I link della settimana (#134) (i) Questo articolo problematizza la narrazione dominante: “Sebbene i dati di qualità siano scarsi, la ricerca esistente suggerisce una narrativa diversa — una in cui i giovani se la cavano meglio in ...

I link della settimana (#134)
open.substack.com/pub/albertoa...

The kids are all right Surprising studies show young people are doing better than previous generations in many ways

"Although quality data are sparse, the research that does exist suggests a different narrative—one in which kids are faring better in many ways than those of previous generations."
www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...

It depends on chapters...this is the title of the Haidt & Rausch one :-(

Home The World Happiness Report is published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, in partnership with Gallup, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and an independent ed...

Also: The core measure -self-reported life satisfaction- has surely some validity concern when applied cross culturally? (e.g., nordic countries are always at top the ranking, but it could plausibly be a "cultural" factor).

www.worldhappiness.report

Even correlations are non-significant when considering also non-western countries (and, in fact, internet used for communication has a significant *positive* correlation with life satisfaction).

Mostly it seems that the actual data pattern is more interesting than the narrative they are tying to push: light social media users report higher wellbeing than non-users, with a drop *only* at heavy use.

The World Happiness Report 2026 theme is social media and adolescent wellbeing, so I tried to have a read. It feels a mixed bag to me.

They gave prominence to the view of Jonathan Haidt and Zach Rausch, which tells about the framing, but there are also clearly more nuanced chapters.

I link della settimana (#133) (i) RIP Robert Trivers.

I link della settimana (#133)
open.substack.com/pub/albertoa...

And learning is mostly interactive (vs individual or observational)

Cross-cultural analysis in non-industrial societies using eHRAF suggests toolmaking skill acquisition is mostly from kin (vs conformity or prestige)
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

First guest lecture in my cultural analytics module! Thank you to Nadia von Jacobi, introducing a new ~27,000 folktales dataset, and testing presence of moral foundations themes.
Preprint presenting the dataset: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Abstract By rewarding engagement over accuracy, social media platforms foster the spread of misinformation. Likes and similar engagement reactions are a central form of feedback on most platforms and shape what users share. On the platforms, users quickly learn that sharing interesting, attention-grabbing content garners positive feedback, even when it is inaccurate. With repeated exposure to these social rewards, sharing interesting content—including interesting but inaccurate content—can become a habit. We review evidence for this reward-based learning and propose a simple redesign of platform rewards: adding a Trust button so users can reward accurate, reliable posts. Experimental evidence supports this approach: Users give Trusts to accurate posts more than inaccurate posts. Then, when they receive trust feedback, users increasingly share accurate content (even when less interesting) and reduce sharing of inaccurate but highly interesting posts. Because this intervention changes incentives, it is scalable, preserves user choice, and aligns with people’s stated goal of sharing accurate information. Misinformation interventions that overlook the role of social media incentives are unlikely to produce lasting results.

Another proposal in line with "The cultural ecology of social media". Platforms reward engagement over accuracy: counter misinformation incentivising producers with a "Trust" button.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Online success on social media is increasingly a question of how well posts serve the poster’s strategic goals (reputation/identity management, coalition building) and less of pure content transmission (and reader psychology), argues @acerbialberto.com:

buff.ly/fDUfOYU

Consistent with the perspective in
osf.io/preprints/so...

Nice systematic review of how emotions affect engagements in social media. The effect is context- (e.g. negative bias in politics and positive in health) and platform-dependent.
www.emerald.com/oir/article-...

I link della settimana (#132) (i) Ragionevole. Le abitudini possono essere negative, ma non sono "dipendenza". E, invece di patologizzare, dovremmo pensare in questi termini: come possiamo creare abitudini migliori per il nostro u...

I link della settimana (#132)
open.substack.com/pub/albertoa...

Refitting the Lower Decks of the Coleman Boat: A Biosocial and Evolutionary Expansion of the Standard Model of Sociological Explanation - KZfSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie In this article, we argue that the standard model of sociological explanation can be substantially improved by systematically integrating insights from biosocial and evolutionary research. Building on...

Another article proposing to integrate an evolutionary framework in sociology
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

What about evaluating researchers/academics on one paper/year at their choice?

If you are interested in cross-cultural analysis, play and human cognition do yourself a favor and reach this amazing post - and the preprint. I’m so chuffed to be part of this research!

Chinese world culltural trend

How can we study human development over two thousand years?

For most periods and regions, we lack reliable data on income, health, or education. Before 1800, and outside Europe, historical records are extremely fragmentary.

Thread 👇 🧵

What does it mean for culture to ‘shape’ cognition? Human culture and cognition vary widely across groups, but how exactly culture ‘shapes’ cognition remains underspecified. In this review, we outline four qualitatively different pathways by which cult...

"...it remains unclear how exactly culture ‘shapes’ cognition. The study outlines four pathways: culture can privilege one cognitive process over another, prune out disfavored processes, produce new processes, or have no effect on cognition."
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Anyway, vieni a Trento e discutiamone davanti a una bottiglia di marzemino! :)

...and for other domains, it seems that not focusing on transmission, or not focusing *only* on transmission, is promising, see e.g. osf.io/preprints/so...

...them as explanatory forces (not sure we have to bring all the DIT package with it). However this does not define culture, and should be part of a broader framework (like the one proposed by B&A)...

...to phenomena. With B&A, each cultural domain needs to be explained differently. But, alas, I think this is true.
Still, for some domains/levels of explanation transmission and possibly selection *are* important (this is certainly not a new take from me), and we can - and should - use...

Can't compete with your monster thread Claudio, but here my quick two cents.
Not surprisingly, I find compelling B&A idea as a *broad* framework for understanding culture.
What you get in breadth you loose in specificity: an appealing aspect of DIT is that provides culture-specific explanations...

Opinion | Your social media ‘addiction’ is overrated It is healthier and more accurate not to pathologize our habits.

Excellent point. Habits can be bad but they are not "addiction". And, if instead of pathologising, we think in these terms, we can create better habits for our social media usage.
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Evolved psychology, eco-phenotypic feedbacks and the social construction of culture This paper responds to more than twenty commentaries on The Ecological Approach to Culture, written by researchers in evolutionary biology, behavioral…

Baumard & André answer to the commentaries to "The ecological approach to culture". An important conversation for everybody interested in application of evolutionary theory to culture.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I link della settimana (#131) (i) I social media hanno democratizzato l’opinione pubblica, mentre l’IA potrebbe avere un effetto opposto e potrebbe non essere un male.

I link della settimana (#131)
open.substack.com/pub/albertoa...

We surely agree we use other strategies/mechanisms too :)