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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This week's Cooperation Colloquium: Patricia Kanngiesser @patkanngiesser.bsky.social Sustaining cooperation in intra- and inter-generational resource dilemmas Date: October 2 Time: 15:00 UTC+2 (Vienna) / 9am NYC Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

Abstract: The world faces escalating environmental crises that demand cooperation within and across generations. Experimental games provide a testbed for studying sustainable decision-making and cooperation in a safe and controlled environment and for exploring underlying factors. In this talk, I will give an overview of past and ongoing research with children and adults, focusing on inter- and intra-generational sustainability dilemmas. In past work, we have shown that groups of children from two cultures successfully collaborated in a threshold public-goods game using water as a real resource (Kanngiesser et al., 2024). In recent work, we have employed a newly developed harvesting game with a depletable resource to study cooperation across generations of players—specifically, whether participants will adjust their harvesting behaviour and conserve resources better when they know that another, future player will depend on them. I will present new data from both adult participants and cross-cultural child participants on whether they make decisions that benefit themselves and/or future others. For adults, we also explore the role of task framing, cognitive factors (e.g. numeracy), and Social Value Orientation in their decision-making. I will discuss specific challenges of inter-generational collaboration: people might be motivated to benefit future others but might not know how to act to improve their own and others’ outcomes.

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Everybody's posting about politics; meanwhile I'm here wondering whether there's a legal limit to the number of arepas I'm allowed to eat in a single sitting

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Our first speaker this week is Kasper Otten (WODC/Erasmus University Rotterdam): The co-occurrence of ingroup and outgroup prosociality across 121 societies Friday, September 18 15:00 UTC+2 (Vienna) / 9am NYT / 21 Beijing Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

Abstract: In an increasingly interconnected world, prosociality across group boundaries becomes ever more important. Yet, a common premise in the behavioral and social sciences is that people are prosocial mainly toward their ingroup and not outgroups. So far, evidence for this premise comes mostly from studies in which people must choose between ingroup and outgroup prosociality, thereby precluding positive associations between the two types of prosociality. We study situations in which people make separate decisions regarding the ingroup and outgroup, allowing us to examine how ingroup and outgroup prosociality are related. Across six large-scale and cross-societal datasets spanning 743,402 individuals in 121 societies, we find a robust positive relationship between ingroup and outgroup prosociality. This relationship holds across societies, different group categorizations, and a diverse range of prosociality measures, including prisoner’s dilemmas, public good dilemmas, dictator games, and survey items on trust and tolerance. Although people are somewhat more prosocial toward their ingroup than the outgroup, those who are prosocial toward the ingroup also tend to be prosocial toward the outgroup. The results offer an optimistic message for prosociality across group boundaries. When people are not made to choose between the ingroup and outgroup, they are generally prosocial toward both.

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Environmental Psychology Groningen @epgroningen.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

We're hiring a PhD candidate in Fair Climate Policy! Deadline to apply: 2 October werkenbij.rug.nl/vacature/pro... (Please note: Carina Havenga de Poel & @gpalomovelez.bsky.social are the contact people, and job interviews will take place in late October) @rug-gmw.bsky.social @rug.nl

werkenbij.rug.nl

Promovendus Rechtvaardig Klimaatbeleid - Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Autumn 2026 Cooperation Colloquia We have an exciting interdisciplinary series of speakers with Kasper Otten, @patkanngiesser.bsky.social, @charlesefferson.bsky.social @nikoletaglyn.bsky.social, Cameron Curtin, & Devesh Rustagi Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

List of speakers:
2026-09-18 | Kasper Otten (WODC / Erasmus University Rotterdam) | The co-occurrence of ingroup and outgroup prosociality across 121 societies
2026-10-02 | Patricia Kanngiesser (University of Plymouth)
2026-10-16 | Charles Efferson (Université de Lausanne)
2026-10-30 | Nikoleta Glynatsi (RIKEN Center for Computational Science)
2026-11-13 | Cameron Curtin (IAST)
2026-12-11 | Devesh Rustagi (University of Warwick)

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

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Julien Combe @combeju.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

My answer

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Gonzalo Palomo Vélez @gpalomovelez.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

We are hiring a joint-PhD candidate with SCP to study how people perceive climate policies and more generally what’s fair climate policy. Come do research with us! — werkenbij.rug.nl/vacature/pro...

werkenbij.rug.nl

Promovendus Rechtvaardig Klimaatbeleid - Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Any sufficiently advanced technology purchased by a university is indistinguishable from malware

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Two postdocs with the inimitable Anna Berti Suman in Padova, on personal narratives in climate litigation. Deadline September 14. Project overview: www.pastis-research.eu/the-persona-... Text mining: www.fisppa.unipd.it/bando-2026cr..., Legal ethnography: www.fisppa.unipd.it/bando-2026cr....

pastis-research.eu

The PersoNa — Personal Narratives in Climate Litigation - Pa.S.T.I.S.

The PersoNa — Personal Narratives in Climate LitigationMUR Starting Grant FIS-2023-01203 · University of Padova, FISPPA Department · 2026–2029About the

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

A lot of this research is really bad. One of these effects people just *want* to be true, so researchers can get away with shoddy crosssectional analyses and handwaving.

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Michel Nivard @michelnivard.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Based on our GWAS of personality I have an academic/data driven reflection on new challenges to the environmental path from parental personality toe child personality. I could put it on my substack (bleg) or add to my near non existend blog, but I have no reach, anyone willing to let me guest blog?

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

If a guy keeps finding the same headline-grabbing, non-replicable result again and again and again, that should indeed make you laugh, then think -- laugh in despair, then think about how to do better.

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

1) denial 2) anger 3) bargaining 4) depression 5) major revisions

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Stephanie Wang @sweiwang.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

🚨Elsevier forces out Games and Economic Behavior (GEB) Editor, entire editorial board has resigned, current board only handling new submissions until Nov. 14 #econsky

Dear Advisory Editor of GEB
We are very sorry to be the bearers of bad news for GEB.
I learned from Elsevier on Wednesday July 28 that, contrary to my expressed willingness to continue, my 3-year contract will not be renewed.
"Moving towards a closer alignment with Elsevier strategic priorities and publishing policies" was offered as the motive for this decision. Requests for explanations, first by me, then in a collective letter by the other six Editors, were dismissed by Elsevier which simply reaffirmed its legal power to make such decisions.
Elsevier then started precipitously its own search for new Editors without input of the Editorial Board.
By Friday August 14 all seven Editors have sent their resignation, requiring a 3-month advance notice.
Therefore, we will continue to manage as before the papers currently under review and the new submissions until Saturday November 14. After this date we will only complete the evaluation of papers still waiting an editorial decision.

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Interesting idea: is anthropology divided more by ontology than by epistemology? It certainly rings true in the sense that cultural anthros (and qual psychologists) rarely appear interested in the same subject matter as quant social scientists across disciplines (such as 'cooperation').

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

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...

retractionwatch.com

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…

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

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

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

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.

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Will Lowe @conjugateprior.org · 07/07/2026

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

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Julia Stern @juliastern.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

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...

stellenangebote.uni-ulm.de

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

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Eva Zschirnt @evazschirnt.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

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

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

As an adult, can I sign up voluntarily?

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Angelika Stefan @ephemeralidea.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

🧑🏻‍🏫 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

run.pavlovia.org

Pavlovia Survey 2025.2.0

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Qinyu Xiao @qinyuxiao.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

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...

doi.org

OSF

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

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.

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

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.

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Alex Stewart @alexanderjstewart.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

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!”

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Lizzie Bradford @lizziebradford.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

💫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/...

vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk

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...

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Annika Brockschmidt @ardenthistorian.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

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

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

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.

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

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.

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

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.

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Caspar van Lissa 🟥 @cjvanlissa.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

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

tiu.nu

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

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

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.

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

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

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

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.

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Saptarshi Pal @saptarshi.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

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.

academic.oup.com

Validate User

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

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.

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Emir Efendić @emire.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

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...

decisionlab.vse.cz

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...

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

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.

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Today on the Cooperation Colloquia:

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Simon Columbus @simoncolumbus.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

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.

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