary, collaborative setting, we use different types of modeling (e.g., reinforcement learning) and human experiments to understand social learning and cultural evolution. Get in touch if you have any questions!

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