Related papers: Is Human Culture Locked by Evolution?
Cultural items like songs have an important impact in creating and reinforcing stereotypes, biases, and discrimination. But the actual nature of such items is often less transparent. Take songs, for example. Are lyrics biased against women?…
Culture is the bedrock of human interaction; it dictates how we perceive and respond to everyday interactions. As the field of human-computer interaction grows via the rise of generative Large Language Models (LLMs), the cultural alignment…
Understanding the dynamics of opinions, preferences and of culture as whole requires more use of empirical data than has been done so far. It is clear that an important role in driving this dynamics is played by social influence, which is…
As LLMs are increasingly deployed in global applications, the importance of cultural sensitivity becomes paramount, ensuring that users from diverse backgrounds feel respected and understood. Cultural harm can arise when these models fail…
Although Darwinian models are rampant in the social sciences, social scientists do not face the problem that motivated Darwin's theory of natural selection: the problem of explaining how lineages evolve despite that any traits they acquire…
The advent of the digital era provided a fertile ground for the development of virtual societies, complex systems influencing real-world dynamics. Understanding online human behavior and its relevance beyond the digital boundaries is still…
This work is concerned with the dynamics of online cultural markets, namely, attention allocation of many users on a set of digital goods with infinite supply. Such dynamic is important in shaping processes and outcomes in society, from…
Algorithmic decision-making is replacing idiosyncratic human judgment in domains such as hiring, lending, and criminal justice. This shift promises increased consistency, but many scholars worry that it can go too far. They warn of the…
LLMs as intelligent agents are being increasingly applied in scenarios where human interactions are involved, leading to a critical concern about whether LLMs are faithful to the variations in culture across regions. Several works have…
Does machine learning and AI ensure that social biases thrive ? This paper aims to analyse this issue. Indeed, as algorithms are informed by data, if these are corrupted, from a social bias perspective, good machine learning algorithms…
Recommender systems are the algorithms which select, filter, and personalize content across many of the worlds largest platforms and apps. As such, their positive and negative effects on individuals and on societies have been extensively…
Recent scholarship typically characterizes Large Language Models (LLMs) through either an \textit{Instrumental Paradigm} (viewing models as reflections of their developers' culture) or a \textit{Substitutive Paradigm} (viewing models as…
The complex nature of organizational culture challenges our ability to infers its underlying dynamics from observational studies. Recent computational studies have adopted a distinct different view, where plausible mechanisms are proposed…
Understanding how cognitive and social mechanisms shape the evolution of complex artifacts such as songs is central to cultural evolution research. Social network topology (what artifacts are available?), selection (which are chosen?), and…
Due to the correlational structure in our traits such as identities, cultures, and political attitudes, seemingly innocuous preferences like following a band or using a specific slang can reveal private traits. This possibility, especially…
A quantitative understanding of societies requires useful combinations of empirical data and mathematical models. Models of cultural dynamics aim at explaining the emergence of culturally homogeneous groups through social influence.…
Culture shapes people's behavior, both online and offline. Surprisingly, there is sparse research on how cultural context affects network formation and content consumption on social media. We analyzed the friendship networks and dyadic…
This paper presents a series of experiments in collective social robotics, spanning more than 10 years, with the long-term aim of building embodied models of (aspects) of cultural evolution. Initial experiments demonstrated the emergence of…
Cognitive biases have been studied in psychology, sociology, and behavioral economics for decades. Traditionally, they have been considered a negative human trait that leads to inferior decision-making, reinforcement of stereotypes, or can…
Even this saying itself is a variant of a similar statement attributed to Bernard of Chartres in the 12th Century, and inspired the title for a book by Steven Hawking and an album by Oasis. Creative ideas beget other creative ideas and, as…