🚀 Postdoc Alert! Are you passionate about social learning & cultural evolution? @dominikdeffner.bsky.social & I have a 3-year position with freedom to develop your research and work on cutting-edge multiplayer and immersive experiments. Apply by March 30! hmc-lab.com/SocialLearni... Pls share 🙏
02.03.2026 10:45 — 👍 50 🔁 48 💬 2 📌 2
Picture of Marjane Satrapi alongside a quote from her. The quote reads: The world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same... - Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French graphic novelist
Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.
28.02.2026 17:18 — 👍 18513 🔁 7912 💬 40 📌 114
Abstract: Human societies are characterized by large-scale cooperative behavior, even among unrelated strangers. Why? One plausible answer is indirect reciprocity: If I help a stranger, I might gain a good reputation, increasing the likelihood that others will help me in turn. But under what circumstances can indirect reciprocity facilitate a stable, cooperative status quo? Can these circumstances—for example, a high level of agreement about reputations—evolve in the first place? For that matter, what rules for assigning reputations can evolve? I use adaptive dynamics to attain simple, intuitive answers to these questions. Specifically, I study the evolution of cooperative strategies, gossiping behavior, and even moral assessment rules themselves by parametrizing them as continuous traits. I confirm some classical results in the theory of indirect reciprocity but challenge others. Cooperation is easily sustainable, provided reputational views are sufficiently correlated. But when reputations are a matter of private judgment, there are no stable cooperative equilibria at all. Gossip can facilitate a high level of agreement, but echo chambers are difficult to overcome. Crucially, while many assessment rules can facilitate cooperation, almost none of them can actually evolve. The main exception is Stern Judging, which mandates that bad individuals be punished––a rule that is, sadly, highly intolerant of disagreement. I conclude by discussing implications for polarization, moral philosophy, and the discourse. Adaptive dynamics provides a mathematical framework not only for establishing a baseline theory of indirect reciprocity but also for incorporating the foibles and peculiarities of real human societies.
Cooperation Colloquium this week:
Taylor Kessinger (U Penn):
Adaptive dynamics of reputation, social norms, and gossip
Date: Feb 27
Time: 15:00 UTC+1 / 9 am ET
Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...
🚨 Job Alert: Professorship in Evolutionary Anthropology / Primatology at University of Zurich, focused on understanding evolutionary and cultural evolutionary foundations of gender-based inequality and violence, with research in non-human primates.
jobs.uzh.ch/job-vacancie...
Are you a junior faculty member interested in spending 2-4 weeks at Princeton Psych? Consider applying for our Microsabbatical program! It’s a fully funded visit for professional development and creating long-term collaborations.
psych.princeton.edu/diversity/mi...
We are excited to share the third episode of our student-led outreach series! In this instalment, student representatives @ferylbadiani.bsky.social & Ishaan interview Dr. Tim Waring, Assoc. Prof. at U. Maine and head of the Applied Cultural Evolutionary Laboratory.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O3U...
We are recruiting a Lecturer in Psychology: mss.port.ac.uk/ce0732li_web... and a Teaching Fellow: mss.port.ac.uk/ce0732li_web.... Come and join the Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology 🐶🐵🐴🐘🕷️🧒 www.port.ac.uk/research/res...
16.02.2026 09:37 — 👍 8 🔁 21 💬 0 📌 0
"The most extraordinary and worrying thing of what is going on in the United States is the scale of normalization that is happening, in which the press is absolutely a structural part of this," says @carolecadwalla.bsky.social, award-winning investigative journalist
(Democracy Now, 2/10/26)
How do we know our research results are REAL? We replicate them! Most folks agree but lament on how hard it is to publish these replications.
My dearest gentle reader, lament no more! Delighted to unveil: Replication Studies, a new section of Behavioral Ecology 1/
academic.oup.com/beheco/artic...
Imagine if Republicans had this kind of courage.
10.02.2026 00:45 — 👍 1018 🔁 259 💬 24 📌 9
More than 500 private jets departed the Bay Area immediately after the Super Bowl ended
Can't be overstated how much the ultra wealthy are single handedly destroying the planet
10.02.2026 00:36 — 👍 1500 🔁 422 💬 9 📌 13
New (competition funded) PhD opportunity with me,
@iaciac.bsky.social and @dralgernon.bsky.social
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Higher-order networks and animal communication. Suited to someone keen on network science theory/computational modeling and keen to adapt this to ecology & evolution.
"Envision the future you want and then built it backwards from there."
@standupforscience.bsky.social isn't fighting to save the status quo, we are fighting for an opportunity to make science and democracy better.
I hope you'll join us ❤️ www.standupforscience.net/march7
Imagination in bonobos!
I am thrilled to share a new paper w/ Amalia Bastos, out now in @science.org
We provide the first experimental evidence that a nonhuman animal can follow along a pretend scenario & track imaginary objects. Work w/ Kanzi, the bonobo, at Ape Initiative
youtu.be/NUSHcQQz2Ko
Useful thread, though I hope somebody will create a spreadsheet (or Wikipedia entry, perhaps).
And then let's not forget the abusers and bullies who aren't famous enough to have received emails from Epstein.
You have a mini hot water bottle for your cat?! Adorable!!
20.01.2026 21:00 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0We received a TON of submissions for @ces2026.bsky.social ! This is definitely a trend you'll want to conform to. If you didn't submit, still come for the amazing speaker lineup. Registration will open soon. @hbes2026.bsky.social abstract submission closes today!
16.01.2026 09:37 — 👍 18 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0
We are hiring – postdoc position exploring how kinship shapes social ageing in killer whales. Collaboration with @samellisq.bsky.social @drwhale.bsky.social and Prof Rufus Johnstone (Cambridge) starts 1st April 2026 and ends 31st March 2029. Apps close 2nd Feb. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPZ788/p...
13.01.2026 14:42 — 👍 54 🔁 58 💬 1 📌 2over the course of 1871, congress held seven months of hearings on ku klux klan and other white vigilante violence in the south, they took detailed testimony from hundreds of black men and women attesting to klan terror. (1/?)
14.01.2026 02:06 — 👍 9680 🔁 2443 💬 55 📌 145
One week left to submit your abstracts to #HBES2026
16 Jan deadline!
@hbes2026.bsky.social
@humbehevosoc.bsky.social
We’re scouting banquet locations. Hope to see you in Rabat!!
Last years field assistant holding a Manx Shearwater on the isle of Rum (under a towel), retrieving a GPS device after a bird has returned from a foraging trip!
We are looking to hire a Seabird Field Assistant for 2026 for our Manx Shearwater research project.
Please share this to anyone who'd like to get out in the field this summer and learn about biotelemetry, bird handling and research into animal behaviour.
drive.google.com/file/d/1SGZt...
Interested in the evolution of social behaviour? We have a fully-funded PhD opportunity on human social hierarchies, nonverbal behaviour and health! Supervised by myself, @bridgetwaller.bsky.social and @ellamcloughlin.bsky.social.
Informal enquires encouraged!
www.ntu.ac.uk/study-and-co...
I shouldn’t have to share this article as much as I do. Sending condolences to all friends and family and loved ones from the Brown Shooting today.
www.newsweek.com/2025/07/18/f...
🚨 Vacancies at Maastricht in research programme "Europe: Society, Politics and Global Order" (do share!)
- Assistant Prof Political Philosophy in Euro Democracy
- Assistant Prof Euro Political History
- PostDoc Disinformation and Euro Democracy
vacancies.maastrichtuniversity.nl/search/?crea...
Meerkat pups in the Kalahari, South Africa
Rhesus macaques in Cayo Santiago
Dwarf mongoose staring at a camera, South Africa.
📢Two fully-funded #PhD opportunities to work with us:
Topic: Social monitoring & manipulation
UK-domiciled black-heritage scheme: tinyurl.com/aja54nr6
NERC DLTP: tinyurl.com/4jfy47pp
Cosupervisors: #PatrickKennedy @ljnbrent.bsky.social
@bristolbiosci.bsky.social
#bioacoustics #mammals #fieldwork
🚨Job Alert plz RT!
Johns Hopkins Psych & Brain Sciences is looking for a new colleague using behavioral or computational approaches to study cognition!
We are excited about many areas of (esp higher) cognition in human adults, children, or nonhuman animals
Open-rank
apply.interfolio.com/178146
I am pleased to announce that from Jan 1 2026 I take over as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Biological Theory. My first act, with the support of the editorial team, is to bring the journal to BlueSky from X.
Please follow us @biologicaltheory.bsky.social. We will be posting about all our articles.
Thrilled to teach again this year, on the evolution of social cognition, at the Toulouse Summer School in Quantitative Social Sciences! Apply before December 15th 👇
Brochure: lnkd.in/e_R7cQTP
Application: lnkd.in/eey-fEJ
Over the past months (and at least 11 versions!), I was lucky to work with 11 amazing colleagues on a call to action to reform academic publishing.
Not another declaration, but an appeal to our powerful friends, research funders & institutions, to Stop the Drain of Scientific Publishing. 1/n
