Cultural evolution and cultural attraction
I am interested in the theoretical debate between cultural attraction theory and “standard” cultural evolution theory. While I have argued that the two approaches are not necessarily in…
Author: Alberto Acerbi
Vaccine hesitancy is not correlated with social media penetration at country-level in Europe
The Wellcome Trust has recently (yesterday) released the 2018 Global Monitor, a 140,000 people survey on how ‘people around the world think and feel about science and major…
Vaccine hesitancy is not correlated with social media penetration at country-level in Europe
The Wellcome Trust has recently (yesterday) released the 2018 Global Monitor, a 140,000 people survey on how ‘people around the world think and feel about science and major…
The ordeal simulation hypothesis
You have probably heard the adagio that “man bites dog”, and not “dog bites man”, makes for a good piece of news: unusual, exceptional, events are better stories…
The ordeal simulation hypothesis
You have probably heard the adagio that “man bites dog”, and not “dog bites man”, makes for a good piece of news: unusual, exceptional, events are better stories…
Why people die in novels: Testing the ordeal simulation hypothesis
I wrote a presentation of the research behind the paper in this blog post.
Is cultural evolution “neoliberal”?
I have been involved, over the weekend, in a small twitter debate on the old question of whether anthropology should use qualitative or quantitative methodologies. The debate was…
Is cultural evolution “neoliberal”?
I have been involved, over the weekend, in a small twitter debate on the old question of whether anthropology should use qualitative or quantitative methodologies. The debate was…
An example preprint / working paper
This work is driven by the results in my previous paper on LLMs. Create your slides in Markdown – click the Slides button to check out the example.…
Morgue employee cremated by mistake while taking a nap
Online misinformation, fake news, false news, hoaxes, you name it, has been blamed for almost everything bad happening in the last years, from the success of Trump to…
Morgue employee cremated by mistake while taking a nap
Online misinformation, fake news, false news, hoaxes, you name it, has been blamed for almost everything bad happening in the last years, from the success of Trump to…
Cognitive attraction and online misinformation
I wrote a presentation of the research behind the paper in this blog post. An article (in Italian) summarising the paper.
Keep calm and trust the algorithm?
There is a joke among pilots—of course, I never heard any pilot actually saying the joke, but I found it online in plenty of commentaries about automation—according to…
Cognitive attraction and online misinformation
Next month, I will give two talks – or two versions of the same talk – on “Cognitive attraction and online misinformation”. One will be in Den Bosch…
Did Einstein really say that?
The phenomenon of online diffusion of misattributed quotes is so widespread that got its own dedicated meme. You may have seen a picture of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th…