iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by David Schultner

ISCON @iscon.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

ISCON now seeking nominations for the 2025 Best Social Cognition Paper Award! This award recognizes an outstanding article (theoretical or empirical) in the field of social cognition. Papers eligible if published in 2025. Deadline Nov 1. Full info here: www.socialcognition.net/best-paper-a...

socialcognition.net

Best Paper Award | Home

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

☀️ Excited to be part of this project! We investigate how language transmission (via written advice) can enable cumulative gains when observing another's behavior is insufficient

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Reposted by David Schultner

Björn Lindström @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

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!

pnas.org

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Very grateful that our paper was awarded ISCON’s Best 2024 Paper in Social Cognition!! Huge thanks to the fantastic team: Ben Stillerman, @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social , @leorhackel.bsky.social , Damaris Hagen, Nils Jostmann, and @davidamodio.bsky.social 🎊💐

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Sepehr Razavi @srazavi.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

I am pleased to announce that @davidschultner.bsky.social will be our next guest as part of the SoCR Lab's Invited Talk Series. Dr. Schultner will present recent work that offers evidence for a parsimonious and mechanistic explanation of human social learning strategies via reward learning!

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Reposted by David Schultner

Björn Lindström @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

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

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

Many thanks to the editor and reviewers! 🌷

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

🎊 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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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Altogether, we present a mechanistic account for the substantial flexibility and individual variability observed in social learning. A domain-general reward learning model shows that personal experience can shape social learning to render it adaptive. Thanks to the reviewers and editorial team! 💐

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Going beyond these experiments, we explore the implications of the SFL model for social learning under a variety of environmental contexts (such as spatial & environmental variability or dangerous environments, check out the full paper for these agent-based simulations and much much more).

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

In a final experiment (Exp. 6), we find evidence suggesting that learning about social- and non-social features follows the same principles. We do so by establishing feature competition (i.e., shared associative strength between social- and non-social features, see full text for details).

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

This suggests that SLS can be shaped by rewards. We show that among multiple available features, people pick out reward-predictive ones (Exp. 3), that this learning pattern also holds with 4 (instead of 2) choice options (Exp. 4), and that learning generalizes to dissimilar contexts (Exp. 5)

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Exps. 1 & 2: Consistent with our model, social learning was shaped by rewards: Having learnt that the majority (or minority) choice is reward predictive, pps copied the majority (or minority) when encountering novel targets. Exp. 2 replicates this with others' payoffs instead of choice behaviour.

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

☀️ We advance a domain-general reinforcement learning model—the Social Feature Learning (SFL) model—explaining SLS as the result of associating social features (e.g., others choices, their payoffs, or their age) with rewards. We test core assumptions and predictions across 6 experiments (n = 1941).

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Selective social learning is essential to navigate the vast and often contradictory forest of social information. At least 26 social learning strategies (SLS; such as 'follow the majority'; 'copy the prestigious') have been documented, but which mechanisms underlie the emergence of SLS? 🤔

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

💥 Our new paper (with ‪@lucasmolleman.bsky.social and ‪@bjornlindstrom.bsky.social‬) is now out in @nathumbehav.nature.com‬ 🥳 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧠 Here, we advance a novel RL account—the Social Feature Learning (SFL) model—that explains how people learn to learn from others! 🤝 🧵👇

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Thanks to my great team! w/ Philip Pärnamets, Ekatarina Yarmolenko & @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Together, these findings show that fairness concerns & conformity jointly but independently shape moral norms. Understanding their interplay can help explain the successes & failures of third-party judgments regulating prosociality in social systems

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Having established these two separable factors, how may their interplay affect larger social systems? Using agent-based simulations, we find: 🔹 Inequality aversion helped societies move toward prosocial states (blue) 🔹 Commonness bias reinforced selfish defaults (red) instead of promoting fairness

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

How do both factors interact in a shared setting? In Study 2, we combined both Study 1 games into a novel game, manipulating inequality & commonness independently. Results closely track those of Study 1: Both motivations shaped moral judgments, but were only weakly related.

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

In Study 1, participants judged others’ behavior in economic games designed to isolate each motivation. Results show distinct effects of inequality aversion & commonness, however: only weak associations between both factors emerged, pointing to separate cognitive contributions

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Third-party judgments help regulate social life—as in cooperation & coordination problems—but which principles guide them? Past research has employed monocausal approaches, focused on 1) inequality aversion or 2) the common-is-moral heuristic, neglecting the complex nature of many moral judgments

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

🚨 New preprint out! 🚨 How do people make moral judgments as third parties? 👀 We show how two motivations—inequality aversion (fair = moral) ⚖️ and the common-is-moral heuristic (frequent = moral 👨‍👩‍👧‍👧—interact to shape evaluations 🧵👇 📄 osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Thanks to my great team! w/ Philip Pärnamets, Ekatarina Yarmolenko & @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Together, these findings show that fairness concerns & conformity jointly 🤝 but independently ◀️▶️ shape moral evaluations. Understanding their interplay can help explain the successes & failures of third-party judgments regulating prosociality in social systems.

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Having established separable factors, we asked: how may their interplay affect larger social systems? 🤔 Using agent-based simulations, we found: 🔹Inequality aversion helped societies move toward prosocial states (blue) 🔹Commonness bias reinforced selfish defaults (red) instead of promoting fairness

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

How do both factors interact in a shared setting? In Study 2, we combined both Study 1 games into a novel game, manipulating inequality & commonness independently. Results closely mirrored those of Study 1: Both motivations shaped moral judgments, but were only weakly related.

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

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David Schultner @davidschultner.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

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Reposted by David Schultner

David Amodio @davidamodio.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

A fantastic blog post on our recent PNAS paper! It elegantly describes our rather complex findings and discusses their implications for bias reduction. And I love the AI-generated podcast version, too. Thanks @thepeoplegeek.bsky.social! davehodges.substack.com/p/the-hidden...

davehodges.substack.com

The Hidden Game of Bias: How Prejudice Goes Viral Without Saying a Word

In the interest of providing multiple means of engaging with this blog, below is the podcast style conversation, using our AI friends Johnny and Joanne.

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Reposted by David Schultner

David Amodio @davidamodio.bsky.social · 01/07/2024

New paper from the lab! w/@davidschultner.bsky.social @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social & Mina Cikara We show that merely viewing a prejudiced person’s intergroup behavior induces bias in observers—a novel learning mechanism for prejudice formation and propagation science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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