Dirk Wulff

Keynote speakers: @tuckerdrob.bsky.social @foswald.bsky.social Ellen Hamaker

Hands-on workshops by:
@tedmond.bsky.social & @ukuvainik.bsky.social (genomic analyses)
@dirkwulff.bsky.social (LLMs in personality research)

www.ecp22edinburgh.org/programme

🚨 New preprint 🚨

What are the reasons underlying human choice in the face of risk?

Excited to share new work with Kamil Fulawka and Ralph Hertwig, establishing #LLMs as a scalable solution to uncovering the reasons behind people's choices from free text reports.

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

🚨 New article 🚨

How to measure semantic #networks of individuals reliably?

Excited to share this article, led by @aeschbach.bsky.social and with @ruimata.bsky.social. Based on simulations, we provide recommendations on designing and interpreting behavioral studies.

Article: lnkd.in/dhWiwEBU

Measuring individual semantic networks: A simulation study Accurately capturing individual differences in semantic networks is fundamental to advancing our mechanistic understanding of semantic memory. Past empirical attempts to construct individual-level sem...

New semantic network paper in @plosone.org with @ruimata.bsky.social at @unibas.ch and @dirkwulff.bsky.social at @arc-mpib.bsky.social!

We ran large-scale simulations to test how well common behavioral tasks measure a person's semantic network.

doi.org/10.1371/jour...

🚨 New publication 🚨

Excited to see this published in Findings of #ACL2025, led by @zakashussain.bsky.social.

We critically evaluate claims that #LLMs are "just next token predictors" or "just machines" and call for a more measured discussion on LLM cognition.

aclanthology.org/2025.finding...

Excited to see our Centaur project out in @nature.com.
TL;DR: Centaur is a computational model that predicts and simulates human behavior for any experiment described in natural language.

🚨 PhD position (75%, TV-L E13) at LMU Munich!
Join our DFG funded META REP project on heterogeneity & replicability in psychology.
Work on meta analysis, simulations, modeling in R/Python.
📅 Apply by July 15
🔗 shorturl.at/939tP
🔗 shorturl.at/2bRLD
👇🧵

Happy to have concluded another iteration of our 5-day open LLMs course, together with @zakashussain.bsky.social.

If you are interested in LLMs for behavioral and social sciences, check out our...

Tutorial: doi.org/10.3758/s134...
Open materials: github.com/zak-Hussain/...

🚨 New preprint 🚨

How to improve risk communication?

In this new piece, spearheaded by ‪@kevinetiede.bsky.social‬, we argue that traditional risk communication often fails to convey experiential dimensions of risk, and that experiential simulations can help fill this gap.

doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🚨 Postdoc position in India 🚨

Work with Kavitha Ranganathan and me to explore the potential of LLMs for improving risk communication. The position (Senior Research Fellow) includes a research stay and affiliation with@arc-mpib.bsky.social at @mpib-berlin.bsky.social.

🚨 New preprint 🚨

Excited to share this work with Dorothée Bentz, where we map the landscape of contamination OCD triggers and analyze individual differences in trigger importance and relatedness.

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

CounseLLMe CounseLLMe: Investigating Human-Large Language Model conversations under the lens of cognitive science and complex systems SATELLITE WORKSHOP FOR HHAI2025 Submit Abstracts -> HERE

We still have 2 slots available for contributed talks at our CounseLLMe workshop for @hhaiconference.bsky.social :

sites.google.com/unitn.it/cou...

Join us in Pisa, deadline May 6!

How to improve conceptual clarity in psychology?

Excited to share a new preprint with @ruimata.bsky.social, discussing approaches based on large language models as possible solutions.

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

Student Research Assistant | Center for Adaptive Rationality

🚨Job Alert (Deadline: Apr. 30)🚨

We're seeking a Student Research Assistant to support the ongoing research in all phases of the scientific process. See the link for more details! @dirkwulff.bsky.social, @mpib-berlin.bsky.social

www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/2016979/2025...

Extreme stances about AI and LLMs in particular (be them deflationary or inflationary) are very likely wrong, valid and certainly not good for an healthy debate. But where do they come from? We (with @giadapistilli.com) argue that common cognitive biases may play a role:

osf.io/preprints/ps...

PNAS is explicit that “The purpose of peer review is not to demonstrate the reviewer’s proficiency in identifying flaws”

Is this your skill set? Review for us at @error.reviews instead where this explicitly is the necessary skill set.

error.reviews

www.pnas.org/reviewer

How can we reduce conceptual clutter in the psychological sciences?

@ruimata.bsky.social and I propose a solution based on a fine-tuned 🤖 LLM (bit.ly/mpnet-pers) and test it for 🎭 personality psychology.

The paper is finally out in @natrevpsych.bsky.social: go.nature.com/4bEaaja

GitHub - Zak-Hussain/LLM4SciSci: Materials "LLMs for science of science research" training, LMU, 2025 Materials "LLMs for science of science research" training, LMU, 2025 - Zak-Hussain/LLM4SciSci

Excited to share the materials for our course on open LLMs for science of science research @zakashussain.bsky.social and I offered at the recent meeting of @euroscisci.bsky.social at @lmumuenchen.bsky.social.

github.com/zak-Hussain/...

Thanks for sharing!

Centaur: a foundation model of human cognition Establishing a unified theory of cognition has been a major goal of psychology. While there have been previous attempts to instantiate such theories by building computational models, we currently do n...

We mean that they reproduce and predict behavior well (at least compared to other models). Here is one example: arxiv.org/abs/2410.20268

We acknowledge anthropomorphism. It's just not the only problem. Anthropocentrism is one, too.

What do you mean by saying that there is no way to falsify?

I agree. I hope that taking LLM cognition seriously may help us arrive at stronger definitions that could help delineate the cognitive differences between humans and LLMs.

Do LLMs think?

Excited to share our updated preprint critically discussing two "Justaic" stances claiming that LLMs lack cognition because they are "just" next-token predictors or "just" machines.

Led by @zakashussain.bsky.social and with @ruimata.bsky.social .

osf.io/preprints/os...

Summer Institute

🚨 Applications for the 22nd Summer Institute on Bounded Rationality are now open!

🌐 Join us in Berlin @mpib-berlin.bsky.social from June 17–25, 2025 to explore "Decision Making in a Digital World".

✏️ Application deadline is March 9 - more info at 👇!!

www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/research/res...

In our latest article, published in @pnas.org and led by @marcelbinz.bsky.social and Stephan Alaniz, we got together four diverse groups of scientists to reflect on how LLMs should affect science. From treating them like co-authors to using other tools instead, many interesting arguments emerged.

GitHub - Zak-Hussain/LLM4BeSci_Ljubljana2025: The course introduces the use of open-source large language models (LLMs) from the Hugging Face ecosystem for research in the behavioral and social scienc... The course introduces the use of open-source large language models (LLMs) from the Hugging Face ecosystem for research in the behavioral and social sciences. - Zak-Hussain/LLM4BeSci_Ljubljana2025

The potential of LLMs in social & behavioral science is enormous—but how can we leverage them?

Zak Hussain & I just taught a 5-day course at #GSERM Ljubljana on this. Check out our open materials (cc-by-sa) on using open LLMs with @hf.co.

github.com/Zak-Hussain/...

The image is the cover page of an article from the "Annual Review of Psychology" titled "Boosting: Empowering Citizens with Behavioral Science" by Stefan M. Herzog and Ralph Hertwig. It features a brief abstract, keywords, and publication details. The abstract outlines the concept of "boosting" as a behavioral public policy that emphasizes empowering individuals to make informed decisions, in contrast to "nudging," which subtly steers behavior. The abstract reads: Behavioral public policy came to the fore with the introduction of nudging, which aims to steer behavior while maintaining freedom of choice. Responding to critiques of nudging (e.g., that it does not promote agency and relies on benevolent choice architects), other behavioral policy approaches focus on empowering citizens. Here we review boosting, a behavioral policy approach that aims to foster people's agency, self-control, and ability to make informed decisions. It is grounded in evidence from behavioral science showing that human decision making is not as notoriously flawed as the nudging approach assumes. We argue that addressing the challenges of our time—such as climate change, pandemics, and the threats to liberal democracies and human autonomy posed by digital technologies and choice architectures—calls for fostering capable and engaged citizens as a first line of response to complement slower, systemic approaches.

List with summary points: 1. Behavioral public policy garnered widespread attention with the introduction of nudging, which aims to steer behavior while maintaining freedom of choice. 2. Criticisms of nudging include that it does not promote agency and competences and that it relies—overly optimistically—on the presence of benevolent choice architects. 3. The proliferation of environments threatening people's autonomy, the slow pace of systemic approaches to tackling societal issues, and the intrinsic benefits of empowerment make empowering citizens an indispensable objective of behavioral public policy. 4. Boosting is a behavioral public policy approach to empowerment grounded in evidence from behavioral science that shows that humans’ boundedly rational decision making is not as flawed as the nudging approach assumes. 5. Boosts are interventions that improve people's competencies to make informed choices that conform to their goals, preferences, and desires. 6. In self-nudging boosts, people learn to use architectural changes in their proximate choice environment to regulate their own behavior—that is, they are empowered to adapt their own choice environments. 7. There are boosts to foster core competences in many domains, including finance, online environments, and health, as well as broader, overarching areas, such as motivation, risk, and judgment and decision making. Boosts should be part of a policy mix that also includes system-level approaches. 8. When implementing boosts, policy makers need to avoid the trap of individualizing responsibility and to be mindful that, due to differences in cognition and motivation, inequalities in the desirable effects across boosted individuals may emerge.

🌟🧠💪📝
#BOOSTING: Empowering citizens with behavioral science

New, freely available paper in Annual Review of Psychology.
PDF: tinyurl.com/boosting2025

For more: scienceofboosting.org

@arc-mpib.bsky.social @mpib-berlin.bsky.social

@annualreviews.bsky.social
#policy #behavioralscience

1/ 🧵👇

Mapping Mental Representations With Free Associations: A Tutorial Using the R Package associatoR | Journal of Cognition The Journal of Cognition, the official journal of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, publishes reviews, empirical articles (including registered reports), data reports, stimulus developmen...

New content: Aeschbach, S., Mata, R., & Wulff, D. U. (2025). Mapping Mental Representations With Free Associations: A
Tutorial Using the R Package associatoR. Journal of Cognition, 8(1): 3, pp. 1–20.DOI: doi.org/10.5334/joc.... #psychscisky

Our tutorial on mapping mental representations with free associations and the associatoR R package was published this week in @jcgntn.bsky.social!

With @ruimata.bsky.social at @unibas.ch and @dirkwulff.bsky.social lff.bsky.social at @arc-mpib.bsky.social.

Read open access: doi.org/10.5334/joc....

Yes. We need to rely more on open LLMs: osf.io/preprints/os...

Agree. The behavioral and social sciences need (more) open LLMs: osf.io/preprints/os...