Olivier Morin

Here is a PhD fellowship in one of the best places in the world to study cognition and culture.
1. Cultural phenomenon: writing
2. Cognitive capacity: to detect what is unpredictable
3. Mission: Show how (2) drives the evolution of (1) 😲
4. Methods: you’ll eventually master some powerful ones

Join us today @cudanlab.bsky.social

for a lecture & discussion with

@oliviermorin.bsky.social
on "The evolution of writing & well-designed languages"

16:00-18:00 Tallinn time UTC+2 🇪🇪🇪🇺🌍
(5 hours from this post).

Details & zoom: cudan.tlu.ee/events/2026-...

PhD student grant (3 years) on the evolution of written communication My team recruits a PhD student to work under the supervision of Olivier Morin on the evolution of written communication, within a project jointly led by Olivier Morin, Hugo Mercier, and Marc Allassonn...

CALL: a PhD grant (3 years) to do a PhD with me at @cognitionens.bsky.social on the evolution of graphic codes. euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/410213

Come work with us! Tallinn Uni is hiring a second lecturer in DH&AI. Estonian proficiency not required, foreign applicants welcome, required phd can be in progress (expected to be completed), competitive salary+benefits, nice working environment close to the sea
candidate.recrur.com/public/jobad...

'Why monsters are dangerous', by @oliviermorin.bsky.social and @sobchuk.bsky.social

📢 CfP now open for the Computational Cultural Science Workshop (Paris, 18-19 May 2026) until 16 February.

Topics of interest:
*️⃣AI and cultural datasets
*️⃣Theory-driven humanities research
*️⃣Document-based modelling of historical and social processes
*️⃣Cultural analytics

👉 c2s.sciencesconf.org

Cultural Transmission Promotes the Emergence of Statistical Properties That Support Language Learning Language is passed across generations through cultural transmission. Prior experimental work, where participants reproduced sets of non-linguistic sequences in transmission chains, shows that this pr...

New paper with @inbalarnon.bsky.social and @simonkirby.bsky.social! Learnability pressures drive the emergence of core statistical properties of language–e.g. Zipf's laws–in an iterated sequence learning experiment, with learners’ RTs indicating sensitivity to the emerging sequence information.

Looking for a funded Ph.D. in #CogSci in an interdisciplinary, research-first program? Apply to CEU!

cognitivescience.ceu.edu/admission

Deadline February 4, 2026. Please share with any interested students!

#PsychSciSky #DevPsych #CogPsych

One research direction of my group will be the evolution of European literature, relying on my ERC starting grant. Another direction will be the cultural evolution of films, music & other diverse artforms. I'll be hiring postdocs & PhD students starting in March 2026, so there will be job posts! 3/3

The building of the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt

I got wonderful news: I was granted a position of Max Planck independent group leader at the MPI for Empirical Aesthetics ⬇️ (@ae.mpg.de) in Frankfurt, which I'll join in early 2026. It's a huge honor: being trusted with academic freedom offered by MPG. My group will study the evolution of arts. 1/3

Societal crises disrupt long-term increases in stress, negativity, and simplicity in US Billboard song lyrics from 1973 to 2023 - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Societal crises disrupt long-term increases in stress, negativity, and simplicity in US Billboard song lyrics from 1973 to 2023

US song lyrics have become more negative in the last 50 years, but societal shocks (like 9/11 and COVID) corresponds to *attenuation* of this trend.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Armin Schulz, It’s Only Human | BJPS Review of Books Olivier Morin reviews It’s Only Human, by Armin Schulz

www.thebsps.org/reviewofbook...

Rate your score on Factor Fexcectorn.

Well done, Scientific Reports. pubpeer.com/publications...

Enduring constraints on grammar revealed by Bayesian spatiophylogenetic analyses - Nature Human Behaviour Despite their great diversity, human languages are shaped by recurring grammatical universals. Verkerk et al. show that about one-third of the proposed universals hold cross-linguistically through ana...

Today, we published a paper on the strength of language universals (if language has X, it also has Y) given spatial & phylogenetic autocorrelation in @nathumbehav.nature.com ! It is a cool research project, led by the brilliant Annemarie Verkerk at @uni-saarland.de
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🎉 New preprint: Bayesian Competence Inference guides Knowledge Attribution and Information search

If someone knows that Venus is the only planet in the Solar System that rotates clockwise, will they also know what Earth’s only natural satellite is? What about which planets have no moons at all?

thanks!

Interesting! Curious to know what
@docteur-drey.bsky.social thinks.

Just out - "Art Beyond Cognition: Reframing Neanderthal art through social connectivity and cultural transmission" by Straffon & Tennie

Too bad — and in it makes sense, in hindsight, given the weaknesses of cognitive dissonance reduction as a theory. Still, on literary merits alone, When prophecy fails remains a gem of a book.

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

It is time to abandon student evaluations of teaching

Comment by Gordon Hodson (@gordonhodsonphd.bsky.social)

Web: go.nature.com/4jfAzXo
PDF: rdcu.be/ef9y5

In this commentary, I argue that student-based teaching evaluations are problematic bc

✳️ systematic biases (e.g., racism, sexism)
✳️ poor construct validity
✳️ undermine standards and learning

We should evaluate teaching as seriously as we do research. Or don't do teaching evaluations.

Your chilly sneer
Of cold command
Your trunkless legs
Upon the sand
Once awed the Persian, Turk,
And Damascene

A pedastal
Beside your smirk
Proclaims “Look up,
You lazy jerk!
Behold the mighty work
Of great
Jolene.”

Unearthing the Nature of Knowing Research reveals how people process information, how they acquire—and sometimes reject—knowledge, and how that compares to artificial intelligence systems’ abilities to do the same.

Excited to see our research highlighted in @psychscience.bsky.social Observer!
With @oliviermorin.bsky.social , @hugoreasoning.bsky.social , and Thomas Dheilly, we explored how people infer others’ knowledge: even from a single answer, they can estimate how much someone knows about a topic!

I feel like I've lost about 150 friends simply by complaining about Dumbar's number.

It is wrong theoretically, statistically, and also emprically.

A Culture of Growth Why Enlightenment culture sparked the Industrial Revolution

My favourite book by Mokyr is A Culture of Growth: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb.... Here, Mokyr draws on cultural evolutionary theory to develop some his key ideas about the evolution of science, technology and the origins of modern economic growth. Really accessible and packed with ideas!

Huge congratulations to @alexeykoshevoy.bsky.social l who defended his PhD thesis today!! with his co-supervisor @sblldtrch.bsky.social and jury members @simonkirby.bsky.social @gboleda.bsky.social Paula Rubio Fernandez & Benjamin Spector.

also with @kakapitan.bsky.social @sobchuk.bsky.social @artjomshl.bsky.social @hugoreasoning.bsky.social & many others

We're officially launching the new PSL CultureLab in 10 days !
If you're interested in the research of a collective bridging Computational Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Evolution, you can check our programme (and come to our event, if you're in Paris 22 September):
psl.eu/agenda/collo...

Amazing Oleg!