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Björn Lindström

@bjornlindstrom.bsky.social

940 followers 430 following 61 posts

Researching (social) learning and cultural evolution at Karolinska Institute, Sweden

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Björn Lindström @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social · Jul 23

Thrilled that our paper on the mechanisms underlying social learning strategies is out! First big paper from my @erc.europa.eu & @kawresearch.bsky.social funded group. More to come! I'm currently looking to recruit two post docs, get in touch if you find this line of research interesting.

Nature Human Behaviour @nathumbehav.nature.com · Jul 23

Through experiments and simulations, this study shows how individuals learn to learn from others, dynamically shaping the processes involved in cultural evolution. @davidschultner.bsky.social @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social
@lucasmolleman.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Feature-based reward learning shapes human social learning strategies - Nature Human Behaviour

This research advances a mechanistic reward learning account of social learning strategies. Through experiments and simulations, it shows how individuals learn to learn from others, dynamically shapin...

www.nature.com

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Mark Ho @markkho.bsky.social · 2d

I'm recruiting grad students!! 🎓

The CoDec Lab @ NYU (codec-lab.github.io) is looking for PhD students (Fall 2026) interested in computational approaches to social cognition & problem solving 🧠

Applications through Psych (tinyurl.com/nyucp) are due Dec 1. Reach out with Qs & please repost! 🙏

codec lab

codec-lab.github.io

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Mark Haselgrove @markhaselgrove.bsky.social · 2d

Am slowly making my way through this paper. And it is an impressive body of work by a collection of great researchers.

However, I have a couple of problems with it...

1/n

PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 8d

Benchmarks for Associative Learning Models: https://osf.io/qsgz8

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Björn Lindström @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social · 5d

As has the last author!

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Lena Frischlich @lenafrescamente.bsky.social · 7d

The result of this super cool work with Henrik Olsson, @abhishekr0y.bsky.social, @hdschulze.bsky.social, Stan Rhodes, and Alison Mansheim can now be found online - and we hope you like it as much as we do 😍https://www.nature.com/articles/s44260-025-00053-z- Core ideas also summarized below 🔽

The complexity of misinformation extends beyond virus and warfare analogies

npj Complexity - The complexity of misinformation extends beyond virus and warfare analogies

rdcu.be

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Dan Mirea @danmirea.bsky.social · 9d

🚨Out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social 🚨

We explore the use of cognitive theories/models with real-world data for understanding mental health.

We review emerging studies and discuss challenges and opportunities of this approach.

With @yaelniv.bsky.social and @eriknook.bsky.social

Thread ⬇️

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Alejandro Pérez Velilla @apvelilla.bsky.social · 12d

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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Joshua Conrad Jackson @joshcjackson.bsky.social · 12d

🚨New preprint🚨

osf.io/preprints/ps...

In a sample of ~2 billion comments, social media discourse becomes more negative over time

Archival and experimental findings suggest this is a byproduct of people trying to differentiate themselves

Led by @hongkai1.bsky.social in his 1st year (!) of his PhD

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Petter Holme @pholme.bsky.social · 15d

New paper in NHB 📄🚨
We ran extensive experiments to show that making the rules of some canonical economic games looser, makes people more cooperative
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Social networking agency and prosociality are inextricably linked in economic games - Nature Human Behaviour

Jia et al. experimentally show that when individuals can tailor their actions to each neighbour—a freedom termed social networking agency—they display higher levels of cooperation, trust and fairness in economic games.

www.nature.com

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Brandon C Davidson @bcdavidson.bsky.social · 23d

🚨 New Preprint 🚨

Prolonged Isolation is associated with an increased behavioural sensitivity to ‘Likes’ on social media.

🧵

Social media rewards are inherently social—but does posting change during social isolation, when in-person social rewards are limited?

It turns out, yes!

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xavier roberts-gaal @xrg.bsky.social · 23d

We often hear from reviewers: "what about demand effects?" So we developed a method to eliminate them. Something weird happened during testing: We couldn’t detect demand effects in the first place! (1/8)

Summary of design and results from our three studies. (A: Design) Each study used a similar experimental design, measuring both positive and negative demand in an online experiment, with three commonly-used task types (dictator game, vignette, intervention). Our experiments had ns ≈ 250 per cell. (B: Results) Observed demand effects were statistically indistinguishable from zero. The plot shows means and 95% confidence intervals for standardized mean differences derived from frequentist analyses of each experiment and an inverse variance-weighted fixed-effect estimator pooling all experiments (solid bars). Prior measurements of experimenter demand from a previous dictator game experiment (de Quidt et al., 2018; standardized mean difference from regression coefficient) and a meta-analysis primarily including small-sample, in-person studies (Coles et al., 2025; Hedge’s g statistic) are also shown for comparison (striped bars). The main text includes Bayesian analyses that quantify our uncertainty.

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Björn Lindström @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social · 26d

Is there a preprint for your talk?

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Sheina Lew-Levy @sheinalew.bsky.social · 28d

@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised!

3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution

2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions.

Please share and apply!

www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...

Fees and Funding - Durham University

www.durham.ac.uk

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Gaia Molinaro @gaiamolinaro.bsky.social · Sep 9

📢 New preprint!
How do humans learn from arbitrary, abstract goals? We show that, when goal spaces can be compressed, costly working-memory processes give way to internalized reward functions, enabling efficient goal-dependent reinforcement learning. @annecollins.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2509.06810

Reward function compression facilitates goal-dependent reinforcement learning

Reinforcement learning agents learn from rewards, but humans can uniquely assign value to novel, abstract outcomes in a goal-dependent manner. However, this flexibility is cognitively costly, making l...

arxiv.org

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Joshua Conrad Jackson @joshcjackson.bsky.social · Sep 5

@helenamiton.bsky.social and I have a new paper out:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Past theories focus on how we evolve complex technologies (jet engines), but neglect cultural innovations that help us operate these technologies (pilot checklist)

Paper has tons of examples and new theory!

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · Jul 28

🎊 New paper out! In this @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social Forum, we (with @lucasmolleman.bsky.social and @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social) summarize how reward learning can lead to adaptive social learning. We also explore the broader consequences for cultural evolution:
www.cell.com/trends/cogni... 🚄

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Isabelle Hoxha @isabellehoxha.bsky.social · Sep 3

Ever wondered why you keep going to that restaurant with stale fries? Is it because you went often in the past (perseveration) or because you remember past good experiences better (positivity bias)? Our study out in PNAS investigates the normative basis for these biases www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Evolving choice hysteresis in reinforcement learning: Comparing the adaptive value of positivity bias and gradual perseveration | PNAS

The tendency to repeat past choices more often than expected from the history of outcomes has been repeatedly empirically observed in reinforcement...

www.pnas.org

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Tom Schaul @schaul.bsky.social · Aug 27

Where do some of Reinforcement Learning's great thinkers stand today?

Find out! Keynotes of the RL Conference are online:
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Wanting vs liking, Agent factories, Theoretical limit of LLMs, Pluralist value, RL teachers, Knowledge flywheels
(guess who talked about which!)

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Will Oremus @willoremus.com · Aug 26

The funny thing is animals actually can suffer and we slaughter them by the billions but sure let’s have an existential panic over whether a software program screams when we turn it off

The Guardian @theguardian.com · Aug 26

Can AIs suffer? Big tech and users grapple with one of most unsettling questions of our times

As first AI-led rights advocacy group is founded, industry is divided on whether models are, or can be, sentient

www.theguardian.com

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · Aug 26

⚡ Autumn 2025 Cooperation Colloquia ⚡

We are excited to announce the next run of Cooperation Colloquia. With @talbotmandrews.bsky.social, @setayeshradkani.bsky.social, @kris-smith.bsky.social, @alexmesoudi.com, & more.

Every second Friday, 15:00 CE(S)T

Sign up here: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

Speaker list for the Autumn 2025 Cooperation Colloquia:
2025-09-12 | Doruk İriş (Sogang University)
2025-09-26 | Talbot M. Andrews (Cornell University)
2025-10-10 | Setayesh Radkani (MIT)
2025-10-24 | Christian Ruff (University of Zürich)
2025-11-07 | Bianca Beersma (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
2025-11-21 | Kristopher M. Smith (Washington State University)
2025-12-05 | Alex Mesoudi (University of Exeter)

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manvir singh @manvir.bsky.social · Aug 25

Why do societies reliably develop strikingly similar traditions like dance songs, hero stories, shamanism & justice institutions?

In a new BBS target article, I propose a theory for such "super-attractors" + cultural evolution more broadly. Now open for commentary: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

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Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · Aug 25

🚨 PhD Position at the University of Amsterdam 🚨

Join my team as a computer scientist / computational social scientist working on LLMs, social media, and politics.

We offer freedom, impact, and an inspiring environment at one of Europe's leading universities.

🔗 werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

Vacancy — PhD Position on Improving Social Media Using Large Language Models

The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam is inviting applications for a fully funded PhD position in the NWO VIDI project "Improving Social Media Using L...

werkenbij.uva.nl

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Björn Lindström @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social · Aug 22

love Stephan Micus!

Reposted by Björn Lindström

Johan Lind @johanlind.bsky.social · Aug 19

A bit late on this, but here we explore how cultural information
can guide development of behavior & cognitive skills just like genes. Can cultural evolution result in teaching trajectories that promote incremental acquisition of complex tasks?
#culturalevolution #developmentalpsychology #modelling

Screenshot of article with abstract, article reference is: Enquist, M., Ghirlanda, S., Hattiangadi, A., Lind, J., & Gredebäck, G. (2024). A joint future for cultural evolution and developmental psychology. Developmental Review, 73, 101147.

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Tim Waring @twaring.bsky.social · Aug 21

🧠 Want to integrate cultural evolution into your course using award winning materials created by the field's experts, and get paid $2000 to do it? 💵

🚨 The Cultural Evolution Society is seeking applications for the ACE Teaching Innovation Awards.

🔖 Apply here: vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management

The most powerful, simple and trusted way to gather experience data. Start your journey to experience management and try a free account today.

vuw.qualtrics.com

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Björn Lindström @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social · Aug 19

An , imo, underused approach is to build ABMs or analytical models extrapolating macro consequences from empirically validated mechanistic micro models of behavior (like www.nature.com/articles/s41... ). I'd guess outcomes sometimes could be quite different than under classical theory...