Robin Schimmelpfennig
schimmelpfennig.bsky.social
Robin Schimmelpfennig
@schimmelpfennig.bsky.social
PhD@heclausanne (w/ EffersonCharles) /Affl. @LSE_PBS w/ @mmuthukrishna & Google Research. UN Fellow for Behavioral Science #behavior #culture #organizations #AI Webite: robinschimmelpfennig.com
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
Congrats to all involved in the production of the massive Oxford Handbook of cultural evolution. You can read our paper The Cultural Evolution Of Science here: cailinoconnor.com/wp-content/u...
October 14, 2025 at 7:11 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
Excited to announce the first ACE Course Design Awards for excellent cultural education teaching. Those award winning classes will be placed in an open teaching repository for anyone looking to enhance cultural evolution content in their courses.
culturalevolutionsociety.org/news-and-eve...
ACE Course Design Awardees Announced - Cultural Evolution Society
culturalevolutionsociety.org
October 17, 2025 at 1:07 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
We just spent 6 months to add 1 figure to this paper. Some people said, "Couples aren't prioritizing men's careers. Men just have better earnings opportunities when moving."

Earnings effects of moves for couples on the left, singles on the right. Negligible gap between single men and women.
October 7, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
If one man marries two women, another man must go unmarried, right? No. Demography matters. If sex ratios are skewed towards women, then polygyny can exist alongside universal marriage for men (who want to marry women). If only more people understood demography 😊
October 6, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
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.
July 23, 2025 at 11:41 AM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
In this Correspondence, Dunivin and @psmaldino.bsky.social argue for greater user control of algorithms for scientific search, and explain why this will benefit both science and platforms alike.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
User control of search algorithms would improve science - Nature Human Behaviour
Nature Human Behaviour - User control of search algorithms would improve science
www.nature.com
July 8, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
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...
July 1, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
💥New postdoc position! 💥

Join us to explore how people learn from each other—and how that drives cultural evolution.

Run experiments, build computational models & collaborate across Europe w. @lucasmolleman.bsky.social
📍 Stockholm
More info: shorturl.at/CY4wk
Postdoctoral Researcher in psychology/cognitive science with focus on social learning and cultural evolution
Do you want to contribute to top quality medical research? The Mechanisms of Social Behavior lab at the Karolinska Institutet (PI: Björn Lindström) in Stockholm, Sweden is seeking a highly qualified
shorturl.at
June 26, 2025 at 11:22 AM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
Our new paper updating key metrics in the IPCC is now out, and the news is grim:

⬆️ Human induced warming now at 1.36C
⬆️ Rate of warming now 0.27C / decade
⬆️ Sharp increase in Earth's energy imbalance
⬇️ Remaining 1.5C carbon budget only 130 GtCO2

essd.copernicus.org/...
Indicators of Global Climate Change 2024: annual update of key indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence
Abstract. In a rapidly changing climate, evidence-based decision-making benefits from up-to-date and timely information. Here we compile monitoring datasets (published at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15639576; Smith et al., 2025a) to produce updated estimates for key indicators of the state of the climate system: net emissions of greenhouse gases and short-lived climate forcers, greenhouse gas concentrations, radiative forcing, the Earth's energy imbalance, surface temperature changes, warming attributed to human activities, the remaining carbon budget, and estimates of global temperature extremes. This year, we additionally include indicators for sea-level rise and land precipitation change. We follow methods as closely as possible to those used in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group One report. The indicators show that human activities are increasing the Earth's energy imbalance and driving faster sea-level rise compared to the AR6 assessment. For the 2015–2024 decade average, observed warming relative to 1850–1900 was 1.24 [1.11 to 1.35] °C, of which 1.22 [1.0 to 1.5] °C was human-induced. The 2024-observed best estimate of global surface temperature (1.52 °C) is well above the best estimate of human-caused warming (1.36 °C). However, the 2024 observed warming can still be regarded as a typical year, considering the human-induced warming level and the state of internal variability associated with the phase of El Niño and Atlantic variability. Human-induced warming has been increasing at a rate that is unprecedented in the instrumental record, reaching 0.27 [0.2–0.4] °C per decade over 2015–2024. This high rate of warming is caused by a combination of greenhouse gas emissions being at an all-time high of 53.6±5.2 Gt CO2e yr−1 over the last decade (2014–2023), as well as reductions in the strength of aerosol cooling. Despite this, there is evidence that the rate of increase in CO2 emissions over the last decade has slowed compared to the 2000s, and depending on societal choices, a continued series of these annual updates over the critical 2020s decade could track decreases or increases in the rate of the climatic changes presented here.
essd.copernicus.org
June 18, 2025 at 11:10 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
New 2 year post-doc position on cultural adaptation in complex environmental management.
Post-Doctoral Position on Cultural Adaptation in Forest Management
The University of Maine seeks a post-doctoral researcher for a two-year project on human cultural adaptation in forest management, requiring a strong quantitative background and experience in modeling.
timwaring.info
June 9, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
Ok, time for a short thread about this paper.

My sense over the past six months or so is that chain-of-thought prompting as used in e.g. ChatGPT o.3 improves substantially upon previous systems such as ChatGPT 4.o, at least for certain tasks.

But how revolutionary is it?
If I have time I'll put together a more detailed thread tomorrow, but for now, I think this new paper about limitations of Chain-of-Thought models could be quite important. Worth a look if you're interested in these sorts of things.

ml-site.cdn-apple.com/papers/the-i...
June 9, 2025 at 3:59 AM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
Is it "good" or "bad" when skilled people leave low-income countries? We summarized the evidence in favor of "brain gain" vs. "brain drain": www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....
Ungated PDF: johanneshaushofer.com/research
May 22, 2025 at 6:28 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
Grateful for the chance to share my thoughts on responsible use of LLMs in psychology research @spspnews.bsky.social #spsp2025. Here's a summary of my presentation for those who missed it. Thanks to @ashwinia.bsky.social for organizing this panel!

How should LLMs be used in psychology research? 🧵
February 22, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
The most achingly beautiful explanation of what science is, from @edyong209.bsky.social: “the idea that much of the world is hidden from us, that we don’t perceive it and don’t understand it, and that it is worth understanding and it is necessary to understand.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/m...
‘The Interview’: Ed Yong Wants to Show You the Hidden Reality of the World
The Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer talks about burnout from covering the pandemic and how bird-watching gave him a new sense of hope.
www.nytimes.com
February 22, 2025 at 3:46 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
Change over time is often depicted as a trendline. But what does shape a trendline? Which forces? Our new paper presents a method allowing to “decompose” trendlines into constituent forces. Also, we tackle an old puzzle: Does culture change “one funeral at a time”? 🧵(1/8) doi.org/10.1098/rspb...
February 5, 2025 at 2:53 PM
Have you ever wondered why organizational research findings do not always seem applicable to practical contexts or the most urgent challenges of our time? New paper out 🙃 👉 tinyurl.com/376ueann
@celbaek.bsky.social Panagiotis Mitkidis @anisha0singh.bsky.social @quinettaphd.bsky.social
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
lnkd.in
January 27, 2025 at 8:21 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
One of the real problems is that too many people conveniently believe the opposite of diversity is merit, and the opposite of inclusion is high standards.

Yeah, that’s just not the case.

(See: Pete Hegseth among countless others.)
January 27, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
New preprint by the amazing @zhilinsu.bsky.social! The neuroeconomics of social influence and contagion featuring work by @mgarvert.bsky.social @klempert.bsky.social @mjcrockett.bsky.social @psyhongbo.bsky.social and many others! Forthcoming in Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions.
📢 New Preprint 📢

Delighted to share our preprint of a chapter co-authored with @thepsychologist.bsky.social @sdnl.bsky.social for the forthcoming book 'Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions'!

The neuroeconomics of social influence and contagion

osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
January 17, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
Social contagion is a powerful force.

People copy thoughts, feelings, & actions of those to whom they are connected. Understanding social network structure & function makes it possible to use social contagion to intervene in the world to improve human welfare. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 1/
December 20, 2024 at 3:57 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
Over the past year, I've resisted blogging about why Protzko needed retracted.

Unfortunately, the authors have used their platforms to mislead about the cause for retraction. As they cannot be honest, I'm choosing to be fully open and transparent.

#metascience

joebakcoleman.com/blog/2024/pr...
I did not want to write this blog post. | Joe B. Bak-Coleman
The Preregistration Revelation
joebakcoleman.com
September 26, 2024 at 2:26 AM
What if you had ca. 10k USD of grant money and want to test a theory that predicts cultural variation of a given psychological effect. Which methodological approach would you choose? (1/2)
September 21, 2024 at 4:21 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
We have a new Commentary out in AMPPS:

👉 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Thread coming soon, but get all the details already in my talk tomorrow at #SPSP2024 (Thur. 8th, 9.45 am; Culture Pre-Conference).
February 7, 2024 at 11:50 PM
Reposted by Robin Schimmelpfennig
Research on fantasy soccer data by @dggoldst.bsky.social et al suggests smaller, smarter sub-crowds—with members with demonstrably more skill than others—can be identified in advance and beat the wisdom of the larger crowd:
buff.ly/4bfm7uH
June 10, 2024 at 5:24 AM