Ralf Kurvers

📣 Call for Applications: The University of Vienna invites applications for more than 40 fully funded doctoral positions across a broad range of disciplines in Life Sciences and Natural Sciences. 👨‍🔬👩‍🔬 #PhDSky #PhD #univie
📅 Application period: 2 March – 27 March 2026, 12:00 CET

More information: ⤵️

Want to learn about computational social science *for free* and identify new research partners across academic fields? Apply to one of the 2026 Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science (described in yellow in the attached map) here: sicss.io/locations

🚀 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 🙏

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared...

Check out this recent @nature.com paper reporting a field experiment on X. It shows X's algorithm boosts conservative content and downranks traditional media—shifting users’ views on key issues. Switching to chronological doesn’t reverse the effect. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

✨New Perspective out w/ Wenning Deng and @fearbrain.bsky.social in @cp-iscience.bsky.social ! We argue that social foraging gives us a unifying, and ecologically grounded way to study how decisions unfold across levels — from individuals and dyads to collectives.

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Human-AI collectives produce the most accurate differential diagnoses YouTube video by HACID Project

We have published the second short video of our series on hybrid collective intelligence. This time, @nikoz.bsky.social from @mpib-berlin.bsky.social presents how combining human expertise with AI insights can lead to better diagnostic accuracy in the medical domain.
youtu.be/Xz8wBkDzjjQ

📣 Applications for the 23rd Summer Institute on Bounded Rationality are now open!

✨Join us in Berlin @arc-mpib.bsky.social June 08–16, 2026, to explore the topic of “Decision Making in the Age of AI”.

✏️ More details + application form (deadline: March 16): www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/research/res...

Front cover of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B showing a trumpetfish shadowing a non-threatening species of a similar colour to aid its hunting success.

Delighted that a #trumpetfish has made the 🌟cover🌟 of @royalsocietypublishing.org journal #ProceedingsB.

Read about how these predatory #fish hide against similarly coloured non-threatening species to #camouflage on the move in our #OpenAccess article:

doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

#behaviour #marine

❄️🎣 What ice-fishing competitions reveal about human decision-making. New paper in @science.org by researchers from @mpib-berlin.bsky.social, @scioi.bsky.social, and the University of Eastern Finland.

👉 Read more: www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/newsroom/new...

📄 Paper: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Hybrid Collective Intelligence: What and Why YouTube video by HACID Project

We have published a new short video of a series on hybrid collective intelligence from the HACID project. In this video, we introduce the field, discussing how human experts and AI systems can join forces to produce better solutions to complex problems.
youtu.be/3dwGpLo0EE0

Is academia just a job?

We assigned this paper in our professional development seminar last week and it was quite popular.

My view: I grew up in a working class family and no one I knew considered their job "a calling". I also had a bunch of jobs that felt, well, like jobs.

Please spread the news:
14 PostDoctoral Fellowships in the Early Career Rescue Fellowship Programme in Freiburg, Konstanz and Tübingen.

Contact me, if you want to work with us in Tübingen.

stellen.uni-konstanz.de/en/jobpostin...

🚨 New in Nature+Science!🚨
AI chatbots can shift voter attitudes on candidates & policies, often by 10+pp
🔹Exps in US Canada Poland & UK
🔹More “facts”→more persuasion (not psych tricks)
🔹Increasing persuasiveness reduces "fact" accuracy
🔹Right-leaning bots=more inaccurate

The rise of machine culture Podcast Episode · Many Minds · 31/10/2024 · 1h 20m

Working my way slowly through the @manymindspod.bsky.social back catalogue. This one with @iyadrahwan.bsky.social is really good on a cultural evolution analysis of machine / digital culture

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/m...

Reranking partisan animosity in algorithmic social media feeds alters affective polarization Today, social media platforms hold the sole power to study the effects of feed-ranking algorithms. We developed a platform-independent method that reranks participants’ feeds in real time and used thi...

This article provides more data showing how easy it is to manipulate humans on social media.

These researchers rerouted the algorithm on Twitter to push some users toward “antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity”.

It only took 1 week to elicit changes that used to take 3 years.

Postdoc position in individual-level incentives, social
learning, and payoff-biased imitation shape group-level accuracy in complex prediction and decision-making tasks in Konstanz

files.newsletter2go.com/l3slzozn/s_i...

Two postdoctoral opportunities in evolutionary anthropology at Duke - HBES https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30783 Position Description The Pontzer Lab in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University seeks two Postdoctoral Associates for research in h...

Two postdoctoral opportunities in evolutionary anthropology at Duke University!
The Pontzer Lab is hiring for projects on human ecology, energetics, and aging & health.
More info: www.hbes.com/two-postdoct...

EHBEA 2026 in Leiden - abstract submission opens soon!

Leiden looking good today ;-)
📢 Abstract submission will be open Nov 1st – Dec 15th for EHBEA 2026
⚡Present your research, connect & collaborate 14-17 April
📝 300 words (extendable to 800 after acceptance)
For more information & our full call for abstracts, check www.ehbea2026.com

Come and do a PhD at Exeter with me and Chico Camargo (Computer Science) on human-genAI coevolution

"Leveraging Natural Language Processing for Data-Driven Agent-Based Modelling of Online Cultural Dynamics"

www.exeter.ac.uk/v8media/recr...

More details here:
www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...

Four three-year postdoctoral positions in the project Slow-Motion Democracy - Vacancy at Aarhus University Vacancy at Department of Political Science, Aarhus University

Four (!) three-year postdoc positions available at @au.dk: international.au.dk/about/profil...

Join an incredible team & help understand the psychological & political implications of the clash between high-speed society & slow-speed democracy.

Please share! @tboeggild.bsky.social can help with Qs

Varieties of childhood Podcast Episode · Many Minds · 10/07/2025 · 1h 29m

Really enjoyed this podcast with @sheinalew.bsky.social and @dorsaamir.bsky.social on evolution and childhood. Super-smart people talking about a super-interesting topic

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/m...

I have some brilliant news to share! I recently received a DFG-funded Emmy Noether 6-year grant to establish my own group in Germany. I will soon be looking for a PhD student and a research assistant to join the team and investigate how the balance of power is maintained in animal societies.

An aerial photograph of the Tilburg University campus.

I am hiring PhD candidates to study the psychology of attention & technology use at @tilburg-university.bsky.social.

We're looking for motivated & curious scholars with expertise in cognitive psychology and statistics, and offer a friendly work environment with great terms & benefits.

tiu.nu/22989

Just 1 week to apply! 4 year @erc.europa.eu funded PhD position working in an interdisciplinary team to study #culturalEvolution as a process of reuse, recombination, and creative re-engineering of past solutions. Details 👉 hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur... 🙏Please share!

Photo by Antoni Shkraba Studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/doctors-examining-an-x-ray-image-on-a-laptop-5214994/

🧵 webinar announcement
1/
How can we combine human and machine intelligence to make better medical diagnoses? 🧠🤖
Join HACID and @HumanDx on Nov 12, 17:30 CET for a special webinar on Hybrid Human-AI Collective Intelligence in Medical Diagnostics.
🔗 events.teams.microsoft.com/event/8e607b...

Less than a week left to apply!

Fully-funded 4-year #PhD in Cultural Evolution! Join my @erc.europa.eu project exploring how compression & compositionality drive cultural innovation: hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur...
Apply by Nov 12!
Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏

How to Apply

The IMPRS LIFE is looking to fill up to three PhD positions.

If you’re interested in working at @arc-mpib.bsky.social with me on topics related to social and collective decision making, and aging, please reach out. Deadline Nov 30: www.imprs-life.mpg.de/11840/how-to...

First-Person Perspective of the Voluntary Payoff-Sharing (VP) Condition YouTube video by Valerii Chirkov

Which processes underlie collective intelligence in naturalistic human groups?

In new work led by Valerii Chirkov, we show that payoff selectivity is key in transforming a group of individuals into an intelligent collective 🤝🧠

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY7n...

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

Transmission networks of long-term and short-term knowledge in a foraging society Abstract. Cultural transmission across generations is key to cumulative cultural evolution. While several mechanisms—such as vertical, horizontal, and obli

💙New paper!💙

How is knowledge transmitted across generations in a foraging society?

With @danielredhead.bsky.social
we found: In BaYaka foragers, long-term skills pass in smaller, sparser networks, while short-term food info circulates broadly & reciprocally

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...